COURTESY of one of my oldest friends I can share my P1 class photo from Crieff in the mid 1960s when I was a caravan dweller; we all had uniform of sorts, some of us had home knitted jerseys and cardigans with cable on the pockets within which fitted bonny wee embroidered hankies provided by adopted grannies; others had hand me downs from older brothers and sisters. Schoolbags were of many and varied types, could be brown leather from where we might graduate in time to a briefcase, with a big hard handle on the top and a flap, with buckles, the honour of opening which was evident promotion to the upper echelons of academia in primary 3.
There were wee warm bottles of milk, jobs as milk monitors or tasks allocating the responsibility of care of a portable library which seemed to transport itself hovering from room to room, with shelves of books brimming over; The Water Babes, The Borrowers, Brer Fox and international tales of derring-do. Walls displayed maps of the world, countries shaded in pink or purple or eggshell blue, green, orange, hatched and outlined to confirm the identity of the imperial power, current or overthrown, and we would share stamps and stamp albums boasting names like Macedonia, Rhodesia, Ceylon and, my favourite, Magyar Posta.