Teachers

Miss Champness, Deputy headmistress of our co-ed Grammar school, would walk along the corridor and if she thought a girl's skirt was too short would tell the girl to kneel. If the hem of the skirt touched the floor it was considered an appropriate length, if not, trouble ensued. Similarly, hair had to be tied back and fingernails inspected. I drove her mad because I was really good at English and really, really bad at maths. She couldn't understand how a bright 'gel' like me could be so dense at a subject that she considered easy. One time in a maths lesson she actually stamped her foot in frustration with me, I was mortified.

Our Latin teacher was a tiny lady who was an absolute battleaxe and I only studied the subject for 2 years but boy! I do remember my declensions and it certainly helped when I began to study law and even today I can have a go at deciphering simple memorials. I had 2 English teachers, both male, who gave me a love of Gerard Manley Hopkins and Chaucer. Maths? Science? I won't go down that route. Let me just say I think I must have been the bane of my teachers' lives I was so dim in those 2 subjects. But hey! I married a scientist so what the heck

Your Latin teachers name wasn't Miss Burt, was it?

My 1st infant teacher was very old --She must have been at least in her mid thirties !!!! Anyway I met her again unexpectedly when she was 91 , and she remembered me , also my brothers and my friends . !! She asked after all of them , now what has been puzzling me since is why did I stick in her mind ??.was I particularly good or bad , I hope the former .

Miss Wright our History/drama teacher she was the most fantastic teacher. She would start the lesson then go off on a tanget, she smoked like a trooper and drank really strong coffee, she must have been late sixtys, History lessons were the best.

She obviously didnt teach English as you can see above, I can not spell

Our English used to stand with her back to the stove - with her skirt hitched up!

No, Elegran, it was Miss Tottle! That's a name not easy to forget with a pudding basin haircut to boot. I'm sure she was very nice really, out of the classroom

I think my Miss Burt was a survivor of the spinster generation after the Great War, when a lot of women had to forge their own careers without men. There were a lot of those indomitable ladies in teaching in those days (fifties)