use the third finger and palm to pick something up and then that progressed to the thumb and forefinger as hand and eye coordination got better. Even throwing toys out of the pram meant the baby was using his arm or learning how to release his fingers.
Perhaps the most intimate form of interaction between the staff and the children came through storytelling. I have always loved storytelling myself, which is why whenever a child asked for a story I was keen to do it. The book corner was well stocked with good books. The children had their own little chairs and we always tried to make it homely so there was an adult chair where we could sit with a child on our lap, if required. Books which talked down to children were frowned upon, which is why we didn’t have a single Enid Blyton book in any of the council nurseries. It didn’t matter that children adored her books. I had been one of them. I’d read all the Famous Five books and the Secret Seven but in the early 1960s, probably because she had dominated the children’s book market for so long, the professionals were quick to voice their disapproval. Later, when I moved on and became a nursery student my college lecturer, Mrs Davies, quoted from Enid Blyton. Apparently she once told a reporter, ‘I sit at the typewriter and it just drips from my fingers.’
I’m sure if she did say such a thing, Enid Blyton meant it in an entirely different way but Mrs Davies wrinkled her nose in scorn and said, ‘Well, that sums up her writing skill perfectly.’
The sort of stories which met with approval were books like The Happy Lion by Louise Fatio, Millions of Cats by Wanda Gag and anything by Beatrix Potter. Magic was considered taboo for the under-fives (I don’t know why), as were very ‘wordy’ stories.
One thing always puzzled me. When I had gone to the council offices for my interview for the job, like all those before and after me, I’d met the nursery supervisor for the council, Miss Fox-Talbot. A formidable woman, she was short and stocky in build but famed for her fabulous hats and her racy red mini car. She told my mother and me that my uniform would be ‘an attractive pink gingham dress’. It turned out to be a shapeless, round-necked garment with a matching covered belt and a Peter Pan collar. It had three rubber buttons down the front, so that they could be boiled, and apparently size twenty fitted everybody. The skirt was just below the knee and considering the rest of the world was waking up to the sack dress and later on, the mini skirt, we all hated it. Most girls hoiked up the skirt and took in the sides in an effort to look a little more twentieth century than eighteenth century.
The thing that puzzled me was this. In the letter Miss Fox-Talbot had sent me was a list of things I’d need to take with me to the nursery. At the bottom of the page, alongside a toothbrush and comb, it said two pairs of ‘garden knickers’. My mother and I scratched our heads. What on earth were garden knickers?
I was all for leaving it, but much to my acute embarrassment, Mum dragged me round all the major stores in Bournemouth but in every single department we were met by blank stares. Mum even insisted we go to a corset department where some old fossil, who had probably been working in the shop since Mrs Noah left the ark, suggested they might be powder blue silk drawers with an elasticated waist and long legs, which stretched as far as the knee. As soon as I saw them, I recognised them as the type of garment my old granny used to wear. I rarely, if ever, defied my mother but I put my foot down right there and then.
‘There is no way I’m going to wear them!’ I said in front of the shocked assistant. ‘I’ll work in the garden with no knickers at all if necessary, but I won’t wear them!’
I worked for the council for four years. Nursery assistants like me came and went. We discussed the subject of garden knickers ad infinitum but I don’t think any one of us ever discovered what they looked like and although I never carried out my threat to go bare bottom in the garden, I certainly never wore my granny’s silk drawers.
Chapter 3
One early morning we got a call. It was an emergency admission. A mum had been rushed to hospital with internal bleeding. It was possibly a miscarriage so there was no telling how long or short her stay would be. If Mum had already lost her baby, it would only be for a few days. If the baby had survived, it may mean months of complete bed rest until it was born. Whatever happened, someone had to look after her other child, a little boy. The problem was that Mum and Dad were Polish and only spoke Polish.
We had never had a Polish child before, and the prospect of such a child coming to the nursery threw everyone into a complete flap. It was nothing to do with prejudice – after all, we had children whose parents had come from the four corners of the world. They might be West Indian, African, mixed race, English, Irish or Welsh but they were dealing with the same problems as everyone else. Homelessness, illness and unemployment can come to anybody. The problem here was that nobody spoke Polish. How were we going to communicate with the poor child? Our sympathies were aroused. To be torn from the arms of your mother would be bad enough, but to be thrust into a situation where you were unable to communicate or make yourself understood would be horrendous.
We wanted to make the usual preparations but even that wasn’t possible. Usually by the time a child arrived in the nursery a pile of clothes would be waiting, and once we were sure of the size, each item marked with the child’s name. The child’s personal clothes would be put into a box and kept until he or she was ready to leave the nursery for good. No one had told us the name of the child or whether we were to expect a boy or a girl.
About half an hour later, a police car drew up outside and a WPC climbed out of the back seat with the child in her arms. To everyone’s surprise Robin Kowalski turned out to be eight months old and his mother was English so there was no need for an interpreter after all! He was a delightful baby. As bald as a coot, he was quite content even though his mother wasn’t with him. Robin only stayed a while. Sadly his mother had a complete miscarriage and she would nurse her pain and loss for years to come. Robin accepted his lot and smiled his toothless grin as a few days later we waved him goodbye and good luck.
I had only been in the nursery a couple of months when I began to feel increasingly ill. I was born with narrow Eustachian tubes in my ears and so a cold quite often resulted in me going deaf. Usually after a few days, my hearing would return and I’d be back on top but in the winter of 1961–62 my cold simply got worse and worse, and I remained completely deaf for more than a week.
I desperately wanted to go to the doctor but I was under the impression that I needed Matron’s permission to do so. She exploited that belief and kept me working. In fact, rather than address the problem, she put me on night duty. It was not a good move. She had removed the problem of everyone having to shout at me and the irritation people feel when they can’t make a deaf person understand what they want, but how could I possibly look after the children properly if I couldn’t hear them? At least in the daytime there were other people about to cover my back and make sure the children were well cared for.
One night, as I was preparing the children’s morning orange juice, Miss Carter appeared in the kitchen. It was the wee small hours of the morning and she was in her night clothes and dressing gown. Using hand signals, she made me go into the night nursery. When I switched on the light, every child was sitting up in bed and screaming. I have no idea who or what started them off, probably one child waking up after having a bad dream, but I hadn’t heard a thing. Even when I was standing in the room, I still couldn’t hear them.
By the time I came to the end of my ten nights, I was feeling a tad better. I went home to West Moors and a couple of days of Mum’s cooking and pampering had me feeling a lot better. However, as soon as I got back into the nursery, I was ill again and before long, I had two lumps in my neck. The pain was becoming unbearable but still Matron turned a blind eye. I should have just gone to the doctor myself but by then I had learned that the way you spelled the word Matron was G-O-D. She cleverly avoided my pleas to have time off to go and see him.
One day, I had two hours off duty in the afternoon and I was feeling so lousy I went to bed. I was supposed to be back on duty at 4.30 but when someone came to find me, I refused to get up. ‘I’m too ill to get up,’ I whined. ‘I need a doctor.’
The girl went away and about half