Page 66 - Through a glass brightly

Your story about Spike Milligan is interesting, Ann. Wasn’t it you, Val (Goatman) who lived next door to Hank Marvin? Also, you met Cliff Richard through your Dad, who worked at Pinewood Studios. I was very impressed by this claim to fame then; nowadays I am more interested in the fact that I think Kingsley Amis and Elizabeth Jane Howard lived in one of the houses in Hadley Green: the same row as Mag (Peart’s?). One of EJH’s novels , before she became better known for the ‘ Cazalet’ series , was called ‘Getting it Right’. It’s set at least partly in Barnet and mentions the Meadway etc.
From Val M at 13.11
nd
(Replying to Ann’s of 2 .) Oh dear, back then we just assumed the mice were sold as pets, but
we alone would have swamped the Barnet market for mice, so I bet that is exactly what happened to the poor little things! I’m not sure that the Barnet pet shop sold snakes, but my daughter suggested the pet shop grew them on and sold them when they were adults, rather like pigs being fattened. Oh dear, what a thought and after all that work buying oats up the High Street and climbing up and down the ladder to feed them - and the ghastly cleaning out! I never did take to having pets and my reluctant participation in our family forays into rabbits and gerbils are something I remember with deep gloom.
Maggie, you asked about Anne Newcombe. She came back to school to visit several times I saw in the diary, but by the sixth form she had stopped coming and so once we left school we lost her. Didn’t you keep up with her for a while, you told me? We had an address and a married name for Barbara Walton in the early days but she never responded to reunion invitations. Carrie Watling was in touch some years ago and she and Ann Wills arranged to come to the lunch but never turned up. I have an email address for her, correct in 2006, if you would like to try it. My experience is that people are only too happy to be contacted out of the blue, especially right now and the older we get. It’s cdross@btinternet.com. She lives in Hampshire. I have an address, should you want.
And Janet, you asked about our original numbers and who we lost and gained from IIIF. I used to be able to recite the register - how naff is that, but it’s an automatic memory and you can’t erase them, well I thought you couldn’t but I thought we were 32 and can only get to 31.
I shouldn’t be doing this at all, I should be planting out the tomato plants my daughter managed to get this morning, but every time I look at my computer there’s another message I can’t really wait to respond to and I’m getting behind. Of the 32 who started, Terry Fitzgerald and Diane Plowman stayed down and Lindy Summers, I think - correct me if I’m wrong anyone - stayed down after the LIVs. Pauline Duffy came in the LIVs I think. Anne Newcombe left after the LVs? Someone called Susan Green came according to my diary and went again? Diane Plowman came back to the lunch a few years ago and was really lovely to talk to, but didn’t stay in touch with OGs. We don’t know of anyone who has died from our form, happily. Though as someone said Ann Draper and Susan Sheers have died from the year. But then we have no idea at all what happened to Hazel Clark or Mary Clark or Brenda Southgate. And it’s many years since we’ve heard news of Seona or several others. I think I’m right in saying all that - Jenny or someone else may know more.
And Ann, if ever you hear from Jane More again, tell her I don’t think anyone ever made me laugh more than she did. If she stayed behind after school, you knew you were in for a riotous time. Never was anyone better cast as Fabian. Not that Fabian was really that funny...
Miss Rhodes/Mrs Shaw came to a reunion some years ago and was really lovely - and of course didn’t seem so much older than us, which she wasn’t. We invited her to the 2013 lunch which we tried to make a really big one. She couldn’t come but she wrote a lovely email. She was
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