Senior Infants

A short sequence in poetry and prose recalling characters from Primary schooldays (before the age of reason) … a poet and his contemporaries, once infants now of senior age, and the different life-styles they were exposed to. The Sally Rod  Heaney bumps into a Primary school class-mate in the street, larger than life, grown senior, jovial, affectionate. A particular memory floods back, exaggerated by time – of physical punishment suffered once upon a winter’s day (a reworked standard fairy-tale opening ‘Once upon a time…’ from  the lost domain of childhood). A primary school teacher Miss Walls, out of control  (lost her head) administering frenzied physical punishment (cut the legs off us) in retribution for no more than a laddish ‘crime’ […]