The Traveller children come to Jah’s school c. 1984

 Shortly after the beginning of the Spring term, a very important announcement was made at Jah’s school. He was impressed by what the class had been told and as he told us all the news, his eyes were open wide, befitting the great Importance, as he saw it. A group of Travellers were going to attend the school. Two were going to be in his class. Jah and his friends took very seriously the fact that they were not to use the term “Gypsies”. We parents were instructed on the correct terminology. They told us that the children should always be described as Travellers.

In retrospect, I do not know whether the children were told that the visitors came from a long-standing tradition. I do not know whether they were told that these particular Travellers came from Ireland, but I think they were told not to comment rudely on their clothes. They were certainly informed in a respectful manner and all the children were well briefed to treat the newcomers well.

There was quite a build-up to the arrival of the Traveller children and Jah set off full of enthusiasm and curiosity on their scheduled first morning. Unfortunately, however their first day was postponed. Apparently two teenage girls from the community had gone missing and the police were involved in trying to find them. This added to the strangeness of the situation and the waiting school population decided that this dramatic turn of events added enormously to the whole scenario.

Eventually the Traveller children did start coming to school. They particularly liked painting sessions, but the teachers had to remove their big pieces of paper quickly; otherwise the children simply re-started by painting another picture on top of the original.

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

We parents did not hear anything officially from the school about how the Travellers’ children settled. It was Jah and his friends who told us about the painting class scenario. School may have seemed a strange place to the newcomers. In the end, they did not stay many weeks, before moving on.

As a family, we were able to watch the Travellers. They lived near our house on a piece of land above a railway tunnel entrance. They broke down a wall to access the space. I do not know whether the top of the tunnel was fenced off. It looked quite a dangerous place, but the children must have been warned of the danger and there were no dreadful accidents.

Many years later, in the late 1990s, we met some other Irish Traveller children in a small park in Camden town. They were very loving and interesting children. They had extremely broad Irish accents. We used to go with our baby granddaughter into a small park and the Travellers lived next to the park. The big girls were very kind to the baby. They were very keen to talk to us and I enjoyed hearing them talk about their travels and catching glimpses of their life.

Katharine Quarmby, a ‘writing’ friend of mine has written a book about her experience of Travellers. She has made many friends in that community. I can thoroughly recommend her book. It was published in 2013.

No Place to Call Home: Inside the Real Lives of Gypsies and Travellers

1 Aug 2013

by Katharine Quarmby

Kindle Edition        £8.54

There is another thing that I can remember vividly about Jah’s first year at the London school . . . see next post.