Page 50 - Through a glass brightly

It’s such a shame that us 75 year olds aren’t going to be able to meet up this year.
I hope that we will make it to 76 and can do it next year.
In the meantime, keep all your fantastic memories coming so we can all survive this lockdown with our sanity!!
From Val M. at 12.32
I shouldn’t have come in from the garden for a drink and then checked my emails - I can’t get anything done as it’s irresistible to reply. The memory recall thing is fascinating and I”m still wondering whatever it is that Cary and I both remember about the classroom visit - and oh that sad story about the games badge - so terrible how these disappointments stay with us all our lives. You can say water under the bridge but I think mine is rather stagnant and I think you still can be affected by things long ago. And I really didn’t think Miss Barber taught in the school when we were in the lower fourths - and I was sure I had never read any of 12th Night before doing it with Miss Barber for Eng. lit. and then performing it. So - very strange. I remember when Miss Barber did come she was a trendy dresser i.e. she wore black stockings - quite outrageous at the time - I always liked her. I remember her telling us in a lower fifths lesson sitting in that classroom we had with a view down over New Barnet, that there was beauty even in the gas works. I laughed as we all did but she made you think and i did wonder if there might be something in it.
Those presents for Charles and Anne - didn’t you contribute to the doll’s knickers in extra needlework, Cary?
I’ll have a look for entertaining stuff about the secret society in the stable loft - Hazel was involved early on - I wonder what happened to her. And the cellars and the exploring after school - what fun... I don’t remember the stuffed birds at all. And I couldn’t decide at the time whether I was relieved or sorry to have missed being caught up the attic by Miss Balaam. I was somewhere in the school having a piano lesson - behind the hall as well? But that really was a narrow escape for you all, it hardly bears thinking about. She was indeed a wonderful head, Miss Balaam. And yes, Pat, I have always been pleasantly surprised that someone so usually well behaved would have joined in such antics.
I laughed and laughed at Mag’s description of playing lacrosse against Miss Iliff - who would have thought it?
And I remember the day of Miss Rotherham’s death and being really upset by it. Cary - didn’t you and I do extra art on wednesday afternoons with her - the only art classes at school I really enjoyed - she wasn’t so proscriptive and she let you talk!
More when I’ve trawled the diaries again.
Tuesday, 28th April
From Glenda at 20.06
Well, hello! This is Scotland calling! The long silence must have led at least some of you to believe that, in Scotland, we have all gone to bed until the crisis is over. Although I wasn’t at school when the Queen visited and I have no idea why I wasn’t involved in “Twelfth Night”. (What was I thinking of? I am besotted with the theatre now!) I have loved reading all your accounts of both. I agree with one of the correspondents that all this should be, at the very least, printed off, bound in some way, and deposited in the school archives. It is, when you think about it, rather remarkable that we are talking about events which took place over 60 years ago - 60 years later! The Queen must’ve been in her 30s, for example. I remember one year visiting the archives in the school library when material from something like 1941 was laid out. There
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