When I was eighteen I went to Poland for six weeks. It was a great turning point in my life, as up till then I had been very shy, very nervous, lacking in confidence and with very few independent skills. I was clever and well read, but that was about it. I left school after […]Read Post ›
Maja is my one of my oldest and best friends. I have known her since September 1965 when she started going to my school. I knew her father before then, as he worked with my mum, and her brother, Tom, and I knew of her- but had never met her until she started at my […]Read Post ›
George Sand has always been a very romantic figure in my imagination. Ever since I was at my boarding school in Ealing, when Mother Mary Dominic swore me to secrecy not to let the other nuns know that I knew, she divulged that Chopin’s lover, that very wicked woman, had actually been a pupil at […]Read Post ›
Reading List Suitable literature for young ladies 1964 – 1971 Form III Mrs Nurse: 39 Steps; The Tempest Lower IV Miss Crowfoot: Great Expectations; Twelfth Night; Hornblower Upper IV M M Francis: The Rape of the Lock; Northanger Abbey Lower V […]Read Post ›
for AG September 1964: the first Wednesday of the school term. I was just about getting used to the dreariness of life in St Augustine’s. I hadn’t been there a week when I realised that every day was going to be the same after all the day girls had gone home. Tea (more on that […]Read Post ›
For KK How I wish there had been such a – or any – dating site when I was young. Telephones were securely tied to land lines – and how I used to pray that someone would ring my number – Knightsbridge 2009 – and whisk me off to a sublime evening of dinner and […]Read Post ›
There is no justification! If ever a teacher had a catchphrase then this was it. You couldn’t make a mistake – there was no justification! as Mademoiselle Louise Vartoukian had carefully taught you how to avoid it. I have never come across anyone so thorough, before or since. I sometimes feel I could reproduce […]Read Post ›
For T When I was at the convent we had these very ancient nuns who had not seen the outside world since before the First World War. One of them, Mother Mary Austen, was particularly ancient and not terribly attractive physically. We were very unkind and spent a lot of time laughing at her, especially […]Read Post ›
Life Through Basia's Eyes 