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 ›
Not a holiday really. Just a record. Vinyl. Very old. We put it on just now and the memories flooded back. Sitting at home in the purple and yellow living room in Egerton Court putting on record after record and dancing and singing wildly whenever I was on my own. With the limited choice of […]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 JS Missed or mist? When this word was suggested to me two things came in to my mind at once – the mists of time and great misunderstandings. I look back on my time at St Augustine’s with great affection. I arrived in September 1964 thinking it was going to be like Fourth […]Read Post ›
(For GD) Today it is sunny for the first time in ages. But still cold. Very cold. Yet the very word sunshine makes me smile. And the word for smile in Spanish is sonrisa. And sonrisa is like sunrise. The most beautiful time of day. Dawn. Every morning when I get up I watch the […]Read Post ›
