Page 85 - Through a glass brightly
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us and being told in assembly to wear deodorant. I remember seeing the press flashlights in the building above us as she looked out as we played netball on the tennis courts.
Teachers
I loved English and drama (or speech training as it was called) - Miss Iliff was my all time favourite teacher along with the wonderful Miss Mayer for history.
Art, particularly extra art on Wednesday afternoons was another favourite. Mrs Zabel said she loved my work, unfortunately an opinion not shared by the O level examiners!
I certainly didn’t appreciate how good our school was but in retrospect so much has been useful - I use Latin every week in church and singing with our local choral society.
Miss Rhodes - she taught me domestic science but I think she fancied teaching science itself, not very successfully.
Miss Girling - she was very young but strict. One parents’ evening she was wearing a blue pinafore dress and my father thought she was a member of the 6th form! I was pleased to speak to her in French at one of our reunions and to tell her what her lessons had meant to me - I met Malcolm at the Barnet College Anglo French club, we had a house in France for 14 years and I now help to run our U3a French conversation group.
I actually quite liked going swimming at QE despite the icy water, though I think the canteen overlooked the pool so we were conscious of the boys watching us. I also remember you had to report to Miss Bryan if you had your period and were excused swimming. She kept a record otherwise some girls would have claimed to have their period every week.
Outings - we had a good trip to Canterbury with Miss Mayer and also a trip to the Old Vic to see Romeo and Juliet with a young Judy Dench as Juliet.
My birthday is August 29th so I was one of the younger girls in our year. I stayed on for the first year 6th before doing a very good secretarial course at Barnet College - I didn’t want to go to Miss Gunnery’s secretarial 6th where I felt you were treated as second class citizens. My year in the lower 6th was the best of my school life and I enjoyed lots of reading, studying art and architecture with Mrs Zabel and I produced a play with the first year girls. It was great being in Tudor House away from the main school and Christine North and I used to get to school early in winter to make toast over the gas fire. I even got to sign the distinguished work book.
From Pat at 11.34
Just for passing interest - I found these in my 1988 album for the w/e 14/15 May.
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