JohnT
Warstock Boy
Somerville Road Junior School - I'm not sure if it still exists or not.
In the mid 1950s, for a couple of years my parents owned a little 'front room' shop midway along Palace Road, Bordesley Green (opposite a WW2 bombsite where two houses had gone), and I attended SR School while we lived there.
I remember I used to pass a dark and mysterious "Herbalist's" shop on my walk to the school (either on Muntz Street or Charles Road, I think), where I would buy sticks of arrowroot to chew. Rumour had it that women and girls got 'backstreet' abortions there!
My only memory of the school is the playground, where we used to lean flattended "20s" cigarette packets up against the bottom brick of the classroom wall, then standing back a few feet to "skim" flattened "10s" at them. Whoever knocked the final 20 over won it and all the previously skimmed packets lying on the ground round it. Great game, that I was quite good at, but it meant carrying dozens of cigarette packets in my satchell and constantly scrounging for elastic bands to hold them together with. I became a bit of a collector of cigarette packets and still have an old bank ledger book with a a couple of hundred rare packets glued into it!
In the mid 1950s, for a couple of years my parents owned a little 'front room' shop midway along Palace Road, Bordesley Green (opposite a WW2 bombsite where two houses had gone), and I attended SR School while we lived there.
I remember I used to pass a dark and mysterious "Herbalist's" shop on my walk to the school (either on Muntz Street or Charles Road, I think), where I would buy sticks of arrowroot to chew. Rumour had it that women and girls got 'backstreet' abortions there!
My only memory of the school is the playground, where we used to lean flattended "20s" cigarette packets up against the bottom brick of the classroom wall, then standing back a few feet to "skim" flattened "10s" at them. Whoever knocked the final 20 over won it and all the previously skimmed packets lying on the ground round it. Great game, that I was quite good at, but it meant carrying dozens of cigarette packets in my satchell and constantly scrounging for elastic bands to hold them together with. I became a bit of a collector of cigarette packets and still have an old bank ledger book with a a couple of hundred rare packets glued into it!