Saturday, 26 August 2017

#52Stories, Week 24, What are your memories of school lunch ? Did you bring it home or eat at school ? How did the food and your experiences change from school to school ?

Sandwiches.

White bread with marmite and cheese, or just jam, wrapped in greaseproof paper, a teeny pack of Cinderella raisins and cordial in a drink bottle. Sometimes a biscuit or some fruit, even a tomato with a little bit of salt twisted in paper. In the winter, maybe a thermos with some soup.

I think mostly I ate what I took to school. I don’t remember swapping with other kids, ‘though I think we did often compare what we had. Anything uneaten was chucked in the rubbish at school – or taken home to throw in the compost.

It was all pretty much the same all through school, though sometimes there were gourmet sandwich fillings: vegemite, lettuce and chopped walnuts and the like.

Some days we’d be allowed to order a school lunch – usually a pie and a doughnut – nothing fancy or particularly nutritional.

At college the theme continued, but often using my “own” money I would buy lunch on the way to school. Some kiwifruit from the little fruit shop at the station – gone now like the Terminus milk bar where the boys mostly congregated waiting for their buses across town. Four kiwifruit for “sikitty cent” from the elderly asian lady who ran the shop.

Other times a sandwich and a cake from the bakery on the corner of Molesworth Street and Sydney St East (now Kate Sheppard Place), or a filled roll and a can of Apple and Orange Fresh Up from that cafĂ© on the corner of Aiken Street and Mulgrave Street about where Subway is now. What was that place called ?? (was it Subway too ? I’m sure it started with “S”. We went almost every day for a hot chocolate on our way from the station to school – and to put on our ties before we got too close and were caught out not wearing correct uniform.

In 7th form when we were allowed to leave the school grounds during the day (not like now when everyone just escapes into the CBD at lunchtime) sometimes we’d go and get fish and chips from Molesworth Street.



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