Many congratulations on your retirement. Pendle will never be the same without you.
The one thing I remember about my class with you in yr 5 (89/90) was the rainforest project. I can still picture the rainforest you made throughout the whole class made from green sugar paper! It was brilliant! Your creativity never went unnoticed. You made us pick an animal and we had to go to the library i.e. the one bookshelf outside the hall (!) and we had to research it and do a presentation to the class. Wanting to be different I chose a chameleon! Not surprisingly there was very little information to be found! Pretty much the only information I could muster was ‘It lives in rainforest and changes colour!’ I always remember you asked me, to my horror, how big they were. Gesturing the size I remember my hands started quite close together and expanded slowly apart as I tried to guess rather than admit I knew nothing about them!!!
Also I remember the now famous ‘A-Z’. I learnt so many words from that from Anaconda to Doodlebug! It was great. I’m sure I’ve still got it at home somewhere. I remember we had to go up to your desk to show you the work we’d done so far. I’d not made much progress and you told me to ‘pull my socks up!’ so that weekend I went home and flicked through some massive dictionaries at home having to ask my parents for definitions of the definitions I was finding and finished the whole thing! I then had to read in class when everybody else was given time to do theirs for the next 4 months! Sure the research skills served me well in my dissertation at uni though!
I also remember doing some health topic and Lucy’s dad, Dr. Saunders came in and taught us about the effects of smoking. I also remember vaguely studying the Second World War because I brought my Great Aunty’s gas mask and ration book into class for the display! I remember sitting in a table of 6 nearest to the door with Sarah Chatburn, Jonathan Carter, Paul Gaskill, Simon Coulter and Graham Clark. I sat next to Graham but because he was left handed and I was right handed we had to swap desks because our elbows kept banging together! I was gutted because I had to move further away from Sarah, the only other girl on the table! I also remember we used to do ‘swaps’ at lunchtime. I managed to get my hands on a lovely red silk Chinese purse from Laura Clegg, pretty sure she wasn’t justly rewarded in return!
Isn’t it funny the things you remember?! Speaking of which I also remember your dolly car with the fold back roof and of course the famous sleepovers at your house for Kate with the chocolate game!!! As I’m writing this I’ve just remembered Kate’s fancy dress ones-the 60s themed party-Lucy’s mum sorted me out some authentic clothes with some amazing white boots which were too big for Lucy to borrow but fit my then adult sized feet perfectly. At another one I did the ever reliable but out of season (March!) witch, with a shiny multi coloured wig! Oh those were the days! Those parties were far from dull!
Hope you use your newly found spare time well, and I hope its not another 15 years before I bump into you in some random country pub! I’ll always remember the time at Pendle fondly and certainly appreciate your efforts to educate us no matter how lost they were on us! I guess you were always fighting a losing battle with us!!! Although I made it to become a Chartered Surveyor so you can’t have done that badly!
All the best
Claire Peters
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