What made you come to Calverton?
I was brought here as a small child when my dad moved from Bestwood pit to Calverton pit.
Do you have any memories of Calverton?
I can remember moving, I know it seems weird for a one year old to be able to remember, but I can remember we moved into the house and the front room had lots of sacks of coal in it, all stacked up. That was one of my first memories and then I can remember the fireplace. It had like an oven in it at the side which you could put your food in.
Did you go to school here?
Yes, I went to Manor Park school, which I didn't like because the floor was very, very slippery and I always thought I was going to slip over and the teachers didn't like them because I'm left handed. I was told off for being left handed all the time so I didn't like being at that school. I then went to Sherbrooke which was okay because there weren't anti-left handed there. And then I went to Colonel Frank Seely but that was about over 40 years ago so it's a long time since I've been at school.
So you mentioned that you were left handed in school and that you got into trouble for that. How does that make you feel now?
I feel that they were very petty and I think it was wrong and very discriminatory. Being brought up, being discriminated against, you then grow up having more empathy with people that are being discriminated against because I was discriminated against because of the fact that I wrote with a different hand to everyone else did. I just don't think it was very fair the way that the people were treated. It was worse in the past. I've got horror stories from my mother-in-law, who had to have her arms strapped down. But her parents went and sorted that out. But it's just wrong. I don't know why people would be so horrible to a child because it picked its pen up in the wrong hand. It's just not fair.
When I got to junior school it was never mentioned or never commented on so I think it was in the mid 70s that it started getting to be better for people, probably because women's rights were in there and then other people's rights were coming up, and discrimination acts were starting to be coming into parliament and things and people were getting more aware of judging a person by by one aspect of their life.
So they judge you because you're left-handed, but they can't tell until they see you move your hand whether you're left-handed or not, but once you see me do it, but people still do point out that I'm left-handed. I'm like, “Yeah if I don't know by now, you don't need to tell me I'm left-handed, because I know I'm left-handed.”
Now people don't have a problem with it. I don't think children have any issues with what hand they write with. I don't think the school are like that. But in those days it was very strict. That's how you did things.
And did that strictness apply to other parts of life in Calverton, not just in school?
No, just the school. I think that they'd been brought up to teach people, and that's how they did it. They got the set curriculum, but if someone didn't fit in because they were left-handed and they were picking the pen up wrong, [then] it's going to be hard o teach them to write because they hold the pen differently, so it's going to be more work for them.
Do you feel like school is different now?
Yeah. I had to write, when I got to senior school at Sealu, you had to have a fountain pen. Well, you can't write with a fountain pen when you're left handed. You just break it and scratch the paper. In the end, they said I could use a biro because it was easier. And then after that they said everybody could use biros. So I think they realised that you can't - not everyone can afford a left handed fountain pen - you could get them but they were more money. But just the fact that you're just rubbing across it all and splurging across the ink instead of drawing away from it. And then they went to biros and they stopped having the fountain pen rule and that was in 1977.
I don't know. I think it's just it just changed when I was there. But like I said, they've got women's rights were coming through, equalities acts and all stuff like that was happening all over the UK. It happened all over the world, so I don't know if that affected people's attitudes and became more you are, what you are. You can write how you like.
If you could, if you could go back and tell your teachers something like, what would you say?
I would tell her not to be discriminated against, left under children. And that she's wrong to have done it. And it's not a very nice thing to do to a child who's only five.