Page 143 - Through a glass brightly

she had lived etc, etc and when OG replied ‘Sherrards Way’ I said, ‘Oh, I used to walk to school with Pat Wyness from your year’. A confused withering look came over her face and a finger pointed at her name tag - ‘I AM, Pat Wyness’!!! Oh dear, and on only one glass of sherry!
If you can bear it I do have Barnet family history to relate. It having been handed down by word of mouth generation to generation since great granddad much of it I need to précis and endeavour to verify it’s validity from elderly aunts, so will get in touch again soon. I have really enjoyed reading everyone’s emails. Thank you. Keep well and smiling.
From Val at 21.36
I can’t resist joining in the memories of lessons, but find that I surprisingly remember very little of actual lesson content. I can’t even remember Miss Gunnery’s tears - how could one forget that? - was I asleep? reading a book under the desk? - more likely. I remember the teachers though very vividly. How interesting that everyone remembers Miss Girling - not an outgoing personality as I remember, but, I agree, an excellent teacher - she really drummed it into us - do you remember how we had to chant the sounds of French vowels, with her specifying exactly the shape of our mouths as we said the sounds. It stood me in really good stead when I went on with French. I loved Miss Hillier too - so gentle, so considerate - and she was good at drumming in our A level French texts, like Corneille’s Horace, surely the most boring play ever written. And Miss Reffin - also kind and gentle, but we couldn’t really understand her accent and a deputation of us went to beg Miss Hillier to read our aural comprehension exam when we heard that Miss Reffin was going to do it. I loved the Modern Languages club parties, where we ate chocolate and dry ‘Vienna rolls’ aka French bread - I thought it very strange at first but hey ho it was chocolate... And sang French - and German - carols and other songs and played games in French. Someone must have worked very hard at all that - we did have devoted staff. And lovely Miss Ferguson who taught German and Miss Slaymaker who came as a student to teach German and later came back to work - statuesque and Norwegian and rather beautiful...
Most of my funny memories are connected to Miss Eatock, apparently a brilliant scientist but not best suited, as I have said before, to teaching the reluctant General Scientists who would much rather have been living it up with Mrs Traynor who sounded such fun and let you cut things up.... Like Judy, I still have a vivid memory of her passing the electric current around, and even better, how about the skeleton in the cupboard? We must have done a bit of biology too and she suddenly opened a long thin cupboard to reveal an entire skeleton, hanging peacefully there leering at us. We were struck dumb with surprise, until she started to move the bones around as she explained them and teeth started to fall out of the jaw and clatter to the bottom of the cupboard! It was so funny - I particularly remember Mag Peart being totally corpsed and we all had a severe attack of giggles. What made it funnier was that Miss E simply didn’t see the joke. I remember in quiet moments in lessons in the General Science lab a few of us would run drip competitions - who could make the longest drip on the taps over the sinks along the benches.
I remember so called Hygiene lessons with Miss Bryan and thinking that she seemed embarrassed, but more likely the embarrassment was all mine - she must have done it so often. And oh Miss Iliff’s English lessons when we first arrived in the school, like getting into a warm bath. I loved her reading to us - do you remember Alison Uttley’s ‘A Country Child’? Which reminds me that my reading habits were revolutionised when I discovered the Middle School Library and could finally stop reading Enid Blyton and get into all the historical fiction there. Did anyone else love that library? That make up demonstration was a bit of an extraordinary thing to choose for us all to experience - as if full make up was an essential part of growing up whereas none of our teachers wore it. The girl who was made up was Ann Jones from a different
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