Gladys Purvis, resident of the Old Town, remembers her school days at the Royal Mile Primary School - 1930 - 1937. I was born in the Elsie Inglis Hospital on 3rd November 1925. At that time, I stayed at 8 Dunbar's Close in the Canongate. My mother had a family of 7. I was the second youngest. Before I went to primary school, I went to a nursery in Reid's Close in the Canongate which is now the manse for the Canongate Kirk. Then in 1930, I went to the Royal Mile School. I can remember vaguely that my teacher's name was Miss Wiper. At the school we had to sit at long desks - each person had their own desk. The teacher gave us lessons - counting and the alphabet and all different things like that. I remember when I first went to the school, I wasn't very happy because I didn't want to leave the nursery! There it had been all play! but as time went on, I just loved it. When we got up in the morning, my mother always gave us porridge before we went to school. My 3 sisters and myself all wore gymslips that were navy blue, navy blue knickers, long black stockings and black shoes. That was our dress for the school. The classroom was a very big classroom and it was always a great big roaring fire, which was always lovely and warm. It was a nice classroom, and we always did pictures that went up onto the wall. There wasn't any central heating or electric fires or anything in those days, but always big roaring fires. In every classroom...the janitor was the one (who lit it) and there was always a coal scuttle at the side of the fire, and as the fire was going down, the teacher would put the coal back on the fire to keep it burning high. It really was lovely. In those days we always had a tin box, and in the tin box were our numbers, - also we had another tin box that had our alphabet on bits of paper - yes, bits of paper!....................Starting to write wasn't very easy, but eventually I did get it...we had pencils - ordinary pencils.... and each individual had a small slate. We wrote on the slate with a bit of white chalk, and we always had a cloth to wipe it off. We had reading books, and we always had a piece of paper to put it on the book to help us read which word - bit by bit. When we came out at playtime, we played in the playground and we used to play at rounders.................We always had a playpiece with us which would be a piece of bread with just margerine on it or jam, and that was what we used to have about 10 o'clock. We went home at lunchtime and we always had soup. Every day we always had soup for our lunch and a pudding - rice or semolina or tapioca, whatever my mother had for that day. No tins - home made soup - good scotch broth and also tripe. Tripe that you don't see these days! Now tripe was very very delicious - I mean I even still like it....! We would go back in the afternoon, and maybe one day we would have gym. We would go into the big hall, take off our overdress and just do gym in our navy blue knickers! We used to climb up the climbing frame or just do our exercises, or sometimes we could maybe play netball.......... I really wasn't very interested in the school, but I liked sewing and I liked gym. I didn't really like lessons. In sewing we maybe would make a wee apron...the sewing teacher was right away up at the top in the attic. I remember one day I was late and the sewing teacher said, " Who do you think you are?" I said "Well, I'm Shirley Temple!" The teacher wasn't very happy! And of course in those days if you were bad you always got the strap... ...You got taken out into the front of the class, held your hand out, and it was a strap with 3 thongs!! - Oh, it was terrible...I didn't like it - it made your hand all red. There were boys and girls in the class and the boys did sewing as well. And sometimes we did knitting - we learned to knit by doing wee squares and we would sew the squares all together, and then the teachers would hand them in to Queensberry house which was the old people's home just next door......... We had art - again I wasn't very good - I was good at drawing a house or maybe drawing a cat...........We always got singing. There was a music teacher there, but there again I wouldn't say I was excellent at singing.......... It was still the same bell as it is now - even the school is the same - I don't see many changes in it...but there was a swimming pool underneath the school where the arches are in the playground. We used to go down there once a week - each class got a turn. At the end of the school day we went home and we had our dinner - our tea at night. After school, If it was a nice summer evening, we'd go over to the school and there were two teachers who used to come at night to the school and we played rounders. In the winter, we'd go the Brownies, or another night go to Carruber's Close Mission. We used to sing all the different hymns in the Mission.