From a Distance

Boiler Suits and Woolly Jumpers - Frensham Heights School   It was a great stroke of family fortune that our mum Betty Richards, was appointed as PE teacher in 1934 at Frensham Heights , near Farnham in Surrey. She was so impressed with this liberal, co-ed and caring school that she resolved to send her own children there. This saved the three girls in the family from attending one of the many small, indifferent single sex boarding schools in Sussex and instead gave us the benefit of an interesting and liberal co-education with lots of emphasis on the creative and performing art s . The downside was that the exam pass rate was appalling. The atmosphere at Frensham was so entirely different from that of my previous school. I started at Frensham in the junior department known as the JD aged ten on a bright, late April day in the summer term 1954.  Mum had barely left the building when I was assigned a guide, Joe Brumwell, fair haired and freckly, who was the younger brother of ...

Starting School Early School Days and Grateful Thanks to Chicken Licken  An energetic and capable pair of women, Miss Millicent Glencross and her life partner, Miss Spence, ran the Gateway School. I started there at in 1948 aged 4½ and travelled with my brother on the 50a bus, which ran along the Sussex coast to Pagham, west of Bognor Regis. For years I was fascinated by the bus’s ultimate destination ‘á Becket’s Ave though had no idea who Becket was with that funny á and what was Ave ? Did it rhyme with Save or with Have ? The Gateway was a traditional, tightly organised prep school where mastery of the basic skills was paramount. The teachers , were kind and caring, the school routine was unvarying. The classes were named after characteristics for us to emulate; the Reception class was called Happiness then we went on to Kindness, Goodness, Unselfishness, Courage, Truth, Loyalty and Perseverance. I can recall the formica-topped table and the tiny chairs and can see the first s...

Memory cells are capricious.   I've forgotten where I left my bike this morning but memories of Sussex by the Sea from seventy years ago are sharply etched in my mind.  Here's a photo of our family on the beach at Middleton-on-Sea in 1954 taking a walk on a hot and glorious summer day.  The sand is warm under our bare feet and there's a lovely saltiness in the air.  We are probably slathered in some shiny cream designed to enhance the tanning properties of the sun - we have no idea how damaging this will be. It's one of the last photos of the four of us together.  My elder sister is already a glamorous young woman who's studying Dance and Drama.  My next sister with the sunhat is in her last year at school and my wiry, sporting brother, holding his camera, is already a seriously talented tennis player.  I am none of these things.