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Having a Carry OnOur Former Pupils have lived through some significant changes, and recall them in letters and e-mails. Like all children, though, they liked to enjoy themselves. "In the summer holidays those of us who lived near the school used the playgrounds as a roller skating rink as it was smoother than the road and nobody told us to stop being pests." (Norman Johnston, 1941-7) "During air raid drill, as we sat in our rows in the cellar wearing gas masks, I recall discovering that if you breathed out too forcefully, the expelled breath escaped through the sides of the mask, making a rude noise. The teacher wasn't having any of this but as she too wore a mask, her orders could not be heard clearly and she became so excited that she too added to the sounds we all made... "I must say I didn't like being at school and there was a time when my brothers and I visited the clinic down in King Street, I think, to be told that we had German Measles and had to stay off school. It was wonderful and we ran along Hilary Crescent then saw our mother in the front of the property. We called to her with the good news of our affliction only to receive a scolding, my mother declaring that she was 'black affronted', which many mothers were in those days..." (David McRobbie, 1941 and later) "The other thing I thought of in regards to your items on what 'kids' get up to, was our 'dare' of trying to go through the railway station on the way home from school. "Those of us who lived in the Alloway St, Kyle St, Smith St, Mill St, etc, area that had to go over the railway bridge that runs from Holmston Road to Burn's Statue Square had a permanent 'dare' for anyone to try and take the 'shortcut' through the station. "It was 'out of bounds' of course, and the trick was to get past the stationmaster's office, which was in the passageway in the entrance from the Holmston Road side, up the stairs, across the bridge, down the stairs and out the other side to 'Smith St'. "Of course the station master had a great view of us coming, being that his office windows looked out on the 'vast area' from Holmston Road down the hill to the station, and knowing the time when school was out, but that was the challenge!, and there were many who were willing to risk it, including myself, I must say, and maybe that's why I became the good runner that I did, because of it. "Oh! to be young again!!!" (Susanne Nixon, now McMillan, 1948-55) Pupils could also enjoy themselves without annoying grown-ups:
"While growing up in Ayr, I wandered wide and freely and found it a place of endless fascination. I often visited Burns Cottage which in those days cost 6d to enter, spent hours at the docks looking at the Irish coal ships, borrowed books from the Carnegie Library, skated on the River Ayr in winter and generally enjoyed myself. I also became a Burns devotee in those days, an interest that has not left me." (David McRobbie, 1941 and later)
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