Ralph Mills

On returning from Aden, my parents eventually moved to a semi-detached, newly-built house in Hitchin, Hertfordshire, where my father had a teaching position at a secondary school. I attended Wilsher dacre Primary School.

All I can remember about Wilsher Dacre is that I hated the school dinners. Until my mother complained, I was repeatedly kept behind in the school dining room in front of a congealing mess of cold fatty meat and gooey gravy while my classmates went out to play. I stubbornly refused to eat however, and so began my lifelong dislike (actually nausea at the mere thought of) of the skin on custard, lumpy semolina, fatty meat, rice pudding, prunes, warm milk and various other culinary disasters that were served to us as school dinners. It is no wonder that I eventually took on the vegan lifestyle!

It was in Hitchin that I first became aware of, and fascinated by museums. I have vague memories of various other exhibits in Hitchin Museum, but a clear mental picture of a penny-farthing bicycle that I think at that time was exhibited hanging on a wall. That this object interested others is shown by a mention in an almost contemporary review in Hitchin Girls' School magazine. The original museum was subsumed within the North Hertfordshire Museum in 2012.

My memories of Hitchen include visiting a science fair at the school at which my father taught, and being fascinated by a bi-coloured cabbage plant, its roots divided between two coloured waters; finding a dead, maggot-infested crow in the little wood near our house on Bedford Road; buying a "Waggon Wheel" on the way home from school (they seemed huge in those days), and visiting the circus.

Last updated 10th January 2022