Kneller Girls

Life has been busy, it follows that blogging takes a back seat so a brief account of events last Saturday (2nd November) will serve a record.

Way back in August had a phone call from Hazel, a classmate who now resides in Bondi announcing she was coming to England again so would I arrange a gathering of Kneller Girls on her first Saturday here. It wasn't till I saw announcements of Rugby International dates that I realised that it would not be possible to meet up in the local pub as we did last time so dear Ian suggested we host a gathering here.

It is not the actual holding of an event that is wearisome, it is the correspondence, contacting people beforehand and awaiting responses. It has to be said that emailing has helped, it seems to encourage prompt replies. I have attempted to track down long lost members of our class, each reunion has seen new faces. This resulted in a girl, who whilst she couldn't attend, sent a list of the names of our form when we were equivalent of Year 9, along with photos. 

I'm not putting photos or names here from our gatherings, but we spent time attempting to identify the teachers in this picture, taken about 1960 - 61.

All went well on Saturday, we had plenty of food for I had taken an easy option and asked a local catering firm, Hampton Hampers to provide a buffet lunch. Really pleased I did, took all the worry and stress away for although we do have enough, even china plates, cutlery and napkins were included. 

Photographed before we removed the cling film, have used some of the cheese that wasn't eaten to make a quiche today. I think we may have slightly over ordered but I hope no one left hungry. 

Although I think I enjoyed the day, have said I won't organise again, but will ensure contact details are sent to everyone, certainly I don't want to lose touch, others have said the same. Must get on with updating address list, I am surprised how lacking I am in energy after this. Maybe because we don't entertain it was harder; we are so unused to having people, even family to stay, also I worry that it will be a disaster, or no one will come. Daft I know!

Reminiscing

Was looking back at my diary for 50 years ago when the calendar lined up with this year, well from 1st March as 1962 wasn't a leap year. Easy to remember a leap year, it is the last year of a US president's four year term of office.

A few other differences, 1962 half term was a week earlier than this year, we had just three days break, spent on a geography field study in Surrey. Holmbury St Mary youth hostel was my first experience of youth hostelling, I noted we sat on the scarp slope of Box Hill to eat lunch on the first day. Delights of the second day included drinking cider at the Stephen Langton pub in Friday Street, we're talking fifth years here so aged 15 or 16 with one teacher.

We were cut off from news, so we returned home to hear about the Cuban crisis although nothing is recorded about this in my diary, cannot decide whether I wasn't interested or it didn't impact on my world.

Looking at the entry for Tuesday 6th November, I record meals, bacon and egg for breakfast; school, the Headmistress said the hockey team was no good - didn't work as a team. She was right, we had a match that afternoon to which we travelled by bus, lost 4 - 0 and "home in Miss H*'s car. Lessons that day included French "went on with verbs"; Scripture "finished yesterday's work & started transformation" [Yesterday's Scripture work was about events at Caesarea Philippi] and in Geography started SW Peninsula. "As usual a good lesson". No idea why I wrote that, nor any indication as to what a good lesson was. 

Back to my Blog of today and Day 18 of Knitting Purchased wool for another pair of socks, just £6.00, Stylecraft Aviemore 4ply superwash 75% wool and 25% nylon in the local garden centre after lunch with ladies from the church. The wool, pink and grey random dyes comes in one 100g ball so will be unable to knit both socks simultaneously so careful row counting will be needed. First have to finish the pair I have on the needles. So stopping here to dash away with the smoothing iron and will knit this evening.