Page 63 - Through a glass brightly

The teachers look so young. They were all very dedicated and no one has mentioned Miss Grimsey who lost her fiancé.
Yes, Val M.’s diary is so funny. Fancy the mouse making it home on the bus!! Thank you for sharing it with us.
From Jenny at 10.58
I don't intend to go through point by point but give below a few facts that relate to queries etc raised in this last series of letters. They are not in any particular order and are not necessarily comprehensive.
• Dead - Anne Draper. Janet Hooper? (Val M will know of any others, but if people don't
keep in touch we won't necessarily know of others.)
• Cookery with Miss Rhodes - I remember crumble too and also some mackerel dish I recall.
The cookery aprons - we all made in Needlework with Miss Dixon (who sadly died soon
after teaching us although I don't think they were related!)
• School shoes - yes when Miss Payne arrived she decided that our shoes were ruining our
feet (probably true) and so insisted that one of two 'uniform' shoes must be purchased from the Clarks shop, when our existing shoes needed replacement. Needless to say the Clarks shoes were awful and no self-respecting girl of more than 12 would wear them. I managed to make a pair of shoes from Freeman Hardy and Willis - purchased for 39/11 - last for the whole of the 2 years in the Sixth Form with multiple repairs. I think many of the 'sporty' girls spent most of their time in their 'plimsolls', probably Green Flash!
• People who left our class at the end of Upper V included Mary Clark, Hazel Clark, Janice Kirkpatrick. We lost Terry Fitzgerald much earlier - assume she transferred to another school (learned many years later that she ended up as a midwife somewhere in Australia)
• Janet is correct that Mrs Olga Barber died in a car accident when we were in Upper V - drove into the back of a lorry in fog we were told. It was the 3rd in a series of deaths, following on from Miss Balaam the year before and Miss Rotherham. It must have been a very difficult time for the staff.
• Miss Grimsey - found love in later life. She left QE (after us) to go as the Head of a school south of London (Beckenham way). The Chair of Governors was a widower and they later married and she became step-mother and later step-grandmother to a nice brood. She usually still comes to our Commemoration lunches, sometimes with Miss Harding (Lower V H)
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