School dinners…

They’ve been in the news this week as a local museum has opened an exhibition devoted to jogging our memories of the food we were served at school from the 1940’s onward. My earliest memory is from junior school days when one of our three classrooms was hurriedly converted every day, so the vast metal containers could be unloaded onto trestle tables and served by the dinner ladies. That school didn’t have a kitchen so everything we needed was delivered in time for lunch. As a prefect I was given the honour of carrying all the waste (pig-swill) to the farm next door so nothing was wasted. A dubious honour… Later in secondary school we sat at tables of eight and had “family service” which meant collecting trays of food to be served to us by the senior pupil on our table. Whilst I don’t remember much about the food, tapioca (always called “bubble cars”) was a favourite. I loved milky puddings although the addition of “Jack’s Island” ruined it for me. Never keen on jam I used to eat around the puddle of red in the centre of my dish. Nobody could convince me to stir it in and turn my pudding pink!. Most of the food was edible and seemed home made, but the introduction of convenience items like turkey twizzlers really brought the standard down and Jamie Oliver worked hard to improve children’s diets. Our hunter/gatherer never stayed for school lunch so his only experience is of joining our family for lunch at school in Lexington where it was served on a divided plastic tray and was generally eaten without cutlery. I wonder what your memories are of school dinners?