Trip back in time

I very much enjoyed writing about my schooldays last year, but one of the most gratifying things I've found since is the steady stream of emails from people who've seen my site and enjoyed looking at it: they've been coming through at the rate of about one a fortnight, including four now I think from ex-pupils I actually knew! But an unexpected bonus last week came in the form of an offer of some scans from the 1962 school panoramic photo. I'd always half-remembered that I hadn't got a "full set" of these: this one was missing, and I can't recollect why. Maybe I was absent from school on the day the orders were taken, or maybe having looked at myself on it, I decided I didn't want that particular souvenir! Nonetheless, 49 years later, I was especially glad to take the trip back in time as I posted the pictures on the site, remembering all the once-familiar faces, albeit struggling now to put names to some of them.

I was in Form 3L at the time, at the age of 13. I almost didn't spot myself on it: I seem to have quite an earnest expression for some reason. Maybe it was the thought of the haircut that my mother had obviously told me to get beforehand! Whatever the background to it, I don't suppose for one minute that I was envisaging that I'd be reflecting on the significance of it all some five decades later!