Listening - Pounds, Shillings and Pence

 “You were not listening!”  Mrs S raged, dark eyes blazing with hatred. I shook, whimpered and cried as she smacked me hard, many times, across the back of my legs with her wooden ruler. I was only seven and a half, fairly new to this school and Mrs S terrified me. I felt the eyes of a class full of seven and eight year olds upon me, staring at my distress. Tears streamed my face, my legs were stinging and I didn’t dare to move until Mrs S dismissed me.

My crime? The inability to do the ‘money’ sums. Pounds, shillings and pence sums were beyond me. I hadn’t done this at my old school. I tried to tell Mrs S. She never listened to me. She wasn’t going to help me. Did she believe that if she smacked me hard enough, I would magically be able to do this work?

My young life had completely changed. I had been a happy, confident little girl, doing well at  school with teachers I adored and a group of friends. I was uprooted, due to our family being in the licenced trade, and moved from all that was familiar to a different pub in a different town, this new school where I felt like an outsider, even at such a young age. I loved my new baby sister.  I was completely lost in all this new stuff.  Looking at life through my adult eyes, that’s a great deal for a seven and a half year old child to cope with. I don’t remember any intervention, apart from my Nanna Hetty suggesting to my mother that she ought to speak to Mrs S or have me change schools. I’d been having nightmares about Mrs S while I was staying with my grandparents during a school holiday, and told Nanna Hetty about my miseries. Nanna Hetty was my paternal grandmother. I adored her, just as I did my maternal one. Grown-ups can have their differences and my mother would have taken Nanna Hetty’s  views as interference. I was stuck. Dad was getting the pub sorted, under new management, and Mum had to get into a routine with the new baby and me, but I didn’t know where I fitted in. They told me just to do my best at school, but I already was. I did listen to Mrs S, but I didn’t understand and was too scared to say so.

Family friends came to visit one day and brought with them a girl a bit older than me. I don’t know who she was and I can’t even remember her name, but that day, she was my guardian angel. We were playing together. I overcame my shyness and asked if she could do pounds, shillings and pence sums. Yes, she could, and would she teach me? Yes, she would, and she did. Slowly, explaining everything, she taught me so well, I was bursting with confidence at my new ability and for once, I wasn’t dreading school.

Two things happened in my favour, though years apart. Twelve months after this move, we were off again to pastures new and I was leaving this dreadful school and Mrs S and the teacher I had after her.  A feeling of belonging never occurred there for me. The other big thing was Decimalisation. Hooray! It might have been just for me.

Perhaps it was fate, perhaps it was setting my demons to rest, but many years later, I found myself working in the same school I had hated, sometimes in the same classroom that used to be mine, where Mrs S smacked my legs. Mrs S had passed away long since, or she’d be about a hundred and thirty years old. My favourite job in my entire working life is the years I spent there. It is a happy school with confident children and teachers who go the extra mile to care for them. Corporal punishment is a thing of the past, thank goodness.

My poem, in Haiku,

I was listening
But I failed to understand
And ended up scared.

She filled me with fear.
She was a witch with dark eyes
And a darker heart.

Hard, wooden ruler
Across the back of my legs.
I still didn’t learn

But I had nightmares
Caused by my raging teacher
Who would not help me

When I was seven,
A shy, new girl, feeling lost
And so unhappy.

Pounds, shillings and pence,
I just couldn’t calculate
And sobbed in distress.

PMW 2021


Thank for reading, Pam x

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ESP - Second Sight

My mum called it ‘second sight’. She had inherited it from her mother and grandmother. It has come down the generations to me, though mine differs from theirs. The first time I encountered it was at our hotel on Central Promenade. I was a young teenager making myself useful by helping, or possibly hindering, the receptionist.  I was sent to fetch my mum to attend to a guest, a woman who was in great distress. I ran upstairs, along the corridor to our private rooms and found my mother on the settee, waking up from a nap. Before I had chance to speak, she said,

“Her son drowned in a boating accident. I just dreamt it.”

What struck me most was the calm, matter-of-fact way that she said it as she stood up, smoothed her skirt, popped her shoes on, combed her hair and checked her lipstick, all in two seconds before she was out of the door. Sadly, that’s exactly what had happened and the poor lady had just received the terrible news.

I am told that my great-grandmother sometimes dreamt names that matched horses in forthcoming races. I don’t know how lucrative it was for her, but it hasn’t come down the line to me, though I’m not into horse racing.

From an early age I knew that my Nanna could see absolutely everything and she knew what everyone was up to. Her eyes looked like she could see right inside a person’s thoughts. With her, everything and everybody was safe. Things came to her in dreams and sometimes she would sit, deep in thought then tell you what you wanted or did not want to hear, never less than honest and nothing ever ‘wrapped up’. I adored her.

I don’t tend to dream things, I just know, usually out of the blue. My sister was in the early stages of her second pregnancy. Very randomly I told her she was having a daughter and she would be born early, a bit poorly but she would be fine. I could even pin-point the date to either 31^st October or 3^rd November, which didn’t mean anything at the time.  My niece was born by Caesarean section on 31^st October, 1988, spent a short time in the Special Care Baby Unit and has grown up into a beautiful young woman. My daughter was born on 3^rd November, 1994.

There was an avalanche in the Alps at a time when people I knew were in the area. I was sure I’d heard something on the radio news, but it wasn’t on the next bulletin, no mention of it on teletext and nothing on the TV news, until the next day when it actually happened. The same thing happened with an earthquake.

I don’t know if it’s connected to ‘second sight’ or an entirely different phenomenon, but I have had ghostly encounters. There are many, but what always makes me smile is the Most Haunted episode featuring The Old Hall in Sandbach. We lived there for a short time when my father was licencee. I hated that move to Cheshire and I’ve mentioned it, not by name, in previous blogs. Yes, it had ‘occupants’, we quickly became aware, but none of our ghosts matched any of the findings in the programme. Strange.

     I found this poem. I can really relate to it.

 

 
    Conjugal Telepathy
    Have you ever noticed when you’re talking with your spouse?
    No matter if you’re out with friends or wandering round the house,
    That when you have a thought you think is worthy to express,
    You’ve scarcely uttered half of it before your thoughts digress,
    And you have quite forgotten what it was you wished to say,
    But there is no need to panic for your spouse will save the day,
    And without the need for prompting, and indeed without a pause,
    Your partial thought’s completed, with an extra thoughtful clause.
    My friends to whom I’ve spoken, and I’ve spoken to a few,
    Have noticed this phenomenon, and so perhaps it’s true,
    That when you live together an extended length of time,
    The need for speech reduces and there's more accent on mime.
    So perhaps there is no worry when your mind begins to go,
    For even out in company, no one really needs to know.
    There is a great incentive to always keep your cool,
    When your spouse's intervention stops you looking like a fool,
    For even if the utterance is not what you would say,
    It is best to grin and bear it and pretend so anyway.

                                                                           By Ian Smith

Thanks for reading, Pam x

 

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