Now that Tyler has started Year 1, it has brought back memories for me and my time in that class. My first proper memories of school are from Year 1, as Reception is kind of fuzzy in my head. Of course back in the eighties, we didn’t call it Year 1, it was the teacher’s name. I was in Miss Fireman’s class at St Helen’s College in Hillingdon – a confusing name for a primary school as it was not a college at all!

Summer Concert – July 1985

Miss Fireman reminded me on one of those illustrations from Roald Dahl books. She was old, had blonde frizzy hair in a bob and had a really pointy nose. I don’t remember much about her apart from her giving us gold stars if we were good, and sticking them on a wall chart that had our names on it. And I remember her asking us what we wanted to be when we grew up, and literally every girl stuck their hand up and said they wanted to be a teacher like her. Whereas I wanted to be a painter.

I had two best friends, Lucy and Asmaa. Lucy was my first best friend and Asmaa was the second. I also had a friend called William who I mistakenly told my parents was my boyfriend, as I thought that meant he was a friend who was a boy. They were shocked to say the least! My mum tells me nowadays that William delivers the Betterware catalogue, so he wouldn’t have been good marriage material anyway 😉

I adored Lucy, we did everything together. At break time we would skip around the playground together with our arms criss-crossed. We picked daisies from the grass. We sat next to each other in class – we had those old-style double wooden desks with two chairs in them days, or maybe it was a bench.

Sports Day – June 1985

In our school we had two sports teams, Windsor (green) and Cambria (red), and though we were in opposing teams, our numbers were the same but backwards, 78 and 87 – we thought that was amazing, like we were soulmates!

I was a bit of a goody two shoes at primary school. Whenever the class was left alone for a few minutes, everybody would start shouting and making a racket just because there was no teacher there. I had no idea where Miss Fireman was going when she left us for a minute, and I’m sure that wouldn’t happen these days and there are now teaching assistants. When this happened, usually a teacher from the older class would come in and shout “Who’s making this noise?!” and everyone would be quiet straightaway like nothing happened. The noisy culprits would never be caught being noisy – they were too cool.

Anyway, one day Miss Fireman moved Lucy to the back of the class, so I was left sitting on my own. I was so upset. But I never said anything, I was as quiet as a mouse. When the class was left alone, everyone started shouting as usual. So I joined in for once, shouting “LUCY! LUCY! LUCY!” at Lucy, because I missed her. Then the teacher from the other class came in, and everyone shut up. Except for me. Because I was so crap at being bad. And I was still shouting out “LUCY! LUCY! LUCY!” with my eyes shut, as the teacher went “Who’s making that racket?! It’s you!” And then she put a sad face by my stars on the wall chart! Can you believe it?! Life was so unfair.

Well, after that, the end of Year 1 came, and both Lucy and Asmaa left the school. They LEFT ME!!! And I never had a best friend ever again. In school. You see, by then, everyone had paired up with their best friend from Reception. There was Rosannah and Sara, Michelle and Bonnie, Hannah and Isabel, Frances and Katie.

And then there was me, the only brown girl in my class, as Asmaa was the only other brown girl. Which sucked. You know that song “We all live in a yellow submarine”? Well the class was singing “We all live in a yellow Sabrina” and then Jude said, ew, we’d be swimming in curry. Bastard. In Year 2 James befriended me, when our task was to write an essay about “An adventure with your best friend” and I said I didn’t have a best friend – worst task EVER!!

What is the point of this post? Well I suppose to relive my memories of Year 1. It’s interesting what I remember and what things haunt me. I wander what Tyler’s memories of Year 1 will be – I hope they will all be happy ones.

What are your memories of Year 1? Did anything life-changing happen??

Sabrina x