About 35 years ago I was teaching in a boys’ school in West London, which was an experience in itself. The school was very rundown and staffed mostly by supply teachers like me, with very few resources. I was working there because it was across the road from where I lived. I had two small […]Read Post ›
or: The asexual reproduction of plants. Miss Power was probably the least well-named teacher we ever had. Beige in dress, including the long bloomers she used to wear under her skirt (we could see whenever she sat at the desk on the dais, legs comfortably, yet still modestly, apart) and somewhat beige in personality. Certainly […]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 ›
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 ›
For everyone who has asked why I’ve not written much this year. A year of such promise. I’ve just been looking back on all the stuff I wrote about so enthusiastically at the beginning of the year. I was so keen to keep a diary of all the exciting things I would be doing on […]Read Post ›
This time last year I finished working in the London Oratory School Library and wrote my last post as a fully-fledged member of the working community. Read all about it, here: https://wp.me/p2Zbqf-BF Yesterday I received the latest copy of their school magazine and it brought back such sweet – and some not so sweet – […]Read Post ›
This is my grandfather as I never knew him. He was born in 1878 and died during the Second World War, a captive in Siberia. His story is a very interesting one, but one which I shall leave for another day. Today I was thinking about him as I was wrapping parcels to send […]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 ›
Babysitting was obviously not going to be a career, so I needed to think again. After the exams I was finally free. Living at home with my mother and stepfather in South Kensington but still needing cash. So I went to work. I joined an agency and was sent out to the Folio Society. Somewhere […]Read Post ›
