Figure 1.-- We see David off to his first day of school in 1954. Presumably this is the first day of pre-school. He would have been 5 years old here. He is wearing a junior sailor suit with dark elasticized short pants, ankle socks, and sandals. Button-on shorts were more common in the 1940s, but elasticized shorts for younger boys became common in the 1950s. The cone he is carrying looks rather German. German children received a cone full of goodies on their first day of school. We have not noted this before in England. We are not sure how common that was in England. Nor do we know what he has in his left hand.

We see David off to his first day of school in 1954. Presumably this is the first day of pre-school. He would have been 5 years old here. He is wearing a junior sailor suit with dark elasticized short pants, ankle socks, and sandals. Button-on shorts were more common in the 1940s, but elasticized shorts for younger boys became common in the 1950s. The cone he is carrying looks rather German. German children received a cone full of goodies on their first day of school. We have not noted this before in England. We are not sure how common that was in England. Nor do we know what he has in his left hand. Here he looks to be in front of a house rather than an apartment building. Perhaps the family moved from the apartment. A British reader writes, "I wonder if he was a German diplomat's child and attended a school for diplomatic children? It would account for the first day at school cone. I never experienced this or saw other children from state schools having a going-to school present. Sailor suits and bow ties suggest he attended a fee paying school. Such clothes are not my experience of the way a boy would have been dressed to attend a state school. Of course one of the parents could have been German, maybe mum and father was English." We would say that his parents were not German, largely because of all the English birthday cards. A war-bride mother is aossibility. He would be about the right age for it. I don;t think the clothing suggests a private school. I don't see any of the standard school uniform items worn at these schools. Of course, many private schools did not insist on school uniform for the pre-school classes..