Chindit gave me food for thought

ACCORDING to a recent statistic, approximately 2.5 million children are currently eligible for free school meals in England, which represents over a quarter of all pupils.

- Ken Rogers

I was in a class of 40 when I went to an inner city Liverpool primary in a very different era, being the mid-1950s.

I must admit, I was no lover of school dinners in those days, free or otherwise. Nothing was cooked on the premises.

Hot meals in that post WW2 era were mostly prepared offsite in a central kitchen and delivered in large insulated steel containers called 'dixies' which had nothing to do with Everton's legend of 60 goals.

When it got to around 11.30am, the strong smell of boiled potatoes, cabbage and carrots - the basics of a typical school stew or casserole - would begin to waft their way up four flights of stairs and into our classroom from the basement dinner hall.

I would turn my nose up at the thought of it, urging my mother to let me come home for lunch.

I well remember our teacher's first task on a Monday morning after he had taken the register.

He would enquire which kids would be requiring a dinner ticket. I might be wrong, but I can't remember too many hands going up.