ACS Revisited

Recently, an old friend found me on Facebook, and brought fragments of those schoolboy days back to me, fragments which I had thought were lost forever. N made me try to recall more of those days, the salad days, and this is what I've come up with:

The look of the old school on Coleman Street (blue, cream and grey); The building is still there, right round the corner from the Victorian firestation.

Waiting for Mommy to pick me up at the school gates on the curb, in her first car, a cream fiat with red leather seats.

Right round the bend steep steps climbed to Fort Canning Park, the grassy slopes used to be full of grasshoppers.

Fort Canning crumbling in the sun, enormous wooden gates (was it haunted?).

Below, the cemetery (yes, of course it's still there!).

Squatting by the little drains around the quadrangle and brushing teeth after recess.

The free milk scheme, the free milk, the milk coupons, then later ordering strawberry Magnolia milk that came in glass bottles.

The dark, large, musty classroom to the left of the entrance which had a shelf full of plaster casts of Roman busts. Why were they there? Are they still there? What were they for?

The tuckshop, with the Indian rojak store selling the most orange-coloured peanut gravy ever. Closing my eyes, I can still smell it, I recall just what it looked like on a plastic plate.

And then there was the store that sold this brown 'curry', eaten with soft, cubed, white bread. The drinks stall right at the end where there was always a scrum.

Buying new school bag, new stationery, pencil case and parcels of Colleen colour pencils at the start of every new school term.

My late grandma making my canvas shoes white by applying this white paste which turned chalky.

The chinese classes becoming more and more challenging, untill I gave up altogether.

There was an upper and lower quadrangle, and the lower one led to a book store selling textbooks and Christian tracts.

And was there, or wasn't there, a birdcage just outside the dank, dark tuckshop toilet?

Playing truant at the Peninsula Shopping Centre, browsing at MPH on Stamford Road, The musty National Library.

Those were the days, indeed.