Chapter Six - St. Dominic's and Eleanor

I am now turning eleven and being as St. Joseph's was a Primary School, it was almost time for me to leave there and move onto Secondary School. Boys were only catered for at the little school until they were seven which meant Mark, my brother had already left and gone to the big St. Joseph's School in Newcastle. This was also a Fee Paying Boys School and was ran by the Christian Brothers. It was anticipated he would be there right through to Sixth Form and thank goodness there were no female teachers there for him to embarrass with his inappropriate comments about bust size! This was the same school that my dad had also attended as a child.

The vast majority of boys went onto the same school as Mark did, and the girls all went to St. Dominic's Grammar School nearby in Hartshill and I had dreamed of going there with all of my friends, plus it was also the same school my mum had gone to too. In fact mum and dad had met at one of the school dances and it was well known that these two schools were intrinsically linked.

Bad news though! We were going to be moving house and moving to what felt like the other side of the country to me at the time, all the way from Newcastle to a village called Barlaston where my dad had bought some land and was designing and building our new home. Even worse we were initially going to move out to Fulford to live with Nana and Grandpa Milward whilst the house was being built!

Of course it was really exciting that we were going to be living with Nana and Grandpa and that was going to be just lovely.....but they lived miles away from anyone and the school I was going to be trying to get into was also called St. Dominic's. This St. Dominic''s however was in Stone and not Harstill and of course none of my friends would be going there with me. I was really upset to say the least! It's a big deal leaing all your friends behind at that age for sure.

St. Dominic's Stone was a much more prestigious school though and passing an entrance examination was required to secure a place there and so I had to go along one Saturday morning and duly take this exam. I had no idea what I was doing and didn't really understand most of the questions that were asked, but somehow and someway I was offered a place to start in September1979. I honestly believe that the only reason I got in was because my two aunties (dad's sisters) had gone there and they were both clever....... and of course dad could afford to pay the school fees too! Anyway whatever the reason I had got in ......Praise the Lord! Hallellulia!

I had to go to a meeting with my parents and the Head Teacher, Sister Mary Mark before I started there in the September though, and this has to be one of the scariest meetings I have ever had to go to. Sister Mary Mark was at least six foot tall and a formidable woman to say the least! It was evident even at my young age that she didn't suffer fools gladly! I can still hear her checking with dad that he could afford the fees, but even more concerning was the fact she told my parents that they needed to have "the talk" with me on the facts of life before I started there in September! Now as much as I didn't really understand what this meant...... I did know it was not a talk I wanted to have with either of them, let alone both of them together!

From that day on I made sure that whenever Mark and Jane were in bed, I was out of their sight and therefore never in a position to get "the talk' I apparently needed! I need not have worried though as to this day I have never had any kind of talk on anything from eitherr my mum, let alone my dad! No mention of periods....... nothing!

I'm not really sure why this was and if it was a generational thing, a religious thing or both, but what I do know is that it was really pretty frightening when things started to happen when I was just eleven years old and I was totally clueless. I am not going to lie, if I hadn't been in the Brownies with some older girls telling me what to do, I would have been besides myself with fear. I think I managed to hide everything from my mum for about three months, but then got in trouble for not saying anything and was then mortified when I overheard her telling my aunties that I had 'started' at my Nana's house one day. I just felt I had done something wrong if I'm totally honest. And even though I am a midwife now I have never been officially told how babies are actually made!

St. Dominic's had a very strict uniform policy and you could only buy the uniform from one designated shop. All the girls wore exactly the same uniform. A white shirt, black and white tie, navy jumper or cardigan with black and white stripes, a navy tunic dress until you were thirteen and then and only then, as you went into third year (year nine) were you allowed to wear the navy pleated skirt! In the summer we wore a patterned navy dress. We also had school blazers complete with school badge and berries with tassles and a badge on them. In the winter we all had the same navy blue coat to wear.

I have to admit we did look very smart and the fact that everyone had exactly the same uniform was good in my opinion too. I do believe that a uniform should be just that ..... uniform and identical for all, and to this day I do get annoyed with nurses and midwives who look sloppy and change up their uniform with different trousers and so on as I feel it lacks professionalism. If you have to wear a uniform,then wear it well and wear it with pride. If you take pride in your uniform I do believe it makes you look more professional. and it builds trust with both patients and relatives alike.

Before we started at school we were given a very long book list of books we needed to buy for the year. Books were not provided by the school so we duly visited the Little Book Shop in Stone and placed our order there. It was not cheap I can tell you! I think we had to buy over twenty books to cover all the different subjects I was to be taking. Once we had them, they all had to covered in brown paper and "backed" as it was called.too This was to protect the books we were advised, and keep them from getting damaged. Like I was going to be studying so hard I would wear the books out I thought to myself! Anyway the books were bought and duly "backed" with said brown paper one evening and placed in my new school bag ready for the big day.

By the time I started at St. Dom's we were now living in Fulford with Nana and Grandpa and we lived in half of their massive bungalow which was great because we had our own bedrooms, kitchen, lounge and bathroom which I'm sure was great for my mum and dad, and for us kids it was brilliant, because if we opened just one door we were there in Nana and Grandpa's home too and of course we all loved going to see Sandy their old Golden Retriever who was a really lovely dog. There was also a cellar in our part of the house which became our Study and the place I was sent every evening to do my homework. It had a distinct smell but was somehow quite cosy down there away from everyone and I had my own little lamp and desk set up, complete with my jar of Quink ink as we were only allowed to write in real ink and a fountain pen at school and God forbid we ever tried to use a ball point pen!

Grandpa used to take Sandy to work with him as he had his own building company. Every day him and Sandy would head off in his van for the day literally like one man and his dog. I also used to love going to sit with Grandpa in a morning whilst he had his cup of tea and a few cigarrettes.....he was a big smoker as were many back in the day. He used to have a little stainless steel tea pot and his loose leaf tea, drank of course from a china cup and saucer. I guess this was his me time! He wasn't a bit talker but even so I used to love sitting there with him and Sandy feeling very grown up especially when he poured me my own cup of tea in my own china cup and saucer too. Maybe this is why I love tea so much and can never enjoy it in anything other than china!

Nana Milward was just the most fun Nana anyone could ever have! She was just hilarious and when I look back she was very ahead of her time and very modern too. I never knew her working, but in her past life she had was a secretary and had qualified in short hand and typing. She used to play the piano.......badly it has to be said and loved singing Spanish Eyes even though she was no Susa Boyle ahall we say! She was very sporty and alongside her horse riding, she loved taking us to play tennis too, but the picture I will always have of her in my mind is when she would set up her ironing board outside whenever the sun was shining and happily iron away wearing her bra and as skirt!

Mark and Jane were still at school in Newcastle at this time so dad would drop them off at school on his way to his Chemist Shop and mum would drive over in the afternoon with Michele who was around three then to pick them up. Because I was now at school in Stone, I got dropped off at a school bus pick up point in Meir Green outside a shop with a couple of much older girls who also caught the bus so this was fine. I'm not going to lie, I learnt A LOT from these girls about the facts of life as I listened to their converstaions about boys! People did what? On the way home I got the school bus back to the same shop, but then had to start walking down a really long A road until mum caught up on her way back from Newcastle and pulled over so I could jump in. I reckon I used to walk between one and two miles most days.

I will never forget my first day at big school. As I walked in with my mum, I saw another girl with her mum who had taken her exam the same day as me. She was called Eleanor and her mum was called Marie. Eleanor ended up becoming my best friend throughout our time at St. Dom's and was just too funny for words. She was just great and we spent endless days getting into trouble together and staying over at each other's houses. Her mum was a District Nurse and I adored her too as she was just so down to earth and had a great sense of humour too.

It was such a shock to the system though starting a new school and it was just so very different from St. Joseph's. Instead of having just one teacher for everything, we had a different teacher for every subject we took, and we also had to go to different classrooms for different lessons too. We had timetables and different exercise books for every subject we did and it was just extremely overwhelming and I'm not going to lie......I felt really out of my depth!

Thankfully I did make friends quite easily here and there were a few of us who became really good friends..... but I'm not going to lie.....we were so naughty! Not naughty by today's standards though and I think a better word to describe us was probablly mischievios. Eleanor's dad used to say "They are just party girls Marie"

There were lots of clever girls at St. Dom's and some were on scholsrships too, but none of my friends were on scholorships funnily enough! We were spilt into two forms for each year group 1F / 1D / 2F / 2D and so on as the years went up. We were always in the F group and the clever girls were in the D group, most likely so that they weren't distracted by us naughty party girls!

As I said we had different teachers for each subject, some teachers did teach more than one subject, for instance Miss Galberly taught Maths and Latin, Mrs. Clarey taught French and Geography, but mainly they taught one subject each. There was only one male teacher in the whole school and he was called Mr. Letteridge and he taught music and was the Choir Master too. He was the most eccentric, outrageous man I have ever come accross and basically lept around the music hall trying to get us to master the musical instrumets we had been assigned to learn play. We didn't get a choice in this matter though, I was given the flute and Eleanor for some reason unbeknown to man was given the violin, which she never mastered throughout her entire time at the school and she really did sound like she was strangling a cat each time she attempted to play it.

It was fun though as we started to settle in and we knew exactly which teachers we could 'play up' for as it were, but we also knew which teachers would take none of our nonsense either!

Fact - We did NOT play up for Sister Mary Mark! As I said she was formidable and not to be taken lightly on any occasion. She taught us all Religious Studies and this was to be taken extremely seriously We did still attend Mass reguarly here too, but not on a weekly basis as in my previous school, but we did still have to say prayers before each lesson, and of course Grace before we ate our lunch which we often got for free from the Dinner Ladies who we made friends with even though most of us brought packed lunches and shoulodnt have been anywhere near the canteen. We also had daily Assembly each morning where we said prayers and sang hymns and it was during these Assembly's that at least one of our gang got dragged out by the collar by one of the Sixth Formers each and every day for talking too much or giggling too loudly.

There was only one other nun at this school strangely enough, and she was called Sister Mary Benedict. A bit like Sister Mary Pascal, she was a fun nun and even rode into school each day on a small 50cc motorbike! The same motorbike we all rode around the playground on when she left her keys in the ignition one day.That was until Tracey fell off, and bounced off one of the other teacher's cars that was and we all got in very serious trouble for.

Getting into trouble here was not for the faint hearted though as the punishment was severe and would certainly not be allowed in any school today. It was corporal punishment for sure and was delivered by Sister Mary Mark herself in her office. As part of her habit she wore a brown leather belt and she would duly take this belt off. We then had to roll up our sleeves and she would deliver five strong lashes to our inner fore arms with the metal buckle end of the said belt! This was horrendoulsy painful and left severe red marks and bruisng for days on end. This was not something you wanted to recieve a second time trust me! Lesser punishments would include writing 500 lines of whatever it was you had done wrong, or being hit hard on the head a few times with the black board rubber or a hard backed Bible.... whichever was closest to hand. Again I am not saying this was right, but it did do the trick and kept us in line when and where we needed to learn a lesson and I don't remember any of us having the strap more than once as even we weren't that stupid!

I was there for five years and even with all of the above, I look back on my school days there with great fondness and the memories still make me smile. We were youg and carefree and we were safe at school as long as we didn't get caught doing silly things by Sister Mary Mark!

It was the days of Steve Wright, DLT and Gary Davis.on Radio One, complete with all the Radio One Road Show's in the summers; Charles and Diana getting married; John Lennon tragically being murdered,; the Yorkshire Ripper finally getting arrested and the first computer being invented. It was also the time of the Tuck Shop: Jackie magazine and Smash Hits: big hair and hairspray; winkle picker shoes; pencil skirts; mods and rockers and all round great music, including our favourite band The Human League. We all loved The Human League so much that we all clubbed together the one Christmas and bought each other the album Dare. This was quite ridiculous when you think about it as we could all just have bought our own copy!

Records were still the way we all listened to music back then, and we would buy our singles when we had saved up enough pocket money as most of us had our own little "suitcase type" record players in our bedrooms at home and when we stayed over at each other's houses we would take our records along and sit and play them all eveing. As tape cassettes started to come in,the other way we all used to listen to music was by recording the Top 40 on a Sunday evening between 5pm - 7pm and it's only if you are of a certain age that you will understand the struggle of holding the pause and record buttons so you didn't accidently record any talking as the songs were being introduced. This was of course the best way to be able to listen to all of your favourite songs for free!

Jackie magazine was really popular with all of us girls and it would be delivered by the Paper Boy once a week to our homes and we all looked forwards to it dropping through our letter boxes to see what we shoud be wearing and so on, but for most of us the best bit was to read the "Problem Page" with was naturally called "Dear Jackie". This problem page was where we started to learn about life it has to be said and we couldn't get enough of ir!

We were obsessed with our hair in the eighties and hairspray was a staple in all of our school bags along with our books. When Charles got engaged to Diana however, we all wanted a "Lady Di" haircut and I'm not going to lie..... we cemented those flicks into space at every available opportunity we could! We couldn't get enough of it.

So we plodded on through school and we all settled in. Me and Eleanor alongside Heidi, Samantha, Tracey and Simone all became really firm friends and used to meet reguarly outside of school and stayed over at each other's houses most weekends. As I said my best friend though was Eleanor who was just fabulous. If anyone had bad luck or got caught out doing something silly.....well you best believe it would be Els as we called her!

Eleanor was funny, silly, slightly daft, very clumsy but oh so lovely! She met Paul who was to very quickly become her husband just after we left school. He quickly became her husband though because she fell pregnant and in true catholic stye it was expected that they would now get married and set up home in preparation for their new arrival. In true Eleanor style though, she went to collect her wedding dress and went into the house leaving it in the boot of her car, only for the car to be stolen.......wedding dress and all! Other things included the whole of her parents house being flooded one time when her parents were away for the weekend and she had a party and them not only coming back and having to replace all of the carpets, they also had no food left as both their fridge and freezer had been raided by unwanted and uinvited guests!

Anyway Els did get married in a new wedding dress and a few months later Christopher arrived and she made a really lovely mommy. We were just seventeen. Els and Paul stayed together, living now in Liverpool, but it wasn't until quite a few years later that she had two more children, Helen and Christie who were born within a year of each other.

Eleanor had an older brother Paul who was five years older than us and he was 6 foot 7 inches tall. He was a great lad and reguarly used to come and pick Els up when she had stayed at our house, but tragically Paul took his own life when me and Els were just sixteen years old. He was just twenty one years old. RIP Paul.

I honestly don't know how Marie and Fred coped with this and being older now I know they probably didn't. He was buried on Christmas Eve and it is to this day one of the most distressing funerals I have ever been to.

To loose a child so tragically is one thing, but what I never envisaged happening was that when she was just fourty, Eleanor very sadly died too. It was all so sudden. She was taken ito hsopital with some kind of infection and died two weeks later.......she left behind her husband Paul, son Christopher and Helen and Christie who were just seven and eight years old at the time. Marie and Fred had now lost both of their children. I have no words......RIP Els.

If this family hadn't suffered enough heartache, it was less than eighteen months later that Eleanor's husband Paul also died leaving their children ophaned ay such a youg age and Marie and Fred having to step in despite their own unimagineable grief and pain to care for the girls,

Marie is one of the most amazsing women I have ever come across in my life and i have admiration for her that words just cannot describe, and especially so because within a couple of years of this her own husband and Eleanor's dad also died too of cancer. How she kept going, I have no idea.......but she did and she did it for her grandchildren who have gone on to do really well in life depite all losing both of their parents. My hat certainly goes off to Marie and I have kept in touch with her over the years. Sadly I couldn't attend Eleanor's funeral as I was living in Antigua at that time and wasn't in a financial situation to fly over. It affected me deeply though and I had many a panic attack and dark time after we had lost her. She was a good egg was Els and I still miss her to this day.

Going back to school again briefly to conclude. We continued on.We had many house parties betwen us where we all played Spin the Bottle, got drunk on Cinzano and lemonade, threw up and got in trouble with our parents, and rightly so I might add, and then we all sat our O'Levels.

It wasn't just me who was not expected to so well in my exaqms, it was all of us, but somehow we did all manage to do better than expected apart from Els of course,who had to re-sit more than one exam. We all left St. Dom's and then sadly most of us went our separate ways either into Further Education or started to work. Heidi went to work in her mum's bridal shop and Tracey started to work in her parent's pub. We kept in touch on and off for a few years, but as with anyone, geography and life we all drifted further apart which was sad and if I ever got the chance to catch up with any of them again it would just be fantastic! If any of you stumble across this blog PLEASE do get in touch!

I am not going to lie when I say I hated the fact that I went to a Private All Girl's Convent School when I was youger, but now I am older and wiser I actually really appreciate the fact that I did and I am so grateful I had this opportunity in life. Whether you agree with private schools or not, I made sure I worked two jobs so that I could afford to send Tom and Jack to private schools too. This was mainly because I wanted them to have the same kind of small school experience that I did and because I thought they deserved what I had as a minimum too and at the end of the day it was my choice and I'm very glad I was able to do it.