The day dawned bright and breezy with fitful flashes of sun. I had breakfast and decided to spend some of the morning working on my planning for next week's lessons. John was spending his time betwixt the greenhouse and the garden. Having completed these tasks, I tidied away and heated up the 'leftovers' from the previous evening's dinner, for lunch. This had been a special meal shared with my son, Paul, and his wife, Helen, whose birthday would be next week. I had a stab at making a first-ever Middle Eastern meal, the star of which had been a large dish of tabbouleh, crammed full of fresh parsley! John and I finished this off alongside the residue from a rice dish, and some experimental chick pea and bean salad.
We spent the afternoon, which was quite hot and sunny, although still breezy, in the garden, generally weeding and tidying up before we go on our holiday to Devon next week. The flower seeds we had sprinkled some three weeks before had enjoyed the most supreme growing conditions, i.e. loads of rain and some warm sunshine, and yet they appeared to have been utterly and completely choked by a multitude of poppy seedlings which had sprung up from out of nowhere! The radical and systematic elimination of these evasive outsiders took an unprecedented amount of time, at the end of which a few, very few, straggly blue flax seedlings were discovered, alongside some unidentified species which could or could not be malopes; anyway we left these to develop.
Later in the afternoon it became evident that 'something' was afoot, owing to an intermittent procession of smartly dressed men, women and children. Putting two and two together, almost literally, I guessed that a wedding was to take place at the church over the way. This was borne out and verified when Jean Boyes, (my neighbour Mrs. Eva Ford's hairdresser), arrived to park her car in Eva's drive - Eva herself being absent on a Norwegian cruise. Jean was on her way to the wedding of Claire Matthews - a Glemsford girl whose parents live over the road. A short time later I watched the wedding procession walk over to the church - the bride in a light gold dress, accompanied by an assortment of bridesmaids wearing gold dresses of a slightly deeper shade.
Following an afternoon cup of tea, John and I proceeded to get ready for what was, undoubtedly, the highlight of the day - the Glemsford School Reunion for pupils and staff who had attended the school during the ten year period, 1945 - 1955. This Reunion had been organised by Mrs. Janet Garwood and Mr. Brian Richer, both former pupils. John helped Mr. Andrew Garwood (neither being former pupils) with the raffle prizes which, like the rabbit population, multiplied rapidly, as the number of invited guests arrived at the village school, many bearing interesting, expensive and unusual gifts. The selling of the raffle tickets proved to be a full time job indeed!
Having arrived at the school about 6.30 p.m., and noticed that the large poster I had painted in blue, on a white sheet, looked suitably sturdy and permanent in the intermittent drizzle which was now falling, I went into the hall sporting my married and maiden names on a sticky label attached to my jacket. It was not long before animated conversation was the order of the evening, as long-lost friends and acquaintances were re-united. Amongst the many faces known to me, I was most surprised to be approached by one of my childhood friends who left the village in the early fifties, and whom I had neither seen nor heard from since. She was called Gillian Walters and I remembered that her father had been the St. Mary's Church verger before the family moved on to Bury St. Edmunds. She attended with her daughter and her older sister, Margaret, and had travelled down from near Huntingdon. Another 'face from the past' - and one which delighted many guests - was that of Mr. Richard Downing, the oldest son of the former headmaster, Mr. Downing. I had a long conversation with him, and reminded him that I had started school with his brother, David, one cold January morning back in 1949, when his father had likewise commenced his headship.
The evening was complemented by drinks, buffet snacks and some absorbing displays of log books, registers, school photographs and even some carefully preserved exercise books from former village pupils. Mr. Edward Hyde, a retired woodwork teacher, now in his nineties, was presented with a gift, as was Mrs. Elizabeth Steele, the present headteacher. The evening concluded with a very, very long draw for the raffle prizes - and I'm sorry to say I was not a lucky recipient! It was generally agreed that the event had been an unprecedented success, and that it might serve as a forerunner to future re-unions of a similar nature. We arrived home by about 11 o'clock and so ended quite an eventful day.