Page 79 - She's One Crazy Lady!

How strange that I was a pupil there for a brief period; that I had been asked to apply for a teaching post in 1976 and here, in April 1994, was their Deputy Head! I was ready, despite it being a wrench to leave Whitefriars.
After a sad, but brilliant, send off
by colleagues, children and parents
I focussed my energies on a new
start. Victoria was different, in that,
it was a multicultural school, having
children from a wide variety of ethnic
backgrounds, with many different
languages spoken. This was not a
barrier, but a welcomed challenge
and I learned so much in the first few
weeks. One thing I will always remember is that when the parents (and even one of the dinner ladies) knew I was single they seemed to take pity on me! I happened to mention I loved stews and casseroles and loved samosas and Indian curries. On a Friday afternoon, at the end of a school week, I was regularly given pots and pots of various meals, enough to feed dozens of people. It was all delicious!! The parents were so generous and so appreciative of their children being well-educated at Victoria.
I was soon made to feel part of yet another wonderful team of teachers and professionals from other areas of education. It was lovely to work inside a building that had so much history; in classrooms that were still very much the same as in Victorian times – classrooms that, I
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