Miss Thompson’s great great great grandmother was called Alice, Alice Nutter.  Alice’s mother was called Demdyke and they lived in the shade of Pendle Hill in the Forest of Bowland.

Miss Thompson was the teacher in the Top Class of St Pauls Primary School at Astley Bridge, Bolton.  She was a witch.  An evil, scrawny, thin and grey shadow of a spinster who was infatuated with a man ten years her senior, Pop Carter, the headmaster of the school.

Due to some mistake on their part I was moved to the Top Class during my final year at St Pauls.  It was an error I never recognised at the time, and in fact it would be many many years later before I came to understand that these two biased, bigoted people had the effect they would have on my life.  And perhaps if they had known how they had guided my life, they might have smugly smiled a self satisfied smirk.

Well now my beauties, ‘tis time for retribution.  What is that well known and well used saying?  Revenge is a dish best served cold.  Believe me, it’s freezing now.

A short explanation is probably due here.  The school was a church of England school, in that it was part of the church and its pupils were expected to attend the church on a regular basis.  Well, that was the original thinking behind the formation of the school when it was first built, but over the years they had been forced to take into the school children who did not attend the church but who lived in the catchment area.  I came into the second category in that I lived in a house on an estate about a mile and a half from the school.  I attended the school from age five until eleven, going from the nursery school to the primary school about the age of seven. Different building and different teachers.  Miss Thompson was the feared hag who was in charge of the Top Class.  This was the name given one of two classes which taught pupils for their final year at the school and prepared them for an examination at age eleven which woulddetermine which secondary school they went to.  There were at that time three types of secondary school.  A Grammar School which was for the more scholastically minded, a Secondary Modern which was for the dummies (that is how it was thought of at the time, and pupils destined for this school were treated like dumies) and a Technical School which taught subjects such as Technical Drawing, Metal Work and the like.

It was automatically expected by the head master and Miss Thompson that only those who went to church and lived in the posh houses near the church would go on to Grammar School.  The likes of me were very definitely going to have to settle for the Secondary School. Their attitude to the kids from the ‘wrong part of town’ was totally different from that towards the kids from other areas.   She never even spoke to us civilly preferring to screech out your name in class.  You were never allowed to forget that you came from a council house and that you did not go to ‘her’ church. 

Corporal punishment was a regular feature of life in that school.  Caning from the headmaster was unusual, but he never held back from administering it.  I would not say that he was vicious or vindictive, but he never held back either.  Miss Thompson on the other hand used physical punishment every day, and sometimes several times a day.  She would call you to go and stand by her side at her desk. Knowing what was coming you naturally enough kept as far from her as possible, but she would gently tell you to stand closer.  When you were then close enough she would point to whatever was wrong with your work whilst with her left hand she would smack you on the back of your knees, quite hard.  As you know, this is a very tender spot, and it hurt like hell. 

Physically she was a tiny person, and thin like a Whippet with long fingers like whips.  She was a pointed person.  Everything about her was sharp. Her face came to a point at the front of her nose and her skin was almost transparent so that you could see the veins on her nose.  She wore thin metal framed glasses which she would remove when she was going to administer punishment.

Even after more than fifty years I can still feel the sense of shame and embarrassment she used on me, and others in the class.  But where she failed in her attempts at embarrassment was the fact that the other kids in the class, the ones she did not pick on, viewed her with the same hatred as we who were the subject of her torment.

My only regret is that I do not know where the evil bitch is buried.  I would love to go and dance on her grave.  

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