Monday 19 September 2011

Extract from Down and out in London and Essex

IRA Nursery School

 Great Leighs Nursery School, Goodmans Lane.

At an early age the suburban parent sends you to nursery school, mine was deep in the countryside outside of the wimpy home estates that were growing out of village greens.

It was a dark old building all wooden beams and hard floors, Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday... Sunday sung in trepidation for our obligatory glass of milk and rich tea finger biscuits. Party rings on birthdays. Here we learnt to share, to sing loudly the alphabet when our parents waited outside, to not make guns out of sticklebricks assuming that this would provoke thoughts of joining the IRA as soon as we lost the stabilisers on our bikes. Frantically peddling over to Ireland and proposing a new legion of mickey mouse knit jumpers on 4ft terrorist groups would storm the pubs of Soho with bombs in milk bottles.

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