St Augustine’s
Ode to Dominic
D is for Dominie, Scottish for master Also for Dashing – but not for Disaster O is for Order, Overwhelmingly Organised Every plan neatly and beautifully realised M is for Medicine when I’ve got a pain And Merriment and Marley and Music again I is for Eye-catching – you’ve seen all the […]Read Post ›
Tupperware
When I was about eight or nine my beloved aunt Alice was in her twenties. She had just got married and was setting up home, first in Richmond, then in Maidenhead, with her husband Dick and their little mongrel dog, Heidi. I wasn’t sure of Dick, and even less sure of Heidi – a cross […]Read Post ›
First Parents’ Evening
Written in April 2015 So much love So many children with doting parents So many children wanting to please So many teachers eager to show their charges in the best light. So many little princes and princesses anxious, arrogant, afraid of disappointment; spitting images of their parents […]Read Post ›
Fulham Broadway
I am not in Fulham Broadway right now. Nor likely to be for a very long time. But for the last year or so this was the image I saw twice a day every weekday on my way to and from what turned out to be my very last full time job! It wasn’t […]Read Post ›
The Favourite
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Marguerite – a kindred spirit.
For JR Marguerite was the Diana to my Anne of Green Gables – many were the glasses of “raspberry cordial” that we shared, many potatoes peeled and eaten, many world problems discussed and solved, many evenings spent together, many days out, and in; generally, someone I relied on to be there when I needed her […]Read Post ›
Driving
For AAK My father passed his driving test when he was about 45 and immediately bought a car. Of course. An Austin A40: YMD 457 I think was the registration. Then he bought an Austin 1100 and we went to Poland in it. I have written bits about that journey. Six years later I was […]Read Post ›
39 years and counting
“Please will you give me a lift at lunchtime?” I asked my unsuspecting colleague, the only person I half knew well enough who had a car and might be amenable. Bill the geography teacher and I had been doing the crossword together every lunchtime for the last month or so, and occasionally we would go […]Read Post ›
Ubi Sunt
Where have they gone? Why have they disappeared? Ever since I was very small I have loved museums. When I was tiny and my parents were still together, my father would take me out every Saturday morning and we would go shopping first to the North End road, go, to the launderette, watch the boxing […]Read Post ›
Life Through Basia's Eyes 