for GD Holidays seem to be a bit of a non-starter these days so we must take our pleasures wherever we can. Little did I know when I set off to Paddington from Cookham fairly early on Monday morning that I would have one of the loveliest days ever. I was going to meet my […]Read Post ›
I am not a natural camper. I can count the number of times I have attempted this activity on the fingers of one hand. (I’m not counting the outrageously luxurious glamming I have enjoyed in Uganda and Tanzania.) just the times I have agreed to sleep in a tent. Or even in a car. The […]Read Post ›
Today was a profoundly sad day, as we celebrated the life of this beautiful, chic and intelligent friend. A life truncated by cancer, too young, too early, too cruelly. I first met Christine when we were both supply teachers at Ealing Green, in 1985.The first thing I noticed about her was her smile and then […]Read Post ›
An ambition fulfilled. Today is the fourth anniversary of Sharon’s death. The last three years there was a lovely memorial mass said for her in Westminster Cathedral – her spiritual and dramatic home. Her funeral there was the biggest production she ever put on, and it was superb. I have written about it before I […]Read Post ›
I miss teaching. I really do. I was talking yesterday to an old friend – the friendship is old, not the friend, about her desire to retire as soon as possible from the profession, and I can quite understand why she wants to. We met about 27 years ago in one of the toughest comprehensives […]Read Post ›
I always wanted to be an English teacher, since I first started school, and I was one of the fortunate people who actually achieved her childhood ambition. As a child I played teacher -schoolchild games with myself over the summer holidays, marking my work, going through pages and pages of workbooks which my mother bought […]Read Post ›
One of my greatest regrets is the demise of the Theatre Museum in Covent Garden. Do you remember it? It was part of the Victoria and Albert Museum and a lovely place to pop into with children or without. Sometimes they would have exhibitions based on current or recent productions – at other times they […]Read Post ›
I was about eight I think when I did my first paid work, not counting selling my grandmother’s cigarettes to her friends when they came e for a gossip for a penny each. That money went into my money box and there it stayed as I had absolutely nothing to spend it on. But when […]Read Post ›
For MO When I was very young my parents went through a very acrimonious divorce, and one outcome was that I was not allowed to go abroad with my mother, or even out of London without my father’s sayso. My mother had a full time job and so found it difficult to look after me […]Read Post ›
So I intend to wallow in it. But this week has been busy too. Two days teaching French at the Guru Nanak School. I surprised myself by how much French I still remember – luckily I still know a bit more than any of the pupils I came across. But two days was enough! A […]Read Post ›
