Memories Of My Time At Boarding School

I’m flying home for the holidays tomorrow. I can’t go home with greasy hair. Mummy and Daddy will be so disappointed if I don’t look nice.

It’s the last day of term and we are standing by the tall windows in Kennedy looking out over the school drive. We’re all waiting to be...

There is a wooden shelving unit on the wall outside Matron’s room with pigeonholes in alphabetical order for our post.

All our dorms are named after authors, poets, painters and composers. I know that now. This term I am in Gainsborough.

Jerry picks me up on a Friday after school in his Porche. It's fast and sporty and it's thrilling sitting in the snug leather passenger seat

Santella is a really smart restaurant and it’s going to be just me and Ba and Jerry.

Life at boarding school really is so humdrum. It’s the same old same old, every day. We only leave the grounds to go into town if we are...

Miss Havard and Miss Ruddock’s apartments are directly opposite the door to Kennedy, the biggest dorm in the school. The one most new...

Once or twice a term we have a special treat on a Sunday afternoon. The large projector is wheeled into the hall and we all watch a film...

It’s parents’ evening tonight and as usual Mummy and Daddy aren’t coming.

It’s the end of term and Daddy has come to pick me and Audrey up. This is a very rare occasion and I’m so happy. My parents are never...

Audrey’s leaves Oakdene. She’s at Westonbirt in the Cotswolds now. It’s a much posher school than Oakdene.

There’s a Sanatorium block at school. It’s at the very end of the long corridor past the Upper Fourth classrooms, well away from the dorms.

I can’t believe it, I’m in cottage this term! With Fran and Nicky and Tina and … Michelle Webb, again.

I want to be a lawyer. Maybe an international lawyer, so that I can use my languages to do something that sounds interesting and law sounds

It’s the first day of the lower sixth. Here we are, back at school, but we are a very reduced group of girls.

Day one. I’m on a diet, again. And I am really depressed. I feel sad all the time. I hate this.

We have just arrived at Stowe and our chaperones are ushering us onto the gravel driveway in front of the imposing steps of the school.