School Day Lunches and our Buchan's Pottery bowls

For a long period in my earlier school years I came home at lunchtime-it was only a five minute jog. Certainly I can recall Iain coming home with me too, but I've fewer memories whether we ever came home by the time Anne had gone to Hunters Tryst. 

Going home at lunch time broke up the day and meant one was less likely to get into any bother. A distinct memory was of watching the One O’clock Show-an entertainment show.

(Photo from The Museum of Edinburgh)

As described in yesterday's blog my mother had prepared lunch-we enjoyed a small bowl of a meat and veg which varied depending on the day of the week. It might be tripe, onions and potatoes; mince and potatoes; stew (or Irish stew) and potatoes; or stovies. We each had our own Buchan’s  Pottery bowl which had been decorated by our nana (Grandma Jo) who worked as a designer at the old factory in Portobello. 

We ate the meal standing up in the kitchen off the small work surface. We never had a pudding. On one memorable occasion we had to have our lunch from Molly Swanson next door and absolutely loved a chocolate custard that she served up with sliced bananas-it was such a novelty, chocolate custard, who would have thought it (I guess all it was, was custard with some Rowntrees Cocoa added in) but the memory of that little twist has remained clearly with me. 

There were some long periods of us having school lunches-either paid for when ‘the old boy’ was working or the infamous blue ticket which was handed out to those pupils who came from poorer families. Blue tickets were a badge of shame-something which took the Education Authorities years to do away with.

School lunches were of a mixed quality. The likes of mince and potatoes might be passable, whilst macaroni would make one feel sick. Puddings were most certainly preferable to soups-often it was a seasonal thing. Jam filled slabs of pastry or even an apple slice served with custard were very popular. As I got older and realised that I didn’t have to spend my lunch money on school lunches gave me the freedom to visit the shops at Oxgangs Broadway where I’d buy three Paris buns and a bottle of Kool-a Pop for the grand total of one shilling and sixpence-when I’d consumed the last drop I returned the empty bottle for three old pence which was spent on sports mixtures or fruit salad chews.

The Oxgangs Diet

I'm thinking of promoting the Oxgangs Diet-the ultimate answer to those seeking to lose weight. Fifty years on it’s only just dawned on me how relatively sparsely we ate, but probably relatively healthily.

When we were quite young, each day and each week hardly varied, unless with the season-breakfast was corn flakes, sugar and milk (hot milk in winter) served up with a mug of sweet tea (from a pre-school age)-sometimes we varied the cereal with a slice of toast; my children didn’t have tea until they were well into secondary school! 

Lunch was either school lunches (free if my father was out of work) or a visit home where we were served up, in a small Buchan’s Pottery bowl, stovies or stew and potatoes (sometimes Irish stew), or mince and potatoes or tripe. 

At tea-time, this time on a small Buchan’s Pottery plate, we enjoyed a slice of toast with Stork margarine and a small helping of either scrambled eggs, tinned Heinz spaghetti or beans, all washed down with a single mug of sweet tea. 

Out-with these meals there were no extras or nibbles-in later years a treat was a small cheap two shillings pack of custard creams bought at the Store (St Cuthbert's Cooperative, Oxgangs Road North) on a late Friday afternoon and finished before evening came. I suspect the average calories consumed each day could only have been around 1200 to 1500 absolute maximum.

I was an energetic kid and it didn't seem to hold me back. Each of us (Anne, Iain and I) could be described as being slightly below average in height-I was 1.78 (5'10") until I lost my hair a few years back and old age crept up on me-however compared to my two young sons who are six feet and six feet one, the boys regularly remind me I’m the smallest male in the household.

The only tweaks to this were on a Sunday when we visited our grandparents at Durham Road, Portobello-much more of this in a later blog; also for periods of time my father's mother, known to us as Nana Hoffmann visited us on a Wednesday afternoon and brought fish along. Also from her work as a housekeeper or at a school there would be a coffee cake which we hated and biscuits, which out-with the Empire biscuit were inedible too.

I'm unsure what other families served up-Mrs Hanlon served up a treat for her four boys Michael, Boo-Boo, Colin and Alan of treacle pieces-if I were in the vicinity she very kindly gave me a piece too, but I could never manage to eat it and used to slip it down the chute when no-one was looking!

Chute provided  on each landing for rubbish to descend to large wheeled bin (Peter Hoffmann)