From a Distance

Starting School Early School Days and Grateful Thanks to Chicken Licken  An energetic and capable pair of women, Miss Millicent Glencross and her life partner, Miss Spence, ran the Gateway School. I started there at in 1948 aged 4½ and travelled with my brother on the 50a bus, which ran along the Sussex coast to Pagham, west of Bognor Regis. For years I was fascinated by the bus’s ultimate destination ‘á Becket’s Ave though had no idea who Becket was with that funny á and what was Ave ? Did it rhyme with Save or with Have ? The Gateway was a traditional, tightly organised prep school where mastery of the basic skills was paramount. The teachers , were kind and caring, the school routine was unvarying. The classes were named after characteristics for us to emulate; the Reception class was called Happiness then we went on to Kindness, Goodness, Unselfishness, Courage, Truth, Loyalty and Perseverance. I can recall the formica-topped table and the tiny chairs and can see the first s...

I've been reflecting on my earliest school days.  From 1948 – 1954 I took the 50a bus from home in Middleton-on-Sea to a little private school called the Gateway in Felpham.   We passed another school on the way.  It had sturdy flint walls and a chain link fence running across the front of the playground.  At four years old, I imagined that the children there were so wild that they needed to be kept in a cage.   Only much later did I realise it was simply a fence to keep them safe from the road and to stop footballs from flying out. As an older child, still deep in that sheltered ignorance, I had absurd visions of these caged children running riot in some kind of dark, Dickensian establishment. However, recently I’ve joined a lovely group called Flashback Bognor Regis and I asked if anyone remembered the little school.   The floodgates opened and a wonderful set of warm and happy memories poured in from group members some of whom had parents and ev...