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I only have good memories of attending St Julians Primary School. I loved all of my teachers and was so pleased when Mrs Evans taught my son as she was certainly one of my favourite teachers! I used to love Sports Day on the huge playing fields and always remember wishing the swimming pool was still in use. I was quite shy in school, so was pleased when I was chosen as the May Queen. I got to wear a princess dress, a crown and sit on a big chair whilst watching the pupils dance around the pole with ribbons! Miss Coombs was my year 6 teacher and I remember my favourite topic with her was learning about World War 2 and getting the chance to see a gas mask. I spent play time on the yard and remember the two large walls on each yard! They were used as football goals! I made lots of friends in school and I’m still friends with a lot now! Mr Draisy was the Head Teacher and Mr Drewitt was the Deputy Head Teacher. I was lucky enough never to get in trouble by either! I remember assembly time with Mr Draisy and singing so many songs as well as always finishing with the school prayer.  When my son attended the school, more memories came flooding back especially during school concerts! I was always an angel and I still have the video recording which my son & niece and nephew love to watch!!  I have such good school memories and I’m so glad my son & other children in my family have got to make their own memories at St Julians Primary.

I went on to attend St Julians Comprehensive School and left in 1996 where I then went on to study at Cross-keys College. I then attended University of Wales Institute Cardiff (UWIC) and achieved a HND and Degree in Hospitality & Business Management. During my degree, I worked in America & Dubai on a work placement. My son was born in 2004 and I started working for a large bank. I have been employed at the Banking Group as a Team Manager for 12 years. This year, I have enrolled at Newport College and am in my first year studying Access to Healthcare and Nursing. Once I finish this course, I’m hoping to go to university to study Paediatric Nursing.

I remember good friendships and summers hanging out in a little tree nook at the side of the playing field. I remember getting shouted at by Mrs Coombs for talking in class!

After finishing St. Julian’s Comprehensive, I moved to Oxford to do my BA in English and moved to London to do my MA in Human Rights. Have lived all over, working for NGOs and the UN since then, India, Fiji, Solomon Islands. In 2011 I moved to Australia to do my phd in post conflict human rights in the Solomons Islands. I am now finishing the PhD and teaching Human Rights at the Australian National University.

Having temporarily left Newport in the 1970s and only ever travelling home for family events I had not really kept up to date with the happenings at St Julian’s until December of last year when I attended a Christmas Concert at the school. Walking back through those doors was an unexpectedly emotional experience for me after almost 60 years. So much that was familiar and yet some changes that seemed oddly disconcerting. Entering the hall to find the stage is now on the right hand wall and not the wall in front of you as you walk in was the first of those odd experiences. I was stood there thinking “What HAVE they done to my school!”

Memories are such wonderful things. As I approach my eighth decade I remain certain that my recollections are perfect. Sadly some of my contemporaries are less convinced! But anyway…

One of the first tasks on entering the Juniors was to begin to write in ink. This had to be achieved using school issue wooden pens with a steel nib which you had to dip into the inkwell on the corner of your desk. It is not hard to imagine the mess that all this created. For some reason we were not allowed to have our own fountain pens until after the first year and ball point pens seem to have been regarded as corrupting influences designed to lure young minds along a path of laziness and corruption!

Once we could write we were given the opportunity to enter an essay completion sponsored by Cadbury’s chocolate. We all sat in the hall and watched a film about how chocolate was harvested in far off places and then made in Birmingham. The task was then to write an essay about some aspect of chocolate production with the prize being a seemingly enormous slab of chocolate for the best essay written by a boy and the best written by a girl. You can , of course, guess why I can remember this. I won the bar of chocolate and made myself thoroughly sick eating it.

We had four ‘houses’ named after the patron Saints of the four countries that made up the United Kingdom. I do not recall the house rivalries being used at any other time then on the annual sports day. In my final year I was , for some odd reason, elected as house captain of St David’s. Since my athletic prowess was notoriously bad the outcome that year on sports day was disastrous for my poor house members.

At one point the overcrowding in the Juniors was so bad that our classroom for an entire year was the dining room. For the last lesson every morning we would carry our chairs out into the corridor and be taught the last morning lesson there.

I recall a school trip to London Airport (now Heathrow) to the rooftop of the Queens Building which had recently opened. We were all a bit puzzled as to why we were going to stand on a rooftop for the day. It was much more exciting than that of course – there were rooftop gardens, souvenir shops and cafes as well as great views of the huge aircraft. On the journey back on the train one of the accompanying teachers got us to play a game which involved winning if you pretended to be asleep for longer than anyone else. I can recall a conversation between 2 of the teachers as I pretended sleep saying that whoever invented this game was a genius!

There was, every year, the annual nativity play. Costumes for this production were pretty basic for us boys. Tea towels tied on as head gear and dressing gowns as robes. I recall one year being cast as Joseph and having to wear a thick clump of cotton wool painted black and attached to a piece of elastic as a beard. It itched like mad and was so delicate I was not allowed to wear it during rehearsals leaving my actual moment of glory in the final performance a bit muffled as I tried to talk through two inches of cotton wool.

I remember Mr Tobin the Headmaster, Mr Davies, Mrs Elway, Mrs Christopher. We had a swimming pool outside. I was a dancer in the Sleeping Beauty play.

I have a GNVQ in Hospitality and Catering and I am now working as catering assistant in a primary school in Newport.

I remember playing at break/ lunch time on the grass and in the trees, the smell of the classroom – which was a pleasant smell, the toilet paper was like tracing paper rather than tissue paper, folk band in the staff room was very fun, I used to play the penny whistle and the spoons. I loved the school dinners, turkey dinosaurs, cooked dinner, jam sponge. My favourite was the chocolate crunch and pink custard. I used to help out with reading at the infants. Once a fortnight a few of us were sent down to the infants to help the younger children with their reading. I remember the computer room and we were all very excited when we had a lesson in there. When we used to do PE, we used to do it in pants and vests and run around like lunatics. I enjoyed gymnastics the most.

I went on to attend St. Julian’s comprehensive, stayed on in sixth form and then went to university. I now have a degree in business marketing. I’m hoping to become a teacher’s assistant. I’m currently working in home insurance where I have completed various courses and an apprenticeship in customer services.