Anyhoo.  Once I’d finally stopped marvelling at how small the world is I started thinking about the school we’d both attended *mumbles* years ago.  It was a small independent preparatory school in the Hampshire market town of Petersfield, and I loved absolutely everything about it.  I was there from the age of 4 or 5 until I went to senior school at 11 and every memory I have captures a sense of contentment and belonging, even the memories that weren’t exactly good.  There are so many things to say about the place I fear I may bore you all to death, but no place I’ve ever visited in my life since has affected me quite like that lovely old school did and it’s such a shame that, while the building still stands, Moreton House School is no more, swallowed up as it was by Churcher’s College in 1993.

This is what the building looks like today on Google streetview, it is the large cream building to the left:

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It has barely changed other than that the front door has been painted a different colour and the sign that was attached to the gates is gone.  If you look closely at the gates you can see the mini door within that the children used to use.  We all loved that little door, and I’m not sure about anyone else but it made me feel a bit like Alice in Wonderland.  Sad, I know.  Beyond the gates was the playground and a hotchpotch of brick and timber clad buildings that served as the classrooms and school hall.  The main building itself wasn’t used for lessons but on the ground floor were the kitchens and dining room, the “library” (which was tiny and was also where we watched episodes of such educational gems as Zig Zag) and the headmaster’s office.  Most of the main building was carpeted in a deep, richly-piled turquoise which sounds horrible but seemed awfully classy to me, especially as it continued up the wide sweeping staircase up to the Wolfe’s living quarters.  If you were VERY lucky sometimes you’d get to go upstairs and see.

Mr Wolfe was the headmaster and we were all afraid of him.  Well, I was, anyway.  I’m not sure why but perhaps it was just because he carried an air of authority, or maybe it was his hawk-like appearance with his beaky nose and gimlet eyes.  He probably didn’t really have a beaky nose or gimlet eyes, but in my memory he does.  He only taught mathematics and that was only to the oldest children in the school so to the smaller children whose only experience of him was in Assembly he was terrifying.  Most terrifying of all, though, was The Corridor that went from the main hall of the main house to Mr Wolfe’s office.  If you were ever naughty the punishment was always a visit to The Corridor.  I lived in fear of it.  For me, the worst thing that could ever, ever happen to me would be to have to stand in The Corridor to Think About What I Have Done.  So perhaps it’s lucky that I was such a goody two-shoes that I never had to, the very idea of the shame of standing in The Corridor was always good enough for me… If only I’d stayed a goody two-shoes!

To be continued…

My childhood is not something I think about very often, not really for any reason other than it is getting further and further  and further away.  I’m almost at the age now where there have been as many years of being an adult as there were of being a child but as I still behave like a five year old most of the time I don’t think I’ll bother letting that get me down.  In fact I’ll make a point of poking my tongue out at my dad later, just for fun.  He’ll like that.

Something happened recently, though, which reminded me of my early school days and made me remember what a happy time that was for me and how much I adored school, at least until I went to secondary school, which I absolutely hated.  It wasn’t terribly exciting, I’d been watching a chat show and Miranda Hart was on it, a comedienne/comedian/comedy actress/whatever you want to want to call her that I rather like.  While talking they showed an old school photo of her and I was surprised because the uniform she was wearing was remarkably similar to mine from my old prep school, Moreton House.  My uniform there was pretty awful, predominately brown: brown pleated skirt, brown jumper, white stiffly collared shirt, brown blazer and the mother of all hideous ties, an orange, brown, green and white diagonally striped affair.  It’s questionable whether or not dressing a child in this uniform wasn’t tantamount to child abuse , quite frankly, so I couldn’t believe there had been two schools in the UK around the same time that would have used it.

Aged 7, looking like a boy

Looking less like a boy...

"Accessorising" to match that beauuuuuuuutiful tie. Nice.

It turned out I was right, a minimum amount of googling revealed that Miranda grew up in the same town as me and attended the same prep school.  Because she doesn’t use her full surname , Hart-Dyke, any more I hadn’t realised who she was, but I remember the Hart-Dykes well because her sister Alice was in my class.  In fact I very vaguely think I remember visiting their house once but that might be a false memory as I’m fairly certain Alice didn’t like me!  I was quite excited by all this and after getting a somewhat lukewarm, unimpressed response from my sons despite the fact they like Miranda too I thought I’d text my mum with “Guess who I went to school with?!” But it turns out she already knew because her response was “Oh, I thought you’d realised.” Cheers for telling me, Mum.  I did try tweeting Miranda herself but given that she has over 80,000 followers I think she either didn’t see it or wasn’t exactly bowled over with excitement by my news. Can’t think why!

To be continued…