The dinner ladies at the Fox Primary School and St. George’s Junior School, Notting Hill Gate, had to be satisfied that we’d made a decent effort to finish our school ‘dinner’. Only then did we get our ‘pudding’. One of our number, who was very smart, expertly squidged all his uneaten meat and veg into a mound of mashed potato on one side of his plate. He came back with his ‘pudding’… very pleased with himself. Following his example, I took my plate up for inspection and was immediately sent back to finish what I’d started: a huge heap of gravy-coloured mash with a variety of spiky vegetable bits protruding at all angles from the lump.
Most of us were streetwise, but not all of us were dinnerwise.
From: Peacocks on the Roof – A London Memoir (work-in-progress)
