40 Years On

A packed final day of the International Summit on the Teaching Profession with a number of productive bi-laterals and then. - the icing on the cake - an announcement that Scotland's offer to host a future summit had been accepted and a provisional date of 2018 proposed. That would follow on Canada next year, Germany in 2016 and Hong Kong in 2017.

We finished all the events in the NZ Parliament building around 5.30 and then my mind turned backwards for a little.

Sometime in the late spring of 1974 , in the last term of my last year at Edinburgh University, I had lunch in the basement canteen of the Chambers Street Union ( no longer there) with Amanda Boal, whom I had met in freshers week in 1970. We had similar backgrounds and interests and had become close friends .

Our lunches in the union ( where I had been a student board member ) were regular occurrences but on this occasion she was merely visiting Edinburgh having graduated the previous year and taken up a place at a law school in England.

After that lunch we kept in contact for a year or two by letter ( no email then of course) but eventually we lost touch.

However tonight she and her husband Alan ( who teaches at Victoria University in Wellington) entertained me to dinner at Shed 5 on the attractive Wellington waterfront.

It has been 40 years but the conversation flowed. Thanks to both of them for a great, memorable, last night in New Zealand. We won't leave it another 40 years .