Guardian Angels: Between Then and Now
My memory begins somewhere. For me, it was behind these brick walls where I arrived unable to read and left knowing who I might become.
JUNE 2025: The metal fence surrounding Guardian Angels RC Primary seems unnecessarily tall from this vantage point. It's a Saturday afternoon, overcast, the Lancashire sky hanging low and heavy with the promise of rain. The school sits empty, windows reflecting nothing but clouds, playground deserted save for a few discarded leaves spinning lazy circles in the breeze.
I hadn't planned this visit. My camera hangs from my neck more by habit than intention, but I find myself here, framing shots through the gaps in the fence. There's something strangely appropriate about this barrier between me and my earliest educational home. The distance feels both physical and temporal, forty-four years condensed into the few inches between lens and metal.
I feel oddly numb. The emotions I expected, nostalgia, perhaps, or that peculiar ache that accompanies returning to places that once loomed so large, remain stubbornly out of reach. Instead, I stand here trying to reconcile the vast importance this building once held with its current, diminished reality. How can something be simultaneously so significant and so small?
The playground seems impossibly compact. Did we really fit here, all of us with our endless energy and noise? I try to summon the feeling of those first days, that tearful four-year-old version of myself clutching at my mother's hand, unable to read a single word, terrified of this vast institutional world. The contrast with the eleven-year-old who left - confident, articulate, armed with knowledge - feels like comparing two entirely different people, connected only by the most tenuous thread of identity.
A gust brings with it the smell of dusty tarmac and freshly cut grass. The memory hits with force, that distinct combination of floor polish, chalk dust, and the plastic-and-paper scent of new exercise books that always accompanied the start of term. I can almost detect the institutional aroma of school dinners that would permeate every corner of the building by midday, and the peculiar smell of the cloakroom where damp coats would steam gently on hooks through winter months.
Daily rhythms return to me now – the 12 noon hooter from the neighbuoring Coates' Elton Cop Dying Plant that signalled the imminent lunch bell, sending a ripple of anticipation through every classroom. Morning assemblies with prayers, all of us in our charcoal grey shirts and navy ties with thin gold stripes, kneeling on the hard floor. Music and Movement sessions with the big radio wheeled in, Mrs. Slattery instructing us to "stretch up like trees" and then "curl into tiny balls," our young bodies learning discipline through play. The caretakers who maintained our world – first Mr. Davies, then Mr. Campbell with his terrifying "old man mask" that he delighted in using to frighten the younger children.
Most vivid of all is the memory of Mr. Storrie, our headmaster, with his grey/black buzzcut and that temple that would visibly pulse when his patience wore thin. I can see him now in assembly, regaling us with tales of Edmund Hillary conquering Everest or Douglas Bader overcoming impossible odds, stories meant to inspire but that also carried clear warnings about the consequences of weakness or failure. The green tracksuit he wore for PE remains emblazoned in my memory – all of us jogging in a disciplined line around this very playground, following his precise tempo, not daring to fall out of step. We all knew about the strap in his office, its mere existence a deterrent that kept most of us in line. His was an authority that belonged to a different era, one of unquestioned respect and clear boundaries.
The church next door was as much a part of our school experience as the classrooms themselves. As an altar boy, I served under Canon Chew, Father Devany, and Father Dillworth, learning the rhythms of the liturgical year. The unofficial payment system – 50p for a funeral, £1 for a wedding – felt like serious income at that age. The St Joseph's Penny collection boxes would appear each Lent, our small contributions supposedly helping children less fortunate than ourselves. I remember the jumabulance fundraisers too, the charity events breaking up the routine of ordinary school days.
The names of teachers surface in my mind, each one associated with a distinct chapter of development: Mrs Ward in those earliest, uncertain days; Mrs Slattery with her seemingly boundless patience; Mrs Malone who first convinced me I might actually be good at something; Mrs Whitaker whose approach provided a framework for everything that followed; Mrs Monk who pushed me harder than I thought possible; Mrs McGrail who prepared me for what lay beyond these walls; and Mr McLennon in his grey tracksuit on the playing field, whistle perpetually hanging from his neck, instructing us in the mysterious rituals of competitive sport.
Certain classroom moments remain vivid, Mrs. Monk reading "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" and "Charlotte's Web" aloud, the entire class held in rare, attentive silence. The triumph of winning the school general knowledge quiz, with Billy Livesley and Kevin Conduit surreptitiously trying to help me with whispered answers. Kevin's "Simon" electronic game that seemed impossibly futuristic, and the Rubik's cube craze that swept through the playground, some of us spending weeks trying to solve the colorful puzzle that adults found equally baffling.
They couldn't have known, these adults, the precise impact they were having. How could they? To them, I was just one child among thousands who had passed through these doors. Yet I stand here, forty-four years later, still shaped by the foundations they laid. The ability to express myself, to analyse, to question, all these things that define my adult identity can be traced back to these classrooms, these teachers, these formative years.
Standing at the fence, names surface, a class register echoing across decades: Ian Alger, Carl Anson, Jason Barrett, Michael Boyd, Nicholas Brett, John Carter, Kevin Conduit, Mark Duggan, Peter Dunne, Damian Edwards, Gary Fishwick, Nicholas Garafalo, Ian Gilmore, Robert Glavas, James Graves, Jody Hay, Michael Heenan, Jeffrey Higham, Nicholas Hill, Edward Keaton, Billy Livesley, Andrew Moore, Mark O'Reilly, Stephen Price, Michael Saxon, Martin Smith, Andrew Walsh, Gary Wilson.
Then the girls: Margaret Bates, Amanda Bezzina, Lisa Broadhurst, Siobhan Costello, Helen Delargy, Tracy Dixon, Charlotte Duxbury, Diane Hilton, Moira Jakeman, Lorna Jones, Vanessa Kelly, Francesca Kelly, Denise Kelly, Andrea Kiely, Ann Marie Leeming, Susan Quigg, Justine Rothwell, Nicola Salmon, Karen Shaw.
John Carter's face lingers longest in my mind. My best mate, my partner in endless games of "Wembley Doubles" on the football pitch, the two of us recreating cup finals with imaginary crowds. Football dominated our breaks and lunchtimes, matches played with tennis balls in the yard, complicated rules developing to accommodate the space. I can still feel the rush of scoring my only goal for the school team, somehow finding the net from an impossible angle, a moment of glory that seemed enormous then. Behind the school, the pitch hosted epic rounders matches, boys versus girls contests that became increasingly competitive as we grew older. That final year was marked by Man City reaching the FA Cup final, only to lose to Tottenham – a heartbreak that felt catastrophic to my eleven-year-old self.
When we left at eleven, our paths diverged, John to Bury Grammar School, me to the expected path to St. Gabriel's. I still think about him sometimes, wonder where life took him after our primary school partnership dissolved. John went on to be headboy in our final year, with Charlotte serving as head girl. I had my moment in the spotlight playing St. Peter in the Easter play 'The Upper Room,' terrified I'd forget my lines under the gaze of parents and teachers.
Outside school, I had my close circle, Ian Gilmore, Eddie Keaton, James Graves, boys I'd play with after the bell rang, extending our school connections into evening adventures. We'd left just before Charles and Diana's royal wedding captured the country's imagination that summer of '81. But I remember vividly the morning after John Lennon's death, all of us lining up in the yard, exchanging what little we knew, trying to understand the sombre mood that had descended on the world.
Helen Delargy too, my deputy when I served as Green House captain, the two of us with our green badges, standing slightly taller during inter-house competitions on Friday morning 'Marks' session, where we counted up house points and the dreaded Black Mark line-ups of shame. The aggregate highest scorer being that week's winner. I remember the day my dad brought his repaired digital watch to school at lunchtime, the red LED display a technological marvel back then, because I was too excited to wait until dinner time. Our horizons expanded through school trips, the day visit to Quarry Bank Mill where we glimpsed industrial history with it's water-powered looms and apprentice cottages, and that magical week in the Lake District when I was ten, many of us away from home for the first time. Some of my clearest memories are of Mrs. Monk directing the school choir, our voices raised in Art Garfunkel's 'Bright Eyes,' the song somehow capturing both the innocence and the underlying melancholy of childhood.
The dinner ladies became unexpected allies in our daily lives – I particularly remember making Mrs. Ward (junior) laugh, finding that adult approval could come from unexpected quarters. These names, once called out daily, now exist in my memory and the old class photographs I don't have. Each represents a complete person with their own journey from that same playground to wherever they are today. Some faces remain crystal clear in my mind; others have blurred with time. I wonder how many of them remember this tearful four-year-old who couldn't read, or if they only recall the confident eleven-year-old who eventually emerged. I wonder how many of them think of Guardian Angels at all, or if I'm alone in this pilgrimage of remembrance.
We learned together how to form letters, how to count, how to raise our hands before speaking. We navigated the complex social hierarchies of the playground, formed alliances that seemed eternal, experienced collective punishments and rewards. We absorbed knowledge in parallel, our young minds developing alongside one another, yet each taking something different from the same lessons. Now we're scattered across decades and distances, connected only by this shared foundation that many may not even consciously acknowledge.
The raindrops begin to fall, landing on the lens of my camera, distorting the image. I feel a sudden, powerful urge to cross this boundary, to place my feet on that playground once more, to touch the brick and breathe the air inside those walls. But unlike my secondary school adventure, there's no convenient tree here, no way to bridge the gap between present and past.
Perhaps that's fitting. Primary school exists in a different category of memory, more foundational, more essential, yet somehow less accessible. The person I was when I entered Guardian Angels barely exists in my conscious memory. I know him only through stories told by others and a handful of photographs. The person who left, however, contains recognisable elements of the adult I would become. Somewhere within these walls, that transformation occurred, from the child in tears, unable to decipher the most basic words, to one who had discovered the power of language and learning.
I take a few final photographs, knowing they'll capture only the physical structure, not the invisible architecture of influence that radiates. As I turn to leave, I find myself whispering an unexpected "thank you", not to the building itself, but to what it represents: the beginning of understanding who I might become.
The rain falls harder now as I walk away, but I don't hurry. There's something appropriate about the weather, about leaving this place as I first entered it all those years ago, slightly damp, emotionally complex, and moving toward an uncertain future that will be shaped, in ways I cannot yet comprehend, by what happened within those walls.
