19.05.12
Former wages clerk Olive Holland of Ashton-under-Lyne started writing when she retired and now enjoys attending a weekly writers’ group in her home town. Her highly evocative description of school, work and leisure for a Mancunian girl and her family in the 30s and 40s impressed the judges.
The piece ends on a deeply poignant note with the death of the then 15 year old Olive’s brother in November 43. Sam Buckley was just 17 and a half when he died, in training, weeks after signing up for the RAF. He died of inflammation of the muscles. “He begged my parents to let him sign up,” recalls Olive.
We left school at 14 in those days – all except those who were good enough to stay on to do the School Certificate. I went to Heginbottom Modern, not that there was anything particularly modern about it! It was an old fashioned girls’ school, really. It might have been modern in its heyday, but not when I was there.
The school’s parting gift to us was our report book which had followed us all the way through the school since we started at 11. At my junior school I had been bright enough to be third or fourth in the class and my mother would often say: “Our Olive’s a good scholar.” (To her credit she continued to believe this for the rest of her life.
Source: Manchester Evening News