School Days

Infants and Junior School

I attended Thomas Willingale Infants and Juniors at The Broadway, Loughton, Essex.  They were separate buildings on the same site.  I have happy memories of these days, the teachers were all lovely and nice classmates.

Click on photo's to see a larger version (and captions where available)

Sorry for the poor quality - these were scanned from slides

Secondary School

Back then, there was a 2 tier education system and you had to take an 11plus exam to see if you could attend a Grammar, or Secondary Modern school.  Fortunately, I passed my 11plus, and chose to attend West Hatch in Chigwell, Essex.  It was not strictly a Grammar School, but classed as a Technical High - but you had to pass the11plus to attend.  It was the same school that Lin and Jan attended and was a relatively new school - having only opened a few year's before they started.

I don't remember much about my days there - the education was not great and not many inspiring teachers, but I did leave with 7 O' Levels.  Did not stay on for A Levels

I did rather like our uniform - it was a black blazer, grey skirt and jumper or cardigan, and an open-neck pink and white candy stripe shirt (which looked much nicer than it sounds).

Saturday Job

As soon as I was old enough, I got a job working in the local Sainsbury's supermarket.  Back in those days there was only one night for 'late night shopping' and that was on a Friday till 8pm.  So I would work there after school, then again on Saturday.  There were quite a few of us that worked there and we frequently socialised after the shop closed - some are the friends I have stayed in contact with.

We would occasionally help on the tills (packing customer's bags for them) and on Saturday it was mainly cleaning and re-stocking the shelves after the shop closed at 4pm.  I was lucky and was asked to work in the office - so I had a rather cushy job counting money!

A few of us photographed outside Sainsbury's - just off to a fancy dress party.  I'm the one at the front!