Chapter Three: The High School Years
Chapter Three of "Open to Possibilities: The Life of a Young English Nurse"
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Trish stood with her arms outstretched and craned her neck to see what the clerk was going to measure next. She was standing in a room at the back of the uniform department at Lewis Department Store, a large department store in Liverpool center that sold school uniforms for most of the schools in the city, including her new school, Childwall Valley High School for Girls. The clerk pushed the end of the tape measure into her underarm, and Trish flinched, but the movement was firm enough that it didn’t tickle. Trish watched as woman noted the measurement from her armpit to her wrist. Next, the clerk asked her to kneel on the floor. Puzzled, Trish glanced at her mum. Her mum nodded, and Trish knelt, then sat back on her heels. The clerk gestured her to rise on her knees, so she was in an upright position, then made a quick measurement from the floor to four inches above Trish’s knees. Talking as she worked, the clerk explained this measurement determined the required length for athletic shorts when student represented their school in sporting events. The entire process seemed very formal and a little intimidating.
The colours for Childwall Valley High were brown and gold, and there was an assortment of garments in those colours for every activity that the school offered. There was a blazer and a brown beret, each emblazoned with the school crest, and a scarf. There were skirts, though Trish wouldn’t need those for a few years, the youngest students wore brown gymslips, or pinafores. She would need, however, the blouses, ties, and a cardigan. There were two styles of summer weight dresses, one in a pale-yellow gingham, and another with brown stripes - Trish needed to have those before the spring term, and there were ankle socks. For gym class there were cotton blouses, brown gym knickers, and gym shoes. There was the required school satchel, made of brown leather with a flap closure with two buckles. It had two straps so Trish could wear it as a backpack. The complete kit cost a small fortune, and as Trish was only 11 years old, there was worry she would grow out of the clothes before the school year was over. The cost of replacing them would be more than the family could bear. There was also a brown gabardine raincoat, but her mum did not have enough money to include that. The shop allowed her to put it on a payment plan, but when Harold found out, he made her take it back until they could afford to pay cash for it; he didn’t believe in going into debt for items. Trish hoped for pleasant weather for the start of the new school year.
In the fall of 1952, Trish started her studies at Childwall Valley High School. On the first morning, the large brick building in the middle of a massive field of trimmed grass appeared rather imposing to 11-year-old Trish. Clad in her new and still unfamiliar uniform, she stepped off the double-decker school bus. It had come to a stop on the driveway that encircled the flagstaff, inside the school grounds. From there it was only a short walk to the building itself, and the three large doors at the main entrance. Getting oriented to the building and grounds, and finding her classrooms required a serious learning curve. The building housed two main wings of classrooms, with one wing having two floors. There were sports fields and tennis courts behind the building, and grassy fields extending back beyond that.
The school was farther away from her home than her primary school had been, so she needed to catch a bus to and from school. She had options - there was a school bus that passed by near to her house, and if she missed that bus, she could walk to the first major intersection down Queen’s Drive and catch a regular bus a bit later. Peter, the family dog, continued to agitate to follow Trish out of the front garden when she left for school each morning. One day, not long after she had started her studies at CVHS, he succeeded. Trish did not notice and boarded the double-decker school bus as usual. She climbed the stairs to the second level and took her seat. After a time, the bus still had not pulled away from the stop, so Trish went to the stairs to look down to the main level. She saw the Conductor, and then she saw Peter. The massive dog was sitting patiently beside the Conductor, who appeared reluctant to make a move. Trish had to grab her school satchel, and rush down the stairs to coax Peter off the bus. She returned him home, before hurrying down to the intersection to catch the regular bus to school.
The first week of the school year included a lot of orientation for the youngest students who were new to high school. Trish learned that she, along with all students at CVHS were to be assigned to a House. There were four Houses, all named after different docks in the Port of Liverpool, in the mouth of the River Mersey. There was Huskisson House (yellow), Sandon House (red), Gladstone House (green) and Langton House (blue), where Trish was assigned. The Houses competed against each other throughout the year, gaining points for some things, like academic or sporting achievements, and losing points for other things, like demerits and detentions. Once a year the girls went on a school trip to explore the dock their House was named after. Trish recalls touring a massive warehouse on Langton dock one year, and being amazed by its size, and how orderly it was.
One of the required classes at CVHS was Home Economics. Early in the school year students learned how to sew their own gym tops, which Trish did to the teacher's satisfaction. The next assignment required the girls to make an apron that they were to wear in future Home Ec. classes. Trish had to pick the seams apart and redo them so many times, she never got the top of the apron attached to the bottom. In the end, the teacher gave her a completed apron from a school leaver, so she would not be the only student without an apron in Home Ec. class!
As the school year unfolded, Trish's abilities at field hockey were noticed. She joined the school team and played left wing. Her dad, being a football fan, always called her field hockey position “outside left”, which he then turned into a word play that Trish was “left outside”.
Puns aside, she was fast and could bring the ball up the wing then make a crisp, accurate pass to the center. Her skill earned her a position on the starting line-up for the school team, which meant she had to play in tournaments many weekends. On Saturday mornings when the team had a tournament, Trish would ride her bike to the school where she and the rest of the team would board a school bus and travel to a rival grammar school, or another team would come to them for a series of matches. Miss Garland, who was rather stern and didn’t take losses well coached the team. Fortunately, she didn’t have many opportunities to complain about the teams’ results; they were one of the best in the city.
Miss Garland did, however, find many occasions to catch girls in violation of non—sport related infractions, specifically uniform infractions. When she noticed a girl remove her school beret while riding the bus home at the end of the school day, or a student who had failed to notice that one sock had slid down her shin, or some other uniform mishaps, she would assign detention. Her favoured form of detention was to relegate the student to spend the lunchtime break standing in front of the staff room, wearing the offending uniform item “correctly”. Each of these detentions deducted points from the penalized girl’s assigned House. Trish cannot recall the infraction that landed her a shift in front of the staff room door, wearing her knickers and blouse from gym class. She does recall, however, the experience of missing lunch while awkwardly standing to endure the disdain of the teachers passing in and out of the staffroom, and the reactions ranging from pity to mirth from classmates.
From a uniform infraction perspective, Trish had a habit of nervously chewing the end of the brown and gold tie that was part of the uniform, though that caused more trouble at home than at school. As she grew taller, the tattered end of the tie no longer tucked into the waist of her skirt, so it was visible. When the tie became too unsightly, it needed to be replaced and that cost money, creating tension in the family finances. Demerits might have been an easier consequence for the habit.
The volume of demerits that were handed out during the school week for slight infractions caused the girls to form a bit of camaraderie around the whole matter. In some classes, when a teacher demanded to know who had spoken out of turn, giggled, or otherwise created a disruption, the entire class would raise their hands. They gambled on the notion that the teacher wouldn’t bother writing up the entire class for detention, and often they were correct. Regardless of such strategies, during her years at CVHS, Trish made several trips to the Head Mistress’s office to pay penance for various infractions.
The school had a choir that was well known in the area. There were 30 - 40 girls in the choir, and they performed regularly for not only other students and parents, but for the community as well. Trish was reluctant to join the choir, but the auditions were compulsory. Although she enjoyed singing, practices were early in the morning, and the choir travelled to various recitals throughout the year. Unfortunately, she could carry a tune, and she was a soprano. She tried to sing off-key in the auditions, but Mrs. Armitstead, the music teacher, saw right through it and Trish found herself enlisted.
When the choir performed, the big school auditorium was usually full. As the choir prepared to sing, there was silence in the massive hall. In the silence, Mrs. Armitstead raised her arms, and the whole choir rose in unison, without making a sound. In silence, until the day that silence was broken as a handful of Mint Imperials fell out of Trish’s pocket when she stood. They hit the floor in what seemed like a slow-motion drum solo, before rolling away between the rows of girls. Trish froze, mortified. Mrs. Armitstead glared at her, but there was nothing to be done. The show went on.
Mrs. Armitstead also assessed all of the girls for their piano skills. She added those who “passed” - and the bar was quite low for this one - to a roster of girls who had to play a march on the piano in the auditorium as students were dismissed from school assemblies. When school assemblies concluded, the students marched out of the auditorium two by two, and that required an actual march to be played on the piano each time. Trish had taken piano lessons from the time she was seven years old, but didn’t particularly enjoy it. She thought her hands were too small to play the piano properly, and she didn’t excel at it. Nonetheless, she passed the piano audition and joined the roster to play a march when it was her turn. Mercifully, the roster was deep, and she was only called on a few times to bang out the one march she knew, as her classmates were filing out of the auditorium. Everyone was making so much noise as they straggled back to class in what could only loosely be called a “march” that Trish felt it didn’t much matter that it was the same piece of music each time, or that she made mistakes.
Life was busy through her CVHS years, between her studies, her extra-curricular activities, and home-life with two rambunctious little brothers. Although Trish enjoyed her years at CVHS mostly, she struggled with some subjects - like Latin and Mathematics. It was difficult to see a practical use for them and that made it difficult to focus on the studies. She didn’t expect to carry on at CVHS after the General Certificate of Education (GCE) Ordinary Level, known as “O-level” examinations at the end of Year Five. Students who did very well at the O-level exams could carry on to Year Six, and then take the Advanced level, or “A-level” exams, but Trish didn’t see that as her future.
When exam week came, she took seven O-level exams, and she passed four: Biology, English Language, English Literature, and Scripture Knowledge.
She was 17 years old, and her high school years were over.
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Author’s note:
We often see our parents through the lens of their roles in our lives— caregivers, disciplinarians, cheerleaders. Perhaps they are our role models or mentors, but who were they before they became these things to us?"
To better understand who my parents were before they were, well, my parents, I set about interviewing them about their lives before marriage and kids. I started with my mom.
Trish Lewis was 18 years old and desperate to escape a mind-numbing administrative job at a factory in Liverpool in the 1950’s. She made the impulsive decision to join a friend to interview for nurse’s aide training at Alder Hey Children’s Hospital. That decision changed the trajectory of her life and launched her into an interesting and rewarding career as a nurse.
Trish is my mom, and this is her story, as told to me in a series of interviews in 2024. The story is pieced together from Mom’s memory, photos, and documents. As we all know, memory is fallible. In the telling of this story, some names have been changed, either because they could not be recalled, or to protect the privacy of the person.The Journey is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
I'm greatly enjoying catching up with your mother's story. Her school experience is so unfamiliar to me, as I went to a completely informal school, that is reads like a fictional story. Most enjoyable.