In 1964 I went to state catholic primary school. What a punch in the guts.
You see, I had spent the preceding year, my gap year, at nursery, expressing myself as a tree or a stickleback or a tadpole or a cotton wool cloud in a blue sky. I had busied my emotional development through the medium of finger paints and Bauhaus wooden toys. The last of the innocent naps always followed lunch and then home in time for Stingray or Fireball XL5.

State catholic primary school in 1964 was a workhouse from 1924. My best friends smelled of damp and stale bread. They had holes in their jumpers. I caught nits. They had bruises and black eyes and purple dye painted on them. They were the poorest, fucked around kids you can imagine.

Shut up Maroon, you are becoming tiresome. You’re nearly fifty, so fucking what? Live, you stupid bastard. That famous picture of the Japanese kids at nursery having their nap in Hiroshima is identical to us having ours. Complete blissful innocence. But then our dads weren’t out raping Nanking were they?

I was extracted in 1965 and sent to protestant primary school. It had activity rooms and French language puppets. It had miniaturised sanitary porcelain in the lavatories. Not to mention a roof over the urinals. It was nice to pee without getting rained on in a place which smelled of carbolic soap and not old man’s piss.