School memories that children today will never experience

I vaguely remember bottled milk before Milk Snatcher Thatcher took them away from primary school kids under the age of 7 in 1971, despite LEAs finding budgets from elsewhere to continue providing the third of a bottle daily for some years to come. Peculiarly enough, it was a Labour PM, Harold Wilson, who cut free milk to all secondary school kids in 1968, but as little derogatory rhymes with ‘Wilson’, Thatcher took the panto villain role.

Brett Ellis chooses to remember bottles of ice cold milk at school

The argument, as well as economic, was that serious bacterial infections were rife after the milk, which was delivered and served up warm, had been attacked by magpies who pecked the silver foil and secreted nasties for the bairns to experience the 1970s version of Yakult. Time clouds perception, however, and I will live with the false memory of ice-cold bottles being delivered on a hot summer's day as we took respite from Pythagoras and other theorems that have never been used for a nanosecond in adult life.

Also high up the nostalgia list is ‘peeling PVA glue off your hands’. This was such a joy and I recall covering myself in the gloop, from elbow to fingertip, and then pretending I had a congenital skin disease as I gleefully peeled it off for the remainder of the week. The pinnacle was ripping off a large patch which had a clear fingerprint on it and then wondering what to do with the item in order to retain it for posterity.

Bunsen burners: handle by the base. Photo: Pixabay

Bunsen burners, however, were the devil’s tool and I received third degree burns during ‘tidy up time’ when lifting a white-hot burner that had just been switched off. There was also an open ‘acid vat’, which would certainly not pass any modicum of risk assessment protocol now, in the metalwork room, circa 1985. I remember it well as it is the only time I received the cane after being seen throwing a foe’s pencil case into the open acid trough before receiving a few slaps from the cane across the back of my hands as I gritted my teeth and swore revenge whilst regretting my ruinous actions.

Bottles and tubs of acid on tables were once a common sight in school chemistry labs

As an atheist I miss singing hymns in assembly, not due to the musical lessons learnt, but the laughs as we all tried to outdo each other by signing as badly and high pitched as was humanely possible. The modern-day equivalent, which grates in my employ, is the kid who, after a public round of applause, must get the last clap in when all is silent.

The truth of the matter however is ‘safety first', which, it can be argued, has gone from one extreme to the other due, in part, to possible litigation from parents as the teacher’s primary job, is not to educate, but to act in loco parentis and keep your kids safe. Never again will we see the likes of one teacher, who was one of the local hospital's main contractors after hurling a boy against a radiator and splitting a few faces open by flinging wooden blackboard rubbers, with unerring accuracy, into poor unsuspecting children’s faces.

His idea of fun was, on the last day of term, and with pure excitement on his face, have us play a game that wouldn’t be out of place in the Roman gladiatorial arenas. We would enter the gym. At either end there was a vaulting horse (to give brief pain respite). 40 or so basketballs would be released, and, from your half, the mission was to throw the basketballs hard at the opposing team and inflict as much injury as possible.

Brett Ellis remembers dodging basketballs in a game later known as dodgeball

There was a further element to this game however: If you hid behind the horse for more than five seconds, the whistle would blow. You would be frogmarched as a coward to the centre circle and the opposing team would have 30 seconds, as you scrunched up in a ball on the floor, to lob as many basketballs at your person as possible. All I can remember is the bruises and the agony, and the fact that on the opposing team was a 6ft 5in lad who played for England schoolboy cricket team as a fast bowler.

Take me back? In hindsight, no. The scars have just about healed, and the rose-tinted spectacles are off, as we recount tales from the time that sound as fantastical as they were miserable.

• Brett Ellis is a teacher