Cats and Birds and Stuff

School Days: Peeing Contests, Playground Crushes, and a Chipped Tooth

Classroom in Great Britain circa 1950

My education at Danygraig Primary School in the early 1960s was less about the three Rs and more about the raw, unvarnished curriculum of boyhood.

I went to Danygraig Primary School, where I got my first proper introduction to formal education and to the fine art of competitive urination. It was a place full of sharp elbows, chalk dust, lukewarm milk, and early lessons in heartbreak and humiliation. The usual.

Peeing for Glory

One of my clearest memories, and I don’t say this proudly, is the peeing contests in the boys’ toilets. The goal? To see who could pee the highest up the wall. Someone had even scratched a series of lines to mark record-breaking attempts.

It was deeply unhygienic, probably a health hazard, and highly competitive. I still remember the quiet pride that came from beating someone by half an inch.

Girls We Loved From Afar

In infant school, all the boys were besotted with Zena Thomas. She was beautiful, confident, and had an air of class that felt miles beyond any of us, and certainly beyond me. I don’t think I ever said more than a handful of words to her.

In junior school, there was Susan Morris, she was my girlfriend and I decided I was going to marry her, though she, tragically, had no idea that she was my girlfriend or that I was going to marry her. She was the daughter of one of the brothers behind Morris Bros, a respectable coach hire company. Even back then, I had a strong sense of what constituted a good long-term investment in a partner.

Milk, Maths and Miss Watt

I remember:

Miss Watt is the only teacher whose name has stuck. Whether that means she was particularly memorable or particularly frightening, I couldn’t say.

One Tooth Down

At some point, some silly bugger banged me on the back of the head while I was drinking from the water fountain. The force chipped a piece off one of my front teeth. It’s funny what you remember. I can still feel the shock of it, the crunch, and the weird sense of betrayal that someone would do that while I was drinking.

A Lesson in Empathy

One of the playground favourite games for boys was to run around lifting the girls’ skirts, part mischief, part curiosity, and mostly just stupidity. I once did it to one of the Fermandal girls, though in her case it was a raincoat.

She wasn’t wearing any knickers.

I remember being shocked, and then suddenly ashamed. Even at that age, I realised her family probably had even less than we did and that made me feel awful. It was one of my first real lessons in empathy, though I wouldn’t have had the word for it then.