~ Featured Famous Person ~
Sue Townsend
Sue Townsend was born in Glen Hills, Glen Parva, Leicester in 1946, and
despite quitting school at 15, went on to become a household name after
her book The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, aged 13 sold millions
of copies in Britain and around the world. Sue attended Glen Hills Infant
School in 1951, and her memories of those early days at that school are
reproduced in an article below (Diary of a Schoolgirl Aged 4
�
).
The best selling �Diary� was followed up with The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole and The True Confessions of Adrian Albert Mole. In 1991 she wrote the bestseller The Queen and I 1992), a wonderfully humorous novel in which the Royal Family are deposed (thrown out) and land up in a council estate in Leicester. A play by the same name was adapted from her novel and presented by Max Stafford-Clark's new "Out of Joint" touring company in conjunction with the Leicester Haymarket and the Royal Court. Other books by Sue include Rebuilding Coventry (1988) and Ghost Children (1998).
For a picture of Sue Townsend, and for more information on her, visit Famous Faces at the Leicester Mercury website or visit Adrian Mole - The Cappuccino Years.
The
Diary of a schoolgirl aged 4 1/4
I started at Glen Hills Infant School September 1951. It was a descent into hell. I
had no conception of �school.� I am sure that my mother tried to explain what it
was to me, but nothing prepared me for the curtailment of my freedom. Like many
people of my generation, I grew up in paradise. There were gardens to play in
and woods and fields nearby. It was hot in the summer and in the winter it snowed.
In spring the wild flowers grew, and blossoms appeared on the trees, and in autumn
there were conkers to collect and dried leaves to kick at. Nowadays there is no
such seasonal certainty and most children live indoors, protected by double glazing
from the elements and potential abduction.
I lived in Leicester in a community of prefabs, where our roads were
unfinished and full of pot-holes. After it rained we would damn the mini
rivers running down the road and stomp through the puddles in our wellingtons.
In the summer the pot-holes would be full of dust and we children would go to
and fro from the kitchen tap with a jug until the pot-hole was full of glorious
mud which we would then feed to our dolls. A photograph exists of me and my
friend Linda, aged about three, sitting in the middle of the road mixing our
mud pies. If a car drove up the road it signified trouble; it could only be
the doctor or someone official.
That first morning at school I regard as my first in captivity. I wore a uniform of
a white shirt with a stiff collar, a school tie and a gymslip with a belt around
the waist. I can still feel the skirt of the gymslip as it scratched the back of my
legs. For the first time in my short life I felt uncomfortable in my clothes.
I felt constrained and restricted in movement. My school shoes felt to heavy to run
in, and my ribbon kept slipping out of my freshly-washed hair.
My mother handed me over to the teacher. Mrs. Biggs, who had a bosom like a railway
embankment. The classroom seemed to be full of children weeping. Some made a dash for
the door, but were held back by Mrs. Biggs. I was given a place at an octagonol-shaped
table were several of the children were sobbing. �I want my mummy,� in more refined
accents than my own.
In 1951 Glen Hills Infants was definitely on the right side of the tracks, its
catchment area was overwhelmingly middle class. We few prefabs dwellers lived on the
wrong side of the tracks. A main road [the A426 Lutterworth Road] divided our two
communities, but as a gormless five-year old I new nothing of the great English class
divide. I was probably eight years old before I realised that some of my classmates
were not allowed to play with the prefab children out of school. Eventually, Mrs.
Biggs quietened her class of thirty or so and began a baffling monologue about the
school: its rules, its timetable, its expectations. I felt like a stranger in a
stranger land. One who didn�t know the language.
Mrs. Biggs then read out our names and the numbers of our pegs which were to be
found in the cloakroom. "What was a cloakroom? And why would a peg be in a cloakroom?�
The only pegs I�d heard of were the type my mother used to hang out the washing.
Our coats, hats, scarves and plimsoll bags (carefully embroidered with our names by
our mothers) must be hung on this peg, apparently. I immediately forgot the number
of my peg and was to afraid to ask Mrs. Biggs, and so fell into a pegless limbo for
several weeks until I identified an unclaimed peg.
The day continued in a series of jerky slabs of time. Several items of equipment were
given out, pencils, paper, fat wax crayons, then, just as I was getting to grips with
them, Mrs. Biggs ordered us to put them away. Little milk bottles [1/3 pint] of milk
and drinking straws were distributed. The silver tops from the bottles were collected
up for the blind, Mrs. Biggs said, another bafflement. What did the blind do with
them, I wondered. When the bottles were sucked empty we were turned out of the
classroom and into the playground.
This truly was hell. The big children screeched and swoomed around the asphalt like a
flock of insane seagulls. I wandered down the school drive and picked some berries
and was brought back by a teacher. I noticed that the big, brown newly-creosoted
gates at the end of the drive which I�d passed through earlier that morning, were now
firmly shut. Had they been open I might have walked home. I�d had enough of school,
I�d been there for two endless hours.
At the end of play time I couldn�t find Mrs. Biggs classroom, so I stood in
the cloakroom and washed my hands repeatedly before being rescued by a big
boy who new his way around. I spent the time until we were taken to the dinner hall
sitting inside the Wendy house, opening and closing the curtains. Perhaps Mrs. Biggs
assumed from this mindless activity that I was a moron, and gave up on me there and
then, because I learned nothing in her class. I was never there, you see. My
attendance was good, but my mind and my brain were elsewhere: I was outside in my
neighbourhood, playing with whatever the season produced.
My eldest granddaughter, Gabrielle, started at Glen Hills Infants this term.
I went to pick her up on her third day. I hadn�t seen her in uniform and it took me
a moment to recognise her in her maroon cardigan with the Glen Hills badge. She was
sitting on the floor amidst a pile of big cushions, listening with close
concentration as a story was read aloud by her teacher.
The classroom was a child�s dream, large and open plan, and crammed with delights.
There was a computer corner, and a pet corner (when asked what her favourite thing
was after her first day, she replied: �the rat�) This adorable and energetic four-year old
who seems to need little sleep at home happily settles down on the cushions for a
compulsory afternoon rest at school. �I keep one eye open, though,� she confessed to
me. My biggest fear was that she wouldn�t be able to manage the self-service system
at lunchtime. How could such a little girl balance a tray with a slithering plate,
bowl and tumbler? She�s only four and has stick-insect legs. Surely she would
collapse under the weight? The family weighted nervously for her account of
�dinnertime.� The trays are apparently of the type used in prisons, there is no
crockery to slide off the edge, there are indentations, or �holes� as
she calls them, for the food. She is extremely proud of her skill with the tray
and looks forward to her dinner, just as I used to 40 years ago.
In 1951 the dinner hall [canteen] was a delightful place. Detached from the rest of
the school, it exuded delicious smells. Proper cooking went on in there: shiny-topped
meat pies and fruit crumbles. Later on, to my joy, I was chosen to be a flower
monitor. It was my job to pick and arrange the flowers for the dinner hall. It meant
that I missed the religious assembly, but I didn�t mind that, I was becoming tired of
pretending to believe in God.
Since starting school my granddaughter has become a fervent believer in God.
Her description makes God sound like a sort of benevolent surveillance camera in the
sky. All-seeing, and all-knowing, with a particular concern for the well-being of
four-year-old girls with stick-insect legs.
This child is eager to get to school every morning. Teeth and hair brushed, uniform
on, she waits patiently to get into the car to learn about computer skills and the
life cycle of the rat, and metric measurements. Unlike her grandmother, she doesn�t
think of school as a prison with crayons. To her, a child of the Nineties, it is
home that is the prison.
For a less mean-spirited look at life at Glen Hills primary school, a view from the other side of the tracks, please see
My Memories of Glen Hills School
(at about the same time-period as Sue Townsend's experience) or go to
[My Page]