An amazing few days.
Friends I haven't seen for years have come and stayed at The Sanctuary. There was a remarkably good level of connection given the time span and the fact that we have inevitably taken very different paths in terms of the out-working of our lives.
I remember a gifted young girl who was an able musician (some things don't change). Popular - with a wide circle of friends. I attended the same school as her for a few years and it was amongst the unhappiest period of my life. The school just didn't work for me and it became an emotional endurence test.
I remember attending a reunion years later - walking into the hall - meeting a couple of teachers - and needing to leave. The whole experience got under my skin and made me deeply uncomfortable.
These days I think a Reunion would make me smile, but then I desperately wanted to believe the whole ghastly experience of being at the school had been somehow worthwhile - and I realised instead how angry I was to be back in the building and amongst teachers who sounded just as patronising as they had when I was 11!
My recollection was that this sense of our school days was not an experience shared by my friend - who I think gained a great deal from the diversity of the other youngsters we encountered and from many of the teaching staff - not least the music department.
Having an old school friend around has made me reconsider why I hated that particular school so much. Ironically, when I moved schools for the sixth form I loved my new school and have the happiest memories of school friends and an incredibly gifted teaching staff.
I think in reality I was an awkward customer. Articulate and insightful with an off the wall sense of humour. I can remember is that I was devastatingly bored at school. Somehow I was left under stimulated with the exception of English and to some degree - Art. I had an extraordinarily gifted English teacher called Rosemary Smith - who went on to become the Headmistress of a Girls Public Day School Trust Independent School in Wimbledon. She had a passion for language and literature but was also a very anecdotal teacher. She taught the set I was in - The Grotties - for four years and over that time we learnt all about her family and her life outside school. Some of the more extrovert members of the set became very adept at setting Mrs Smith off on a family reminiscence as this was often much more entertaining than ploughing our way through the poetry anthology set for our O'Level Literature examination. However, Mrs Smith taught me the importance of learning by rote - and I can still recite some of the poems and quotations from texts we studied. She taught me to become a confident creative writer - to believe I had something to say. I don't think she ever particularly 'approved' of the content or style of my stories - but she rewarded a wide vocabularly - and eventually agreed that the two girls in the class with quite a passion for writing and reading could sit together. I sat with Pauline New Year for a while. Pauline introduced me to black soul - still a love; Jazz; and the writings of James Baldwin - an author I return again and again to down the years. We'd meet at Tooting Library sometimes. I have maintained a passionate respect for black American authors ever since and cannot resist test driving anything that catches my eye.
My art teacher was Mrs Owen and she was Scottish, gifted and mildly eccentric. She taught us nothing formally and I failed O'Level Art - but she let us experiment. I learnt to be fearless in artistic terms and to see my efforts as work in process.
My old school friend's visit brought back memories of school which were good to revisit; to test if old wounds have healed in terms of memories of school days - which they seem to have - not even a twinge. Now I don't feel angry - just sad. I suspect a number of girls at the school did not realise their full potential.
I discovered how different life could be for me when I went to a new school and grew in confidence and my sense of self. The school my friend and I attended wasn't intrinsically bad - it was perhaps a little dated in it's approaches and expectations - and retrospectively I can see with the eyes of a teacher myself that there were many of the staff who were not gifted at inspiring young people. In our examination years many staff were at a low ebb as the school prepared for amalgamation and to become a comprehensive. The days of selective education in London were over and many of them did not have the skills to teach a truly mixed ability intake.
For all my negativity about the quality of the education I received between 11-16, I recognise that there were some seeds sown at that time which have shaped the whole of my adult life. Amongst them are friendships experienced and enjoyed during this most formative of times.
As a consequence it was tremendous to have the opportunity to spend time with someone who had been an important part of that formation. I met this week the woman that the young girl had become. I wish we had had more time - just to natter and mull - but we both had families with us and things to do and be - but it was good to reflect and to check out and learn about the now in each of our lives. I am sure we will do this again.
Funny too the tricks my memory had played and the way I could challenge my own assumptions made all those years ago when we met and made friends as 11 year olds. I always thought I was so thick and unskilled as a youngster. I believed I was clumsy and without any noteworthy gifts, whilst my friend was a rising star as a musician and the life and soul of the party (or at least our social set of kids who didn't really fit in the more conventional groupings). It's been fun growing up - and loving that young girl inside me who thought she did not belong and had no real ability into life. Encouraging her towards laughter and sitting light on the many things that cannot be changed but must be owned for healing to take place. Life is about being me becoming me and you becoming you; enjoying being what we are; becoming content in our own thoughts, feelings and skin.
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