The early years

As far back as I can remember, I spent my pre-primary school at home with the maid, while my mother and father went off to work, my two older sisters were at school and I remember being very bored and getting up to loads of mischief. 

I started going to Sunday school creche at the age of 3 and we learnt all the bible stories, the Sunday we did moses in the bull rushes and made a basket out of some kind of play dough and moses was a jelly baby, well moses got eaten very quickly, even though he was covered in play dough.  Our Sunday school teacher was Heloise Louw, her husband was the local vetenarian and I think they only had one son Franscious, they may have had a daughter two.  There was another lady who used to help out and her name was Sheila.  In the cradle section of the Sunday school, I remember there being two other girls in the class with me - Morag Todd and Jill Hanekom, the weird thing is they have both passed away and both at a young age.  Jill was about 16 when her horse threw her off and Morag was 27 when she passed away.

I eventually started school at the age of 5 of couldn't wait to start, but I must admit I hated school, I loved the social aspect of school but that was about it. 

Grade 1 (1970) - My teachers name was Mrs Van Vuuren, she had been my eldest sisters Sisters standard 4 teacher so she knew me when I started.  I was late for my first day at school and wasn't dropped off by my mother as most of the grade 1 kids were, my eldest sister took me to my class.  The teacher asked me if I recognised anyone in the class and I recognised Jill from Sunday school, so she sat me next to Jill.  Our first day we were given thick wax crayons and we spent most of the day drawing, my mother had given me 5c to buy something from the tuck shop, in those days a packet of Simba Crisps cost 5c, but when I went to get my money it was gone.  It turned out Jill had taken my money and the teacher soon got it back, from that day on we were seperated and I think I sat next to Russell for the rest of the year.  Mr Higgs was the principal at the school.  This is the only year I received a school prize, I think I was either first or second in class.

Grade 2  (1971) - Mrs Buys, a red haired Afrikaner lady with a very bad temper and very very strict.  I only remember I hated her with a passion.  I happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time one break time and was accused of spitting on Sharon Steyn's head this tall girl who was in another class, as it happened the Standard 1 boys were throwing orange juice cartons into the dustbin, and some of the juice happened to go on her head. I ended up being told to go to the headmasters office, but in the end the prefect felt sorry for me and let me go back to class.  This is the only year I remember doing a school concert, we were butterflys in "Teddy Bears Picnic".

Standard 1 (1972) - Miss Ciglar - she was really nice, my first English teacher, she made learning fun.  However I did get into trouble in her class one day when I had an altecation with Morag, Morag was teasing me and grabbed a letter away from me that I had written and I ended up scratching her and she cried.  The first boy I spoke to socially was in my class Chris Larsen and he was leaving to move to Durban.  Miss Ciglar was not too strict, but if we were naughty she would hit us with a ruler.

Standard 2 (1973) - Miss Da Silva - Miss Da Silva was by far the most beautiful teacher I had had, she was Spanish and all the guys in I class loved her and so did the girls.  She was very strict though and used to hit the girls with a wooden spoon on their hands, so hard that it stung like hell and in winter it would hurt even more so because I hands were so cold.  Standard 2 was the last standard that we remained in the same class for all our subjects, this was also the year that the swimming pool was built and we got to learn how to swim.  Our swimming teacher was Mrs Prout Jones. 

Standard 3 (1974) - Ah, now who was the teacher was it Miss Fourie, I think so she was a lovely ditzy blonde lady who used to hit the guys and the girls on the backsides with a T bar ruler if they were naughty.  She was our main teacher and also took us for Afrikaans.  This is the year we used to move classes for different subjects and Mr Naude took us for Music, I was chosed to sing in the choir and we sang in an eistedford at the civic centre and also put on a play called the H.M.S. Pinafore.  Most of the standard 5 boys had the main parts in the show, Gavin, David etc. and the boys in our year were the sailors and the girls were the ladies in waiting.

Standard 4 (1975) - Was it Mrs Callaghan or O'Callaghan I remember she was an Afrikaans lady married to an Irishman.  Can't say I remember too much about this year.  My eldest sister matriculated this year and was Head Librarian at Hill High.

Standard 5 (1976) - Last year in Primary school, school was a jol, I was also a girl guide and we went on some awesome camps, one in particular was to Louis Trichardt in the middle of winter with 500 other girl guides from around South Africa, we had the Lazy Daze camp in Magaliesburg, I remember Cheryl & Elaine and Shirly all being on this camp, the girls and boys had seperate dorms and our Vice principal Mr. Walsh came with, we played volley ball by the pool and I ended up breaking my arm.   We had veld school and we went off to some god forsaken place called Delmas where an army major made us act like soldiers and camp out under the stars, there were 2 or 3 different schools on the camp.

I was in a fabulous class, the girls were all becoming really beautiful and the guys so good looking, I had the biggest crush on Marc who lived down the road from me, but he was not one bit interested in me.  I remember at our Standard 5 farewell party at the school, I was just dying to dance with him and I think I did.  The biggest song that year was "I hate the music" by John Paul Young.