MY BEST DAY AT SCHOOL

MY BEST DAY AT SCHOOL by Bobby Crockett aged 9 years

I am chewing my pencil until the end is all soggy and I get bits of wood and flaky paint in my mouth. It isn’t very nice but it’s what I do when I think really hard. And I have to think really hard now about the question Miss Thompson has set me. I have to write about my best day at school. I think she asked me because today is my last day. Tomorrow my family are going to our new home in Dorset and after the summer holiday, I will have to start at a new school.  Some children, like my cousins, live in the same house all the time but I don’t. When my Dad was in the RAF we moved about quite often and 183 Sutton Road, Maidstone is the fourth house I have lived in, five if I include the time we spent at Auntie Eileen’s. So I am used to making friends and then leaving them. But I like this school and I like being in Miss Thompson’s class. I thought one day I might marry Miss Thompson but she told us a few days ago she was marrying Mr Lehmann during the summer holiday and she is very happy. If I was older, which of course I’m not, I might wonder how a man in his late thirties with a German name came to be teaching the top juniors at a school in Kent just ten years after the war. I might wonder if he had escaped Germany before the war started or whether he was a POW like Bert Trautmann the famous goalkeeper who broke his neck in the Cup Final last year. Mr Lehmann’s life might make an interesting story like the one I wrote about how I scored a goal for England at Wembley. Miss Thompson liked the story so much she said I could go to all the classes and read it out loud to them. Perhaps that was my best day at this school.

Or perhaps it was when we went to Hampton Court on a big coach. Miss Thompson asked me lots of questions about history dates and I knew them all. She said, “Well Done Bobby”, smiled and then nodded to the lady teacher sitting next to her on the bus and I was very proud. And we had fun at Hampton Court, we went into the Maze and we ate our sandwiches for lunch. Perhaps that was my “Best Day”.

Or perhaps it was when I had to read out my report about the football match against St. Andrew’s in Assembly to the whole school. I wrote it all by myself and said how good our goalie was. He is a lot bigger than me. Miss Ringer, the headmistress, gave him some extra praise and so he decided not to beat me up. That was a good day but perhaps not my best!

Maybe it was last year when I had to be a clown in Mrs Miggins Toy Shop. I didn’t really like being a clown but Mum made me a clown’s outfit and everyone said I was very good at being a clown. I remember there was a girl, I forget her name,  she’s left now for the big school where my sister’s go, she played the Christmas Fairy and I liked how she looked in her fairy costume. In our class, I like Josephine although I’m not sure I like her so much now after she and Laura started kissing and laughing at me. I didn’t say anything about that game Laura and I played in the woods.

One day I led the boys out of assembly first. I said to the boys in the class that I didn’t think it was fair that the girls always went out of the hall first and that we should go first next time. And we did, although only David Goode and Peter Took came with me. Miss Thompson wasn’t angry but she did say that Miss Ringer had said we were “very rude boys.” I  don’t think Miss Thompson liked us doing it so we never did it again. So I don’t think that can count as my “Best Day”.

It’s difficult because I can remember lots of “Best Days” at Mangravet School although I can remember some “Worst Days” too.  There was the time my head kept itching and Mum said I had headlice. And that time we all went to Billy’s birthday party and I caught the German Measles and was ill and had to miss school. Do you think Mr Lehmann had German Measles? And that time when.. .well I shan’t tell you about that time but it was certainly was my “Worst Day” and everyone was horrible and Tony Elliot was the worst!

I shall miss my friends though. I shall miss going to David’s house after school and watching the Lone Ranger on his television. His mum always gives us sandwiches and a drink but his dad sometimes grumbles about me being there “again”! I like David’s mum though. She’s always singing and cheerful and says “ Oh, he’s alright, he’s no bother.”

We don’t have a television. One day at school a man came to talk to us about savings stamps. The ones with Prince Charles and Princess Anne on them.  I said I couldn’t afford any because I was “broke”. Everyone in the class laughed but when I told Mum she didn’t laugh and got quite cross. So that wasn’t my “Best Day.”

So what was my “Best Day” at this school? I think it was every day, except for the bad ones of course. Just as every day at my last school was “ My Best Day”. And I hope I shall lots of “Best Days” at my new school wherever it is. It will be a new adventure and I like adventures. Perhaps one day I will be able to write about them. If anyone is interested.

The End.

( This is all true except some of the names)