Newsletter 2009 - Francis Holland School

ReunionBy Lucy Peck (Macnair)We read a lot about school reunions a few years ago when Friends Reunited and othersuch websites got a huge number of people seeking out long lost friends, but we did it theold-fashioned way. Without the assistance of any website the form that started at FrancisHolland in 1958 (and therefore took O-levels in 1969), has just had its very first reunion,a full fifty years after some of us found ourselves in Kindergarten, that rather lovely roomupstairs in the Morison Wing. We may have been a bit bewildered at first but we soon gotused to it under the tender care of Miss Oldroyd.This, therefore, seemed a good year in which to try to re-unite our form. Mary Butler,with help from a few others, Pamela Tennant especially, has proved that it’s still possibleto find old friends with nothing but a good memory and a telephone, at least if you are asdetermined and resolute as she was. Somehow, with Pam’s help and a few serendipitousconnections, she managed to track down almost all the girls who had been with us atvarious stages of our school careers and cajoled most of us into converging on the PeterJones coffee shop at 11 o’clock on a Tuesday morning in October.It was a strange experience coming up the escalator and suddenly seeing people you lastsaw as teenagers turned into greying middle-aged ladies! We distributed ourselves arounda couple of large tables and tried to justify our presence by buying the odd cup of coffee,but I believe it was more than obvious to others in the café what we were up to. I do not feel,however, that Peter Jones could begrudge us the space – where was it we went to buy allthose school uniforms and sensible shoes all those years ago?A few didn’t make it and we missed seeing Anne Wilkinson, Anna Philipps, CarolBlackett-Ord, Carolyn Warrender, Janie Strachey, Clare Croft and Lynne Aspinall. A fewothers were found but could only send their best wishes from far-flung places: VanessaNewcombe in Exeter, Sue Powell in Lincolnshire, Cathy Lushington in Toronto and FannyAnn Pearl in Houston. Sadly we did not track down Sue Hutton in time to invite her alongand we know there are others that we could not find at all.Nonetheless eighteen of us made it and had a happy few hours catching up. It seemed tome that some of us were instantly recognisable while others had changed quite a lot but Isuspect that we had all changed differently in each other’s eyes. Complete strangers turnedinto old friends as soon as a name was mentioned; somehow the features fell into place – ofcourse we recognised each other! We may, perhaps, be remembered as a form with rathersharp differences in interests and clothing in the senior school, some of us liking bracingfresh air in the class room after break and persisting in wearing socks and enjoying gameslong after others had moved into stockings (stockings!) and pop music, but unsurprisinglythis barrier had vanished.It was difficult to catch up with the details of everyone’s lives - let’s face it, we are nowin our mid-fifties and many of us had not met for at least forty years – but I think we allmanaged to say a few words to everyone. The interesting thing was that so many of us haveended up doing more or less what might have been predicted when we were at school. Thereis a nice assortment of occupations among us: the health-care sector is well represented bydoctors, a nurse, and a physiotherapist. Then there are teachers, a life coach, a lawyer, an