Hi, just joined this forum, I've been browsing through and it has brought back many memories.
I haven't lived in Brum since 1963, a lot will have changed since then
I started school in early 1943 at Hastings Road Infants school in Perry Common, we lived in Abingdon Road.
In those days there were 4 classes in 2 years, I remember one teacher was called Miss Plum. She had a cane which seemed at the time to be about 10 feet long.
During one summer, probably 1943, we took our desks out into the playground for outside lessons, far above was some aerial conflict going on, we could see contrails criss-crossing the sky, twisting and turning, but no sound reached us.
After school we used to make our way home via 'the rec' at Perry Common. Google Earth shows that the swings and roundabouts are no longer there.
After Hastings Road I went to Hawthorn Road Primary for a year until my parents moved to Oldbury.
The headmaster at Hawthorn was a Mr Dainty, ex-world war 1. He used to line us up for 'parade' each morning before school for hands and boots inspection.
He expected us to have shiny black boots, and if they were not clean would tell us how to apply spit and polish
When I first went to Moat Farm Primary school in 1946 in Oldbury, I was laughed at because of my Brum accent......this from black country boys...........a different world, yet only a few miles away.
Down the road in Old Hill they still spoke a form of Anglo-Saxon or Old English, yet even harder to understand.
If anyone wonders what my moniker Akatarawa means it is a valley north of Upper Hutt in New Zealand where we have lived for the past 35 years.