School days

Well not exactly shool days but some parts of school days.
My Americah friend wrote on his blog about school dinners and he couldn't remember if there was a cafeteria or whether anyone was allowe do bring food into school.
In infants from 5 to 9 years of age, juniors from 9 to 13 years of age there were no school dinners available. To be honest none were needed.
As I was sent to a Secondary Modern School. This was an intermediate school. Grammar Schools being the highest for 11+ pass pupils. Mind you, one had to go to the selection board to see if your parents could afford to send you to Grammar School.
Well I went to the Secondary School. It was just short of 2 miles from where I lived to school. Dinner time was from 12.00 noon until 1.15pm. This didn't give me enough time to get home, have my dinner and get back to school. As I have mentioned before, we were poor. I didn't know just how poor we were but suffice to say, my Mother could not afford to pay for me to catch a bus home at dinner time abd it was another 2 years before they could afford to buy me a bicycle, second hand of course.
Anyway my Mother decided to give me a packed dinner. Sandwiches and something sweet for afters. There was another lad who I was pally with also took sandwiches, so we had them each dinner in the nearby park. We were happy with this situation until the Headmaster, yes not Head Teacher found out and ordered both of us to his Study to explain.
The rule was that if you lived 3 miles from the school you qualified for School Dinners, as we lived less than that we informed the Headmaster that we couldn't walk home, have our dinner and get back to school in time. He then told us that arrangements would be made for us to have School Dinners from the following week.
The dinners were subsidised and cost 6d a day 2/6d a week. In todays money 12.5p a week.
I don't know if the Grammar School had their own meals cooked but other schools like mine had the meals cooked in a special place and transported to the school. It was served by Dinner Ladies as we called them. The meals were bought in some sort of insulated containers. To be honest they were always hot and consisted of a basic dinner of potatoes, a vegetable some meat and gravy. The sweet was different for several days. a milk pudding one day. a steamed pudding another day, a pastry pudding another day then perhaps bread and butter pudding as a different sweet. The meals were adequate and wholesome. My Mother though was not so impressed, she insisted that I would have my dinner that had been cooked for me at noon would be warmed up for me at teatime. This went on until I was 13 when I had my bicycle then I could get home for dinner in good time and get back to school.
Incidentally, everyone had the opportunity of having a drink of milk from the first day at school until the day one left. It was 1/3 of a pint. As 5 year olds it seemed an awful lot but as a 14 year old it was nothing. To be honest, there was more than one occasion when one could have a second bottle of milk. These were available at morning break in the Secondary School. I can remember at infants it was given to you in a beaker. I guess we thought it good to down a 1/3 of a pint in a bottle in one go when we were 13 0r 14.
My American friend also spoke of the radio, tomorrow I will talk a little about how it was here in England in the 40s. More soon.