School Dinners ? Love em or Hate em !


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I firstly have to go back to St.Marys on Derby rd.Don't forget I was taught by the sisters of "have no mercy".so after the daily ordeal of refusing that flat top milk,coupled with me being the devils lovechild -because I was lefthanded,I was ready for some nosh!! A hunk of raw veg was our starter then the food came- which wasn't bad. Coming from a house with a no nonsense approach to food,I ate all up. Meals at the Becket were lovely,cornflake tart/ chicken supreme/beef cobbler/shepards pie etc..though I hated the fish- my mums hake in milk was awful,to this day even with my ost-arth condition fish is low in my diet.OCD had set in early as one day I caught a lad from lenton ( the whole family stunk of piss!) .licking his knife and fork as though his life depended on it..so took me own eating irons!!

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As the title says. Personally I loved them. With the only exception of Bread & Butter Pudding, URGGGGGGGGH ! Attending school in the 50s fom a poor background school dinners were loo

I hated school dinners, except for the fish we had on Fridays and cornflake tart. I once wrote a note allegedly from my mum to say I was allergic to mashed potato and mustn't be forced to eat it. Un

It certainly was just water Smiffy. Now it's in plastic jugs as the metal ones were aluminium and that is probably why we are all batty

Good grief - you were all being robbed - unless we got meals on the cheap in Derbyshire! I can remember the teacher in what would now be called Year 3 telling us that the price (for a week) was going up from 3/9d to 4/2d. That would be about 1956 - and I think it was 1959 or 60 before it reached 5 bob.

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I have very few memories of school dinners but none of them are particularly happy ones.

At Kingswell Junior School we had to line up at the school office on a Monday morning to pay our 5 shillings for a week's dinners. One Monday morning my Mum didn't have any money to give me so I stood in the queue trembling and worried what the School Secretary, Mrs Allen, was going to say. She was a horrible woman, loads of make-up and long red painted fingernails that looked like talons. When I got to her desk she shouted and made an example of me. I nearly wet myself, I was so frightened of her.

At Carlton-le-Willows we had mince every Monday and every Monday afternoon I got a headache, so severe that I was usually sick when I got home and then couldn't do my homework. Even now, 50 years on, I expect to get a headache whenever I have mince! Like everyone else, I couldn't stomach Tapioca either!

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At Gedling All Hallows infant school, we used to have Tapioca with a spoon of jam in the middle. I hated it, so one day I sat and stirred my jam into the pud, (whilst waiting for everyone to finish eating) until it was a dish full of a greyish pink stone cold milky Tapioca.

At the end of lunch time when the teacher saw what I had done, she stood and made me eat the lot. It made me so ill that I can't bear to look at Tapioca to this day. I certainly learnt the hard way not to waste food!

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Never stayed school dinners, just hated the thought, used to cycle back home from Gedling school up to Mapperley every day, mum was always trying to get me to stay dinners but I never did.

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Thanks for posting all of these, a really enjoyable read, still chuckling !

From memory the only drink available was water in a metal jug?

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It certainly was just water Smiffy. Now it's in plastic jugs as the metal ones were aluminium and that is probably why we are all batty slywink

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School dinners were compulsory at Brincliffe - we weren`t allowed to bring sandwiches either.They weren`t too bad - but you had to eat it all even if you didn`t like it. After dinner we used to be crocodiled down to the Arboretum for after-dinner play and some wicked gels used to go up to the Chinese bell gardens for a fag. (Allegedly)

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  • 3 weeks later...

We all had school dinners. They were good value at 2/6d per week. It meant Mum only had to do a cooked meal for herself and Dad, and he went home at lunchtime and had his then.

I wasn't fond of the mash as it always seemed to have lumps in it. I loved the stew, which was so thick you could stand your spoon up in it, and it came with a triangle of fried bread.

Favourite puddings were caramel tart, semolina with a blob of jam in it, tapioca (until someone told me it was frogspawn, then I just couldn't eat it) and fruit salad with cream that was made out of powdered milk.

In high school, if you were getting the meals for your table, you always had to check the back of your spoon before eating your pudding. While you were away from the table someone would dip the back in the water jug then sprinkle it with salt! If you forgot to check, your second mouthful of pudding was awful.

We were served wholesome balanced meals. From what I've seen on the telly, they seem to be dishing up junk food these days.

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I can't remember school dinners too well, only the caramel tart sticks in my memory. (Thorntons do a very good one).

Player school had a breakfast club? as well but I never tried it.

I was at the senior school for about a year and during this time we used to go to the shops on Chingford Road where there was a chip shop and a grocers next door. The grocer used to sell us bread 'batches' cut in half, we would go into the chip shop hollow out the bread into baskets provided by the chippie and fill the case with chips. Glorious!

I then moved to People's College and can't remember school dinners there either. We used to take sandwiches and eat them in the Castle grounds or the Arboretum, later on we sometimes went without and went to the lunchtime sessions at the Locarno.

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I was a recipient of the Player School breakfast club dave5491, to a hungry kid on a freezing cold morning it was a godsend until the local education committee decided to stop funding it, poverty really was poverty in them days.

Caramel Tart, arr yes !

Sometimes if we had money we also visited that chippy & had the half batch filled with chips, great !

This chip shop treat was funded by nicking empty pop bottles from the beer-off next door & returning them for the 3d deposit. Until he cottoned on to our little enterprise !

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  • 6 months later...

Caramel tart was everyone's favourite. Loved the sponge puds and thick custard, tapioca, (frogspawn) rice pud and semolina with a blob of jam. Still love milk puddings.

Semolina was crap. So, mix the blob of jam into it and it becomes pink crap.

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I remember at Arno Vale primary, when all the kids were mixing their jam into their rice pudding, we were admonished by Mrs Lockwood, a scary teacher, who said that we should take a spoon of rice pudding and add a little bit of jam. Still enjoy fine dining to this day!

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Apart from fish every Friday, dinners were ok at HPGS, and if you timed it right you could get one for free. I used to pride myself on being able to sweet talk the head dinner lady - Mrs Edis? - into giving me seconds of pudding. After dinner, grab any unlocked bike from the bike sheds and down to watch the trains on Arnold Road.

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Had school dinners in the early sixties, 5 bob a week, only because it was too far to get home and back during lunch time.

One thing that sticks in my mind, and throat, was the cabbage. I don't know what they did to it but it was always bright fluorescent lime green. Like no other cabbage I had seen up to then and until now 50 years later.

As older students sometimes we had to endure sitting on the headmasters table, he would have been at home at a trough, speaking with his mouth full and spitting it over the food of those unfortunate enough to be within spitting distance. Being prefects we pulled rank and positioned the sproggs we didn't like within range.

In our final year and no longer having to wear uniforms lunch was occasionally at a local pub where no questions of age arose.

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