Crocodile and Blue Wave Experience

Yesterday afternoon's lovely sunshine brought to mind an incident - well, a whole series of 'incidents', if I'm honest - nearly 65 years ago that I thought worthy of bringing to a broader public.  It goes to show how different were life, the townscape and social norms then compared to now.

After lunch on a sunny Friday, three or four dozen eight- or nine-year-olds were formed into an excited crocodile and walked forth, two by two, across the school playground.  At the gate in the corner, they made a 180-degree turn to the right, into the footpath that ran alongside the outside of the playground.  Once out of sight of the school building, and a bit further along, they turned into a gateway on the opposite side of the path.  This led them into a public meadow, with a square patch in the middle roped off to protect the town's cricket pitches.

The children kept well away from the square and made for a cluster of wartime Nissen huts and sheds, passing as they did so a fence on their right-hand-side beyond which some of the elder boys used to have their gardening lessons.  They made their way along a well-trodden path between the buildings and through another gateway, turning right into an open area through which ran a broad, straight path, wide enough to be a road.  In point of fact, it wasn't many years afterward that this would indeed be its fate, as it became the main thoroughfare of a completely new housing estate.

At the end of this broad pathway, as they walked towards the bright sun, they came to a wrought-iron gate, beyond which was the main road out of the town.  Often this gate would be set open, and the leading children knew that they had to stop here and wait for all the others to catch them up.  When all were assembled, the trek continued, along the pavement, keeping carefully away from the kerb.  Eventually their destination was sighted on the opposite side of the road and, closely watched and monitored by those in charge, they crossed the road and entered the grounds of the Blue Wave Swimming Pool.

This ritual occupied Friday afternoons all through the summer term, supervised by two of the senior teachers: one male and one female, sometimes accompanied by the school secretary.  Here, the male teacher taught the children the basic swimming strokes, demonstrating vertically on the poolside the motions to be copied horizontally in the water.  Somehow this geometric transition didn't confuse the children and in the course of the term many succeeded, first of all in overcoming their fear of the water itself, and then finding the confidence to launch forth supported by the water and actually achieve forward movement, first over 10 yards, then over increasing distances up to 220 yards!  Each stage of progress was rewarded by a certificate.

Depending on our pre-existing circumstances, the skill of swimming wasn't all that was learned.  Boys who had no sisters discovered the sight of female legs to an extent hitherto unknown ... and this before they were aware of the erotic nature of such an experience.  There were others, who had thus far lived under the close control of doting mothers who did far more than they taught, so far as their children's development was concerned; they had to be shown the technique of drying themselves once out of the water.  I suspect that, in the case of the girls, there was a far smaller innovative degree of subsidiary discovery, they likely having had a more comprehensive domestic growing up already.

For my part, it was a skill once learned that kept me occupied and to a great extent out of mischief for several summers, and the overall experience led to a degree of self-confidence that - although I may not have realised it at the time - has equipped me for the whole of my adult life.

Thass loike I saay ... teark loife as 't come

Some things happen one day and are gone from memory the next.  Others stay for decades, as bright and fresh (or so I believe!) as the day they happened.  One that came to mind the other day dates back to my first year of married life, and a dining-room incident while on holiday; another that I recalled the same day stems from my pre-school days, when my mother took me into the shop where, not five years previously, she would have been working in the days before her marriage.  A third recollection comes to mind even as I ponder narrating two incidents of the week just past.  

I'm something of a natural mimic.  When I was driving for a living, I had to be careful when delivering in another part of the country, not to lapse into the local accent.  Quite apart from the likelihood of 'not getting it quite right', there was always the possibility that someone would be offended if they thought I was taking the mickey at the way they talked.  One day I'd been given a job to the Newcastle area and by the time I'd gone the five miles to collect it, I was already muttering to myself 'in Geordie'!

I can't help wondering whether this ability bears some relationship to my delight in languages.  In my days at the local grammar school, I recall getting 98% for French in my first form examination.  In these days of possibly greater wisdom, I find myself being more careful about accents, and I only lapse into the broad tones of my youth on the Norfolk-Suffolk border when I'm among people with whom I'm completely at ease.

Two incidents this week have brought these things to mind.  On Sunday morning after the coffee and chatter that followed our Meeting for Worship, I said something to one of the elders as I was leaving in just that broad accent that I've described ... and realised what an indication that was of how 'at home' I feel in their company.

For the last few months I've been going most Thursdays to a community coffee morning in the town.  This week, instead of a simple quiz to tax our minds, we were asked to help wrap children's presents for Santa Claus to distribute when he comes along next month.  I had been cutting paper off a large roll to fit the books that others were wrapping. When the last of the paper sprang free from the tube within, I turned to the lady sitting next to me and, without thinking, imitated the accent I've been surrounded by for the last year and more as I commented. "Ah've coom to t'end o' t'roll; Ah'm goin' 'oom."

That was an example of the other aspect of my experiences.  I clearly had no fears about offending her ... although, in point of fact, she's only been here a few years herself, after moving up from Bristol, so it wasn't her accent I was imitating.  Instead, she was quite amused and possibly a bit surprised, since I'm usually quite quiet and restrained.

It all goes to show how well I've settled into a new pattern of life.  One aspect of this new shape to things is retiring to the lounge in the evening, and so I'm no longer tempted to carry on working at my desk until bedtime, as would often have been the case before I moved out of the flat.  Instead, I use my old laptop to watch a selection of You-Tube videos.  Two in particular, I find extremely relaxing.  

One is The Mindful Narrowboat, presented by a lady cruising the canal system with her dog.  She has an eye for nature and is also quite artistic, for each vlog ends with an 'over-the-shoulder' shot of her entry in a beautiful notebook, in which a poetic summary of the foregoing scenes accompanies coloured sketches of birds, animals or plants that she has noticed along the way. It's rather in the style of 'The Diary of an Edwardian Lady'.

The second video is called Linguoer Mechanic, this one featuring a young oriental lady.  The posts follow a common pattern, with no narrative at all.  She collects a rusty or corroded piece of machinery, dismantles it and cleans each part, before painting and rebuilding the whole, and finally demonstrating it working once more as it did when new.  I'm amazed how she knows what bit goes where!