Memory Lane 19

24th January 2025, Steve Breibart recalls his first days at St. Nicks 

Your editor finds himself short of submissions and so offers these few words – a brief memory of my first days at St. Nicks.

My first day at a new school – no longer a big fish in a small pond but very much the opposite. Dressed in my new school uniform, everything a bit on the large size so that I could grow into it. Shoes polished to within an inch of their lives – one of several unique instances on the day. Cap perched on head – out intake (1967) was the last required to wear a cap and only for one year. I had no school brief case and so my father lent me an old attaché case, which I was very proud to carry. Another uniqueness about the day was that I was given a lift to school. Dropped off outside the gate a warily trundled in to try and find some of the other boys from my old primary school. 

I found myself, by virtue only of my surname, allocated to form 1A (the last time I was to be in the A stream) with Mrs. Drummond as my Form Mistress. Finding all the staff in academic gowns felt quite forbidding. Things pottered along quite well during that first week and I seemed to be settling well with my new classmates.

All this changed at the weekend when my father, thinking he was doing me a great favour, presented me with a brand-new briefcase. Bright orange pigskin. In a class full of boys with black and brown briefcases, I knew even before I set foot in class again that this was going to give me a headache.

The following Monday, I walked to school (eschewing the hopeless bus service and reserving my bus money for the tuckshop) and into a storm. Almost immediately my brand-new bright orange briefcase miraculously found its way onto a shelf at the back of the class that I couldn’t possibly reach. Equally miraculously it had apparently got there of its own volition, since no one admitted to having put it there. Order and my brief case were, of course, soon restored. So began my sojourn at St. Nicks.

(first published December 2024 in Newsletter 6)