JEFF Williams is right about schoolchildren needing a nutritious midday meal (Postbag, 18 Sep).

But I just wonder how good those provided at state schools in the 1950s really were.

Boys at King Edward VI Grammar School, Totnes, Devon, had a walk up Fore Street in all weathers and into the Royal Antediluvian Order of Buffalo hall for their school dinners. Heads of various deer and stags looked down on rows of tables where the food eaten was just about passable.

The servery consisted of a line of bain maries filled with meat and vegetables beneath lamps that that had been keeping the food hot since who knows when.

Along with tasteless greens were bullet hard peas.

In fact the woman doling out the vegetables had a shrill war cry of a voice: “Cabbage! Carrots! Peas!” that got mimicked every day.

The meats were less memorable.

The puddings, stodge of one sort or another, covered in glutinous custard.

Still, we survived, to pass a smattering of GCE O Levels and A Levels, not that we obtained the dozen A stars that children on little more than packed lunches manage to achieve today.

Ironically, at the time my parents were running a 10-bedroom country holiday guest house, so I had both ends of the food spectrum every school day.

ERIC HAYMAN,

Bradpole Road, Bournemouth