Janet Wooden on duty: ‘When I first started doing this, I was so angry with the cyclists because they had almost run my children over’

SHE has been the friendly face greeting children on the morning school run for nearly 20 years.

But Janet Wooden – one of London’s longest-serving lollipop ladies – says she cannot put off retirement much longer.

Having started in the kitchen at St John’s Highbury Vale Primary School in Blackstock Road, Finsbury Park, in the 1980s, she later donned the red and yellow uniform and began helping pupils across the road in 2005.

“I started working in the school on September 16, 1985, in the kitchen, because my youngest child had just started at the school and I didn’t want to pay for childcare, so I thought, ‘oh, I’ll just work in the same school as them,’” she said.

“I’ve been putting off retiring for many years because I love my children. I don’t get any child that’s not happy to come across my crossing, and I’m really going to miss them. But, I have to go at some stage, and I can’t wait and keep saying ‘oh, I’ll wait for that one to grow up, or that one’ because there’s always going to be a new stream of children every year.”

Ms Wooden, 69, is going to hang up her sign on March 31 – the last day of term before Easter break.

She said: “When you’re on the crossing, you’re part of the wider community – you’re not to just stand there as a faceless thing. You want the children to want to come to school, want to go across the crossing, you want them, if they’re in trouble, to come and tell you about it. We are here to protect the children, that’s the most important thing.”

Ms Wooden worked in the school’s kitchen through the pandemic, which she describes as “eerie,” serving school lunches to the children of key workers.

“It was a good thing for the children to see each other. But, I think the closing of the school during Covid has done an awful lot of damage to some of the younger children … there are a lot of children who now find it very hard to cope going into groups and things,” she added.

Ms Wooden said she has seen Islington through the best and worst of times. “I’ve seen so much change. I’ve seen this community get more diverse, and to me, it doesn’t matter what the colour of your skin is, doesn’t matter what religion you are or what country you come from, if we respect each other, we get on fine.

“I’ve got all races and nations and ages coming across my crossing, and we all get on.”

But has there ever been a golden era as far as Ms Wooden is concerned?

“I’ll be very honest, I loved Mrs Thatcher. She took no nonsense,” said Ms Wooden. “The first woman to rule our country and she took no prisoners. She’d bang their heads together – all of them, whether it was Conservatives, or Labour, or Lib Dems, she’d bang their heads together. All of them that have come after her try to emulate her but they can’t.”

She added: “Her famous words were ‘this lady’s not for turning’ – she wouldn’t do all these U-turns they’re doing now. I don’t usually try to lecture people in politics, because everyone’s got their own ideas of what they are and they believe ‘we are better’ than the other side. And if that’s what they want, fine, because we all need our beliefs in this world. We just have to live and let live.”

Ms Wooden said she has never been one not to stand up for herself.

“When I first started doing this, I was so angry with the cyclists because they had almost run my children over,” she said. “When I was younger, I was a cyclist, I learned to cycle using the Highway Code. You’d cycle as a motorist. I learned the children’s names so I can say ‘morning, whoever’ to them and the cyclists can hear me and know someone is about to cross. I was on the BBC about this and everything.”

She added: “When I first started, the buses thought they could bully me on the road and they wouldn’t stop. But no, no chance, this lady’s not for turning.”