Walking past the place
Posted: 05/10/2025
My second primary school was Banks Avenue School. It was in Dallington, which was a suburb heavily affected by the quakes. As the years passed every day I'd walk from North Avon Road where my old house was to Banks Avenue, and there'd be fewer and fewer houses left standing on River Road as they were gradually demolished. Today the only building left standing is the Montessori school, and River Road itself is quite different; 8 year-old me would scarcely recognise it. Not least because they replaced the munted footbridge with a fancy new arch one.
As for the school... life was complicated there. I remember that there was this upper echelon of students who were granted the right to use their own computers and were placed in higher reading and writing classes, and for some reason me and my friend Josh (where is he now?) were always half-in, half-out of this group - given certain privileges but not others - but the teachers would never fully admit us into it for some reason. I also remember the numerous lockdowns we used to have, and the time my dog Aussie (stepfather was not imaginative with his names) managed to find his way to Banks Ave and wait for me by the chestnut tree where we'd dig for chestnuts while our parents came to pick us up. That incident involved a student being bitten, however... and Aussie had to go.
Banks Avenue School was demolished about COVID time I believe, but they kept the sign for the school up then. I noticed that day that even that was gone now, and the only way you'd ever know a school existed there was all the scraggly art done on the perimeter fence showing the names of the classes. The new Banks Avenue School is now just up the road at North Parade at much more modern premises, but its relocation won't stop me from feeling weirdly removed from my past.
Those are only some of the "lead-laced" adolescent memories I refer to... others however I have grown to accept recently. Not everything has to be dropped to the bottom of the lake and left to drown. One hopes.