If you were at primary school in the 80s

[isabellerossignol]

I've spent what seems like all morning printing off worksheets for my primary aged child. And I was suddenly struck by a vivid memory from primary school. Hand typed or handwritten worksheets that were printed on a machine, in the days before printers, with really poor quality paper and all the writing came out with a bluey/purple tinge.

I've had a Google and apparently it was called a Banda machine, and was used a lot in schools because it enabled relatively cheap printing. Does anyone else remember it?

The thing I remember most is that the printed sheets had a really strong, distinctive smell. If I could smell that now, I'd feel like I was 8 all over again.

Does anyone remember the swimming bags that had water between the layers and little plastic fish?

Maybe 90’s as I might have been high schooo by then

My other primary school “wtf?” memory is going to get the window pole

Old building and the windows were super high. The window pole was kept in the corridor and a child would be sent to fetch it.

It was about 8ft and weighed a tonne. Plus had a metal hook on the end. Can’t imagine schools getting away with that now

We had them on our house. We (the kids) used to use them for ‘joisting’. Yes we all have both eyes.

The window pole! Yes.

I loved singing all the Beatles songs in my early 80s west London primary.

"When i'm 64", "yellow submarine" and one non Beatles song about football that made everyone totally crazy. They only let us have it on special occasions. Does anyone happen to know the song I mean?

Possibly "football crazy?"

PE in vest and knickers. There was always one kid who forgot to keep their pants on and ended up naked.

Country dancing and hiding under the tables so we wouldn't have to dance with the boys.

Lining up to see the nit nurse and not being entirely sure what we were doing.

Mine was a large Victorian primary with 3 floors, high windows, concrete stairs and a tarmac playground. No soft landing when you fell off the climbing frame. I'd love to see it now.

I remember accidentally banging heads with another child in the playground and then falling to the ground and banging my head again. Lost consciousness for a while. Sat quietly in the office for the rest of lunchtime then went back to class with a lovely black eye developing. Went home on the school bus, and walked the mile home on my own from the bus stop, and gave my mum a huge fright when she saw my bruised face. Obviously the school hadn’t phoned her. Promptly fell asleep when I sat down. Like to think that wouldn’t happen nowadays.

I don’t remember Tufty, we had the Green Cross Code man, and he visited our school, but we were more excited as he was Darth Vader in Star Wars. I do remember quite a few children in my class getting broken limbs from getting hit by cars when playing out, and one poor boy got killed crossing the road. What with that and those public information films I do wonder whether people look back with rose tinted glasses when talking about how lovely it was for children to have so much freedom playing out.

I used this machine to print off newsletters at my first job. Pretty sure it was called a Gesetner and the smell was meths.

The secretary would type up the newsletter on a template, I would peel a bit off, put it in the roller bit and turn the handle to print copies.

Gestetner

loved the smell of the Banda machine pages, in their purple glory.

I remember the window pole! .

Health & Safety was non existent. Safeguarding, too. One of our favourite pastimes at morning break was to go into the ‘boiler room’ - a creepy basement room down some concrete stairs - and talk to the caretaker on his tea break. Little girls in the basement with some old bloke (fortunately lovely!) giving us biscuits and telling us not to tell our teachers .

We had dinner monitors. Year 6 (in modern terms) kids who wouldn’t let you leave the dinner hall until you’d made a decent effort on your spam and smash. Hated those cruel fuckers!

Llyn that was Maxpax. Absolutely revolting!

I shudder when I think about some of the health and safety fails from the 80s. We used to have this huge, heavy metal-framed swing in our garden that wasn't properly fixed to the ground. If you swung too high, it would start to tip, so naturally my parents didn't get rid of the thing, just told us to be careful not to go too high. One of my brother's particularly naughty friends was playing on it once, and despite our pleas, he was making the swing go as high as he could. Of course, it tipped over, he cracked his head open on one of the metal bars, blood everywhere, hysterical wailing from me etc etc. It turned out he'd fractured his skull. I imagine these days, his parents would have been straight onto a solicitor, but they just said it was his own stupid fault for swinging too high...

Yes to random Beatles songs - we also sang When I'm Sixty-four and Yellow Submarine. There was also an attempt to do She's Leaving Home, which had to be abandoned because most of the infants were in floods of tears by the end of the second verse.

When I first started teaching we have one bit you didn't do your own copying. We used to leave it on a special pile with the instructions and an admin/support person did it for us within a certain time.
They copied the OHP films too.

Will our children still waste time in class to watch Kes? ("Yer killed me burd!!!!")

It’s a Y7 rite of passage here (nearest town is Barnsley).

We sang Football Crazy too! And our random Beatles song was Michelle, complete with French bit, but we didn’t do French so sang it phonetically...

I was at secondary in the early 00s but our French teacher would occasionally bring out a handwritten purple - copied worksheet! Only ever in French. I liked them because they reminded me of comics ready to be inked (something I'd learned about from art attack) and I liked going over the letters with my fountain pen.

In my second primary school there were some songs we would get to sing occasionally as a treat that I'd never sung at the first one. One went

Ah de do ah de do da day
Ah de do ah de day dee
He whistled and sang till the greenwoods rang
And he won the heart of a laaaaay-dee

I fondly remember being asked to go the the art cupboard-a real treat in itself- and getting fresh ‘blocks’ of paint to refill the empty ones in the white trays. The feeling of getting a tray with new paint blocks was like nothing else! Happy days indeed.

We were never allowed to actually write on them- I am reminded of this currently because our printer is missing in action and we aren’t printing out the worksheets for homeschooling - they look at the questions on screen and write the answers in their excercise book. I don’t think I’d fully realised this doesn’t happen any more! Actually much greener not to print out a worksheet of questions to be used once.

In my primary school we had a machine that you put - I am guessing a 2p or 5p coin in and turn the handle. One had salted peanuts. the other very cheap chocolate fake smarties. We had tuck shop which sold only crisps - 5p per packet.

We did country dancing, which I loved. Massive hymn sheets on the wall - we seemed to sing Onward Christians Soldiers, At the Name of Jesus and All Things Bright and Beautiful - a lot.
We had ducks eggs and an incubator - the eggs had to be turned and sprayed with water evry day . We got to do this in turns - so exciting.

Watch on TV once a week. The TV had its own room which we had to go to =it was in the basement of the school. We also did tests here in our last year. I guess they were literacy and numeracy and they must have been marked by scanning because they were multiple choice and you filled in the little oval box with a pencil.

Reading books - Reading On red book 1. They were a series of colours - the colour changed as you moved up to the more difficult books. Haydn Richards scheme rings a bell too.

Craft - doing cross stitch with wool and big fat needles on very stiff pieces of fabric. Seemed to make a lot of place mats and maybe a purse or pencil case. Plasticine kept in an old tobacco tin in your own drawer with all you books in it. We also did basket making with canes that had to be soaked in water.

I bloody lokved juniors.

I now have an earworm of the theme music from How We Used To Live.
I'm blaming this thread.

Was that the one that went

Do...di-do
Dooo... di-do
Do-do do-do-du-doooooo-do
Etc... ended in a ‘BAHHHHHHHHHHH’

Oh my. I'm 43, and this thread has swept me away in a warm, cosy hug of nostalgia. So many things that I haven't though about for years, but all so familiar. Chime Bars! Apusskidu! Granny's Garden! Blank clock face stamps! Weird purple printing! Come and Praise!

Dark Towers properly put the wind up me. Utterly terrifying! 'Beware of two bees that buzz together! Beware of the bird without any feathers!'

@zaphodbeeble We played Skittleball in Derbyshire! But not all of Derbyshire, there were neighbouring schools who didn't. I googled it recently, and it is still A Thing! I can't tell you how happy this made me.

@QuantumWeatherButterfly so happy !!!! I work in Merseyside now and no ones ever heard of it !

My dad was a teacher and so we had piles of drawing paper which was on the back of those purple printed science sheets. I love that smell!

For a special occasion / special drawing we would ask for "clean on both sides paper".

One of our favourite pastimes at morning break was to go into the ‘boiler room’ - a creepy basement room down some concrete stairs - and talk to the caretaker on his tea break.

That brings back memories - I used to chat to the caretaker at secondary school, I thought he was ancient. Then about 10 years ago I saw him in a pub when I was out with DH, and told DH who he was. DH already knew him - they were in the army together