Takes me back ...

I met my oldest grandchild from school yesterday, the first time I'd seen her in her summer uniform, and suddenly I was transported back to the 1950s, when summer began after the Easter break, no matter when Easter fell; when you wore your school dress with your blazer and a cardi underneath because actually it didn't feel like summer yet. Most of all, however, it was the dress. It is exactly the same as the one I had to wear - the identical blue stripe, the same material, the same bow to tie at the back of the waist. 

And it struck me that (a) uniform rigorously adhered to makes life so simple and uncompetitive and (b) an old-fashioned summer dress is a much more becoming garment for a seven-year-old girl than any of the pinafores and shifts that became de rigeur about the time her dad was a child.