Crier Profile - Sue Jackson
Sue Jackson has been a teacher at Swaffham Prior school for over twenty years. However, she has memories of places very far from here!
I CAN'T REMEMBER THE EXACT DAY I started teaching at Swaffham Prior - I first went in to help as a mum and I was doing lots of other supply as well, at a school at Lode then, and one at Wicken - both gone now. Then I was taken on one whole day, or two afternoons helping each class. I had been teaching in Sheffield before I moved here in 1983 - Sophie was born just as we moved, so teaching was put on hold for a bit. Gradually I took over from Barbara Brown, who was already my friend. It was quite a culture shock, moving from the city to the country - I thought what am I going to do? I felt really lonely and isolated to begin with so I found out about NWR - the National Women's Register. It's an organisation for women to get together and not talk about the kids! You made up your own calendar, so we talked about books, and went on visits - I think it still exists, but this branch may have phased out. But a group of us stayed together for ages, and still bump into each other. I was really pleased with that because it expanded my horizons. I was so surprised how insular it was in a little village. I'd say to people, do you come from round here? And they'd say, no, no - I come from Bulbeck! (Laughs) In Sheffield people would talk to you at bus stops. Here I found if you walked along the road and there was one person walking towards you, you both ended up looking aside as you passed! - Every village used to have its own bonfire night, even the school had its own - and when I moved, I thought Quy and all these villages to Reach - I expect they get together for everything but no, each village worked in isolation. I found this really hard to take on board because in the city you are used to travelling ten, twelve miles across to go to night classes or whatever - the distance didn't seem anything to me.
We moved down because work had been drying up for Dave - he worked in the building industry - travelling from Sheffield to Manchester for a long while, and we'd moved to Greece for a year too, in the hope that building would pick up in Sheffield, but no. We'd visited Cambridge and it seemed like a nice city but I wasn't prepared for the culture shock...I said to a friend - a bomb could have gone off in the whole of the rest of the country, and I wouldn't know for a week in Swaffham Prior! The first year I was here I think out of 52 weekends, 40 were either going back to Sheffield or people coming to visit us. They all said, great, Cambridge! It was a way of getting by, at the time. But NWR helped, and I joined the babysitting circle.
I don't go back really now - I've got one very good set of friends who I do keep in touch with. But I don't come from the North - I come from Gloucester. I had a job in the car tax office - when car taxes were local - where we had to get rid of all the obsolete papers. The day was so long we invented various games to try and make the time pass. Like you're not allowed to look at the clock for fifteen minutes - we'd guess after about three and a half minutes. And promotion was opening the letters. And the bakery I worked in was a bit of an eye-opener. Very unhygienic. You weren't allowed to wash when you wanted - you had to wipe your hands on your overalls. I was a bit of a disgrace. I had a cream bag for the big sponge cakes. They had to keep stopping the conveyor belt because I wasn't quick enough. And I had to cut the custard slices - my hand was all blistered from the repetitive action. Then they put me on to peeling potatoes in the canteen and I think I enjoyed that more, really. You need to have done these jobs, to know what goes on. I went to training college in Sheffield, from '67 to '70. It was all girls - I believe it had been a home economics college. I think there were four men allowed in in the last year! One of my first little projects was to go out on the streets of Gloucester - we had to interview people - with a tape recorder and say: I'm going to Sheffield, have you heard of it? What do you think of it? They'd say, oh, poor thing, how awful, or it's all chimneys and smoke, oh dear...so I wasn't looking forward to it! But Sheffield was looking up. We could go to parks. There were loads of parks. It's a big city but it doesn't feel rambling. My dad died when I was at college and we moved to Bristol so I had no particular home in the same way so Sheffield became my home in my heart, I think.
I taught there for two years, and then I met Dave. He worked in London but part of the job was to go out to Indonesia to work on the site of the Hilton Hotel, so I joined him. We were both out there for two years. I taught at the school there. I didn't have a job waiting, I had to find one - but I had to give up the flat I had with my best friend and sell my car - I was really sad! And I followed Dave out...this must have been '74. People didn't travel out there a lot then. I had a huge goodbye with everybody and got to the airport and they'd cancelled the flight for a week and forgotten to inform me, so I had to go back home again...a week later no-one was really interested in saying goodbye, they'd already done it! Communications were poor then - Dave didn't really know what was happening at all - When I did turn up he'd had no idea where I was at all. They just said I'd never got off the plane. Now people would say, why didn't you email? Why didn't you text? But it was really hard then. You had say right, I'm going to make a phone call - and you had to go down to the main exchange in Jakarta and queue for ages. Of course there was very little English spoken then. It was quite something!
I taught any nationality except Indonesian. The school was set up for people who'd gone over there and needed their children teaching. It was in a house and my classroom was the garage. The Business School was a bit like Swaffham Prior's, quite homely, whereas the joint Embassy school was bigger and grander with wonderful equipment!
Sometimes it rained so hard, the children would say, come on teacher, we've got to take off our shoes and socks and lift everything onto the higher shelves. Were they having me on, I thought? But it happens every year. The rain would come in - three or four inches of water on the floor. Especially in the garage. The children just took it in their stride.
It was so hot, we started at eight; we had a break, which wasn't a lunch break, and then at one we'd be driven home, or to the pool...a strange life. I'd thought the "ex-pat" life had died out with India, really, but it was very much like that. You went to The Club...most people were older than us, with families. Very hard to get used to the culture, having servants...but you had to. Every house was massive. You had to have a chauffeur, because it wasn't safe to drive around on your own. Cars were airconditioned there even then - you just stepped from your air-conditioned car to your air-conditioned restaurant...and a guard: every house had huge fences round. It was just the way the ex-pat life had evolved. If you didn't have one, there'd be a stone at your window, and five minutes later they'd come knocking on your door - do you need a guard?
There were minor political issues, but they didn't affect us directly. You might have a house boy or girl and you'd notice they're stealing the jam, or the coffee, and you'd think, what's going on here? But slowly you began to realise that they just saw that we had so much they just thought - well, what is it to them? It's just a tiny, tiny little bit. And what did surprise us as well was that they thought the way we were living there was how we lived in our own countries - nothing like it ! A life of luxury. Totally alien to anything that I've ever known.
I was brought up in a ittle cul-de-sac and we shared our first car with our grandparents. Everyone came round and watched the one telly with us...to go from there to that very luxurious life was quite strange.
The house girl had a tiny room that belonged to the house and I remember one
day she was ill, and her friends came round and they were chanting from the
Koran - really quite scary, as we were saying look, can't we take her to a
doctor? But that was not what they wanted. They were up all night,
chanting...and she looked awful, and we were pacing round...but she pulled
through, and that was an indication of their faith, in a way. They didn't
want our interference, they didn't want the Western way. It very much
opened my eyes. I can see how they would see the West as decadent - it looked
as if we had absolutely everything...and they just had their religion. But it
was said that the ex-pats treated the servants far better than the Indonesians
did - they only gave their servants food....we were paying them and helping
them where possible. The rich Indonesians were really very rich. There was a
huge divide. Lots of beggars, people without limbs. Quite often there were
floods. When you were going into the city and you got stuck, lots of people
would just always appear, hundreds of them and push you out of the floods, and
probably ask for money afterwards...it was partly frightening and partly
absolutely dreamlike. We travelled around a lot - a shame to be over there and
not travel...Bali, hardly any tourists, and the Thousand Islands - just...sea.
And sand. And a hut. And Komodo Dragons, you know, the big lizards, crashing
around in the undergrowth.
Coming home two years later, I really missed the seasons - out there, it's just wet, or it's dry. And it's hot all the time. Indonesian was a funny language - quite simple in many ways. Take a word like A-da: that can mean I've got, you've got, have you got, did you have, will you have, are they? All those things. Bunga was a flower. Flowers were bungabunga. Ruma was a house, sakit was ill, so a hospital was ruma sakit. Whereas learning Greek, the year I was there - that was really quite hard! I went to Greek classes - the only thing I did in Greece on my own - while Dave looked after our two little tots. Dave would phone up with bawling in the background...so sometimes I didn't always make it to the end of the lesson. But the Greeks were very good with children - in a restaurant, they'd say, oh, you have your meal, we'll look after them...stand up on a bus to let them sit down. I did a little bit of private teaching - that was quite lucrative.
In Indonesia, you'd drive though the city and it would be open sewers...kids jumping in and out of the water. But the local lads would have immaculate white suits, and they looked really good. I'm not a very good swimmer, but one of the most amazing experiences I had was when we went off somewhere - the Thousand Islands? and I just put the snorkel mask on and put my head down into the water - and ok, I've lived on this earth, but here was another world, entirely. You see fish on TV, but this was fantastic. One of the best days of my life.
When we went back, Dave was still working in London but he was looking around, we weren't married and I went back home to my poor mum - what was I - 27? 28? I think it was a bit of a shock for her. It was a time when getting teaching jobs were looking not so easy to come by, so I went on a TOPS course...I trained as a secretary. I did law, sociology and economics. Then I got a job for September teaching so I never went back to secretarial work! But what was useful was learning shorthand. This is what kids have to go through Šthese symbols, trying to interpret them and get them in my head...and this is what kids have to do learning to read.
As for my own schooling, you remember the teachers that do something for you personally. I remember one of my maths teachers, Mrs Payne - she would just explain things to you as many times as you liked. When she said put your hand up if you don't understand, she really meant it. If you didn't get it, she'd explain it again another way. I think she really turned me round with maths.
When I first started teaching at Swaffham Prior it was much smaller. There wasn't class two or the library, or the existing staffroom...Where Jo's office is, was the whole of the staffroom and the toilet! There were about eighty pupils. There have always been four classes except when it went up to five once. Teaching has changed a lot ...endless, endless initiatives. The big one was the National Curriculum which came in when I came back, so I was in on that, which was nice. Things go round in cycles...there's a big debate coming round again about phonics.
Mostly school life has been very good. That time we failed the Ofsted, that was very unpleasant and felt very unfair. My big worry when I came from a city school was - well, there aren't going to be many people to talk to: what if you don't get on? But it hasn't been like that. Loads of memorable children. Loads and loads. Lots of fun with the pets. Various rabbits and things. There was Boney - lots of people laugh at his name but the children did vote for it! Whenever he escaped he'd come round my house because I had two female rabbits. And one year we'd been growing some sunflowers, measuring them and watering them - but one of the rabbits escaped and we got him back but I noticed the sunflower stem had an inch gap where it had been nibbled. Shall I tell the children, I thought, or shall I just wait? And another one escaped and mated with a wild one and the children had the babies and then escaped again but this time the babies were really wild...and we've had stick insects and a giant snail. I can't think of anything else I would want to do other than teaching, though. When I was little, I wasn't girly, I didn't play with dolls exactly, but I lined all my dolls and teddies up in a row and when I played teachers I made them little books, and I wrote sums in their books and then I went round and ticked them all - So I guess I was made to be a teacher somehow.
Village life here is lovely, though. It's safe for the kids to play. Popping down to the park. When we moved here there was only one swing, buttercups growing in the grass. I love the skies. The only thing I still really miss is the hills. Cycling's a bonus. And it's a nice easy atmosphere.