Thirty Seven and a Half Minutes

The clock on the mantelpiece stopped this week, broken at 10.37. It struck a chord and after a while, I realised it was the time of one of the morning lesson bells at school. We had these really weird thirty seven and a half minute lessons. It's odd how watching the clock hands move round interminably slowly to 10.37 over a period of seven years, leaves an indelible mark. Break followed at 11.15am. The rich girls had sticky buns to eat, probably why I've spent a lifetime eating them whenever possible, to subconsciously join the elite. We used to sit in small groups on the desk tops, chatting away. There would be a lot of gossip about who had 'gone the furthest' with the boys. There was an air of shock and disbelief when one girl did bravely admit in the cloakroom that she had 'done it'. Apart from being gloriously horrified at her confession, the only other thing I remember about her is that she had hairy legs. Strange, the odd bits that stick in your mind.

Most of the classrooms were the Victorian type, high windows to stop anything distracting us outside, vaulted ceilings and wooden desks with lids and strange holes for long gone ink wells. The wood and chalk dust had a particular smell, not unpleasant, just a mustiness that became so familiar it felt friendly. There were some modern classrooms in the trendy, cuboid science block.

The chemistry lab always smelt of the strange potions in quaint, glass-stoppered jars, and all those puffs of conjurer's smoke in the fume cupboard. The physics lab was always warm and sunny, which helped make up for my dislike of the subject. The biology teacher relied heavily on Banda machine copies on which the writing was reproduced rather faintly, and with a distracting shininess. As it was her own, loopy handwriting it was quite hard to read, and I failed to fully 'digest' the life cycle of the tape worm and other intriguing facts. The maths teacher had a bad lisp and started each lesson with 'do shit down', which resulted in giggles.

We had a music teacher who looked so old she was almost fossilised in chalk dust. She played epic works on the school's grand piano with great gusto, arms flying into the air between stanzas, as if flicking cobwebs out of her blue rinse perm.

The PE teacher seemed determined to give detentions to any girl not wearing regulation blue knickers and, with hindsight, possibly took more interest than was appropriate in checking out our underwear for signs of anarchy.

It was a school where a roll-around blackboard was considered pretty hot technology. I might be exaggerating, but I do believe the lessons were so unutterably dull, even the use of coloured chalk by a teacher made them a bit more exciting.

Girls' secondary schools were moribund places indeed, I hope they've improved. At least I don't suppose anyone has thirty seven and a half minute lessons anymore.