Southall 1967 To 1971 North Road Primary School

A Memory of Southall.

I arrived in Southall aged 7 (September 1967) from Kenya, and moved into a rented property on Lady Margaret Road, just opposite a chip shop that used to be there. I remember a portion cost around 6 old pennies (2.5pence), and were wrapped in old newspapers. Lady Margaret Road, seemed really long to me then, and I remember how pretty it looked in Spring and Summer, when all the flowers bloomed in the rectangular plots dotted about the road.

I joined North Road Primary School, and started off in the 1st year (juniors - as it was known as at the time). I remember when I first attended the school, its head was a Mrs Shaw, who seemed to have come straight out of a Dickens Novel. She was a very grand looking lady, from another age altogether.
She retired soon after,and the post then went to a Mrs Danelian, who was also my class teacher for some time. I recall Mr Rogers, and his trusty slipper 'Fred', and the delightful tales he used to narrate. A most jovial man, whose bark was often worse than his bite... Then we also had a superb teacher by the name of Mr Wasley (spelling may be incorrect) who seemed to delight all the children with his glorious magic tricks, and his superb speed writing skills on the blackboard. For PE, we used to go swimming in that tiny pool, which used to be in the middle of the playground, in a tiny hut. We were taught by a Mr Greenaway, and I recall his techniques for getting us to breathe correctly bellowing out 'Breathe In, turn your heads, Breathe out"... During cold snaps, the pool would often be covered in large swathes of ice, and had plastic sheeting to separate the ice from the kids swimming in the water!! I still cannot swim properly to this day.. (not his fault though!).

I remember the wonderful team of 'dinner ladies', who really looked after the children at lunch times so well. The in-house cooking was really delicious, and seemed almost luxurious by today's standards. I remember a Mrs Thomson and a Mrs Cooke amongst others. They were so good, that they used to cut up the meat into tinier portions just so that we would eat the meals provided, properly, and at times, to enable us to chew it properly. I admit, that I did have difficulty with the roast lamb we used to get... I remember the lemon tart and custards, coconut sponge and custard, and my favorite sweet - chocolate sponge and... you've guessed it.. chocolate custard...!!!! Yummy. Those were the days..

For French lessons, we had a lovely teacher called Mrs Fish. She was terrific, and I still remember the language from her teachings, all those years ago. My very first class teacher, was a young Miss Hunter, she was simply amazing and so very kind.

I still remember the names of some of my classmates then (Surinderpal Sidhu, Joanne Cooke, Phillip Knight, Sucha Gosal, Sharan Hutt, John King, Paul KcKenzie, Adrian Whyte, Hajinderpal Dhami, and many others...

North Road Primary, was really such a great school, and it had wonderful teachers who really cared for the pupils in such a good way. Alas, all that ended, when I left the school, and went onto to my then 'brand new comprehensive' Twyford High School, in 1971...but that's another story.... ;)