Woodside memory

You know how it is... the summer has wound back to a chilly March, the sun tempts you to hang out some washing which is then battered in freezing rain but you leave it because it was soaked in seconds and so would you be if you went out and besides you're still feeling poorly and it'd do you no good at all to do that and anyway you can't be bothered. And in the midst of all that you're not swanning about outside taking photos of anything that your pals haven't seen umpteen times before - and a miserable teatime walk along the deserted prom just because of some absurd sense of need isn't going to cut it. And of course there are no jolly French people taking you out of yourself and making you think and speak and laugh and have photos taken ...

So that was today. However, in the sitting-around-feeling-fed-up time I was looking at the thread of comments on one of the Glasgow photos I like to see on Facebook and found one comment from someone who was a pupil in the school I taught in for my very first job and who left after I'd been there two years. I answered his comment - which was about how his old school had become a pub - that I'd taught in that very building and that I'd had my lunch where my desk used to be, and a conversation about teachers he could remember ensued. 

(You can tell I wasn't having an exciting day) ...I remembered that I had a photo of the staff of about that time, and went for a rummage in the music cabinet of which I have purloined two drawers for big photos ... and found the photo I've used for today's blip. I think it was taken in the early part of 1970, because I can see the History PT who looked like the Duke of Edinburgh who moved into the classroom next door to mine when his younger predecessor moved on - and I can see the woman who was my boss, the PT English, who was there as seldom as the rules governing sickness leave allowed and who was forced to retire by the new rules that came in that year, so that she and I shared a tea party at the end of the summer term. I was given a wedding present (which is the standard lamp that still stands beside the harpsichord) and she a retirement presentation, as I cheered, silently. 

I'm in the photo, looking very young and rather odd - was I wearing black eyeliner? - and strangely enough standing in exactly the same position in the photo as I did years later in Dunoon Grammar staff photo. Strangely enough there are many faces to whom I cannot put a name - perhaps I never really got to know them. The school had two discrete buildings as well as an annexe half a mile away where Home Ec. was located, and they all had their own staffrooms, which meant I got to know the ten or so women in "my" staffroom and the men in the corresponding one next door, with whom we used to share fish and chips on a Friday. These two staffrooms had coal fires, lit in the morning by "our" cleaner, Sadie, and we hung our coats in a separate cloakroom in a square tower which had pigeons in the roof. Once a builder opened the hatch ...

Enough reminiscing. I need bed and sleep and not to go shopping too early on the grounds that I'm poorly - I shall take my chances later.