School Tales

We were discussing the things that we used to get up to at school or "funny" things that happened to us or other kids. Most of my tales are from when we lived in Oldham!

Pigeons

When we were at Chadderton Hall School (we were 8 or 9), we used to keep our bus fare and walk home, stopping at the shop to buy a glass of sarsaparilla (we called sasprilla).

One time we got concerned about a bloke that kept locking up pigeons in a shed on the allotment we crossed on the way to the shop. So we unlocked the door and shooed the pigeons out and made sure it was locked again.

The next day they were all back, sitting in the dirty shed, so we let them all out again. For the next few days it was the same. We'd let them out and the next day the nasty bloke (so we thought) had captured them again.

Then one day we were mid-shoo when a man came up. An angry man... "I know your Dad" he said. And he did. Over his shoulder I saw an angry Dad coming over the allotment. That's how we learned about pigeon lofts and homing pigeons!!

Snow Boy

This tale was earlier in my school days. It used to snow quite a lot in the 60's especially in Oldham. I was at St Matthews Infants in Chadderton and we were all in the playground before school started. At the front the playground was below road level with a wall and a concrete slope stopping it all falling down. The top of the wall was the base for iron railings and was maybe 10 feet above the playground surface. When it snowed it drifted up against the concrete and the wall.

The older kids use to walk along the wall holding onto the railings; shuffling to their right to get along to the other end about 20 yards away. We were watching as one kid after another tried it. Then one kid lost his footing about half way... feet sliding into the snow on the sloping concrete. With a shout his hands slipped and he whooshed down into the snow drift, disappearing from sight. We could hear him shouting for help. How we all laughed.

After a while someone went to get the caretaker. The shouting started to get less and less and the laughing stopped about the same time. The caretaker arrived and started to dig through the snow, about 6 feet deep at this point, to get to the kid. Someone had called the ambulance and they arrived and helped the caretaker dig through about ten yards of snow.

Eventually pulling the frozen kid out; blue with cold and unconscious. He was rushed off to hospital. We learned another lesson that day!