I’m in Valencia at the moment, having been whisked here by husband to try and forget about my impending cataract removal and to celebrate our 45th wedding anniversary. It’s been a great time for celebrations – I was seventy 3 weeks ago and had the most fabulous surprises, dinners, parties etc. it’s nice getting old, most of the time.

Anyway, here we are in Spain – we came here on honeymoon in 1979 – and a lot has changed. For the better I think. At least now we are in a hotel where the shower isn’t in the middle of the room, just hidden by curtains!

So, what do we do? We walk. We go for drinks and to restaurants.

We peer into shop windows.

And then we saw this object. It’s for sale. I don’t need it. I don’t really want it. But it brought back loads of memories. When I started at St Augustine’s Priory, Academy for Young Ladies, in 1964, there were 22 boarders. Weekly boarders. We lived at the top of the school, looked after by the nuns who lived on the other side of the black door. I was eleven, and very shy, and they put me in a room with a girl from Hong Kong who was 17. We had nothing in common initially though she warmed up a bit when I asked her to teach me some Cantonese. I can still remember some of it. Fanny Chow. She lived in Park Hill. I wonder where she is now?

But I digress. The boarders were not really made to feel welcome. The youngest was about six, the oldest were 17. The rules were the same for all of us.

It was lonely and scary at first. We were not allowed any contact with our families. No phone calls, ever. We were allowed to write and receive letters but they were all read by the nuns first. It was like being a novice nun. The convent was an enclosed order which meant the nuns, though intelligent and very clever, most of them, had no contact with the outside world. And they didn’t see why we should either. They still spoke to strangers through a grille when I first arrived. But they did have a phone. In the grille room. And it was identical to the one in the picture.

I did use it once. I think my mum had to go to hospital and they let me speak to her when she came out. I had to learn how to use it. I had to stand on a chair in order to reach the mouthpiece!

I was in the school for seven years. They changed the phone only after I left. When I became a teacher there I once found myself alone in the school office. The phone rang. I answered it. A male voice began reciting a long list of obscenities. It was horrific. But I was pleased it was me who had answered the phone and not one of the nuns, poor innocents. Or so I thought. M

M Francis came out at that moment. What’s the matter, dear? I didn’t really know what to say. Oh never mind, dear, she guessed. We get those calls all the time. We just put the phone down. At least it’s during the day. It’s when it happens in the middle of the night that we get a bit annoyed!

Always good to be positive!