Some school days were the very best of times, writes Clarke Isaacs.
I set out at age 12 for Arthur Street Primary School, Dunedin, from my home, a two-bedroomed wooden cottage - much inferior to Prime Minister John Key's Christchurch state house - in Canongate, opposite the so-called Gothic house featured in the film Scarfies.
A cottage, but warm and comfortable. I shared a bedroom with Dick, my older brother, later a lecturer at the North of Scotland College of Agriculture, and still living in Aberdeen.
It took me only six or seven minutes to walk to school, where in std 6 (year 8) in 1944, the second-last year of World War 2, I was a prefect, along with Bill Smith, Ivor Mackay, Shirley Glengarry, Shirley Jeffs and Zelma Muirhead.
We had the badges but were a benevolent sixsome who exerted no power whatsoever.
I was not late getting to school, because I was the bell-ringer - in charge of the bell, the stout rope of which hung down at the back of our classroom. Thus it was that I kept careful check on time throughout the day, because it was my responsibility to summon pupils to and discharge them from classes by ringing the bell.
That day I was responsible for another welcome daily chore, leaving class in the morning to empty the capacious mailbox at the foot of the northernmost steps leading up to the school.
The mail picked up, I presented it to the headmaster, Mr Gilling. After carefully perusing all the correspondence, Mr Gilling ensured teachers received their letters promptly, and off I set around the classrooms.
On my visit to the infants' block, I had a precious glimpse of the young statuesque blonde, Miss James, with whom I had fallen in love.
I was a busy lad that day but I worked hard at lessons, which I much enjoyed, and good fortune enabled me to become dux at year's end.
Those welcome school chores did not prevent me from playing fives - not with the hard, small standard ball but rather, a tennis ball.
Monarch of all I surveyed, I earned the strap for being the class clown. Our teacher, Mr Downes, admonished Jack Foster for chewing gum, told him to take it out of his mouth and put it in his pants pocket.
Leaning over my desk, I patted down the gum in Jack's pocket and was rewarded with two or three of the best on my hand - more of a caress, though, than a severe pounding.
Strap or no, I was a very happy boy, aged 12. Though many good days were to follow, that was the best day of my life.
• Clarke Isaacs is an Otago Daily Times columnist and former chief of staff.
Tell us about your best day. Write to odt.features@odt.co.nz. We ask correspondents not to nominate weddings or births; of course they were the best days.
