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| Caroline now |
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| Caroline aged about eight outside her house |
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| Caroline aged sixteen |
I
remember my time at Talbot Heath with nostalgia, and I’m surprised by my
memories of all sorts of trivial things, rather than the actual lessons.
Do
you remember the school uniforms that changed from winter to those awful pink
dresses for summer, the indoor and outdoor shoes, and the hats/berets and
panamas. It was a nightmare getting all the correct gear from Beales department
store in the Square. The school monitors had to check that the length of our
skirts were no higher than 2 inches above the knee. Our hair should not touch
our collar, be tied up in bunches or backcombed into beehives.
In
fact it all seemed to be ruled and regulated. No running in the corridors on
those wonderful parquet floors and single file only, even if it was only two
people. I remember the endless practice of filing into the lily-pond quadrangle
by class number for the school birthday and speech day, and we had to wear those
little white gloves.
We
even had to file into the canteen for lunch. There were long tables with 8
people per side and a 6th former at each end to divvy up the big
meat pies into 18 identical squares. I really disliked the stodgy food, though
my worst fear was getting the skin on the custard.
There
were good times; playing in the woods in breaktime, making dens with pine
branches and avoiding those huge red-ant nests that erupted with fury if
disturbed. And there bad times; waiting in the corridor outside Dr Mac’s room
for the green light to come on.
I
do remember some of the teachers. I loved Miss Wilson’s art lessons in the
studio in the playground and how she used to drive her old Morris Minor right
up to the door, whilst most of us were lucky just to have bicycles. And our
first male teacher, was it Mr Ghey?
The
worst ever lessons were domestic science with Mrs Stalleybrass, who made us
embroider our own white aprons with our names. I may never be able to look at a
blancmange again. Whereas Miss Henderson’s geography lessons were a delight and
she used to bring in slides of her holidays abroad at the end of term.
I
was useless at sport, and hated the scratchy Aertex shirts as well. Miss Michie
(built like a cannon wearing grey divided shorts) used to despair of me,
whereas Miss Vernon-Browne was more sanguine and accepted that some people
couldn’t get the hang of thwacking people across the ankles with a hockey
stick.
Actually
I was useless at music as well. More or less on the first day in the music room
at the top of the southwest tower, our class were asked to sing along while
Miss Lord, or was it Miss Redfearn, played the piano. There was this terrible
discordant voice in the class and embarrassingly, it turned out to be me. Even
two years of trying to conquer the intricacies of the descant recorder didn’t
seem to help, so I gave up gratefully.
I
failed French several times and even tried German, but languages didn’t seem to
be my forte. However science held me spellbound. Biology, chemistry and physics
lessons were great fun, despite those blue crossover overalls we had to wear in
the lab.
I
loved science so much I went on to study it at London University. Then I got a
job working in Medical Research at the Cyclotron Unit in the physics department
at Hammersmith Hospital. The cyclotron is like an X-ray machine on steroids and
was used to treat people with in-operable cancer.
After
a wonderful 10 years, I decided on a complete change of career and became an
inspector of nuclear-energy submarines and power-stations. This was seriously
non-glamorous work: crawling around in a boiler-suit in semi-darkness with a
torch inspecting the safety of various nuclear establishments, climbing up
chimney stacks to read instruments and squashing down submarine ladders to
inspect the nuclear power plant.
Once
again, I changed career after 12 years for a new challenge and joined the Food
Standards Agency in London. This unit dealt with any food-related emergencies,
to stop contaminated food getting into the foodchain. It was fascinating,
varied, hectic and never boring. From oil-tanker spills, fake labelling on
dodgy vodka, e-coli in milk chocolate, radioactive plum-jam imported from
Chernobyl to donkey-meat in salami.
