8th January Rescue
Me Diana Ross
I had decided to try to get somewhere today, no matter how short a distance and so I set off after breakfast, saying a very genuine thank you to Mrs Peters. Her bed and breakfast may have been a small two-star B & B, 47 Crescent Road, yet I could not have been shown any more kindness. She was obviously not a well-off woman and relied on customers, yet her breakfast was always ample and although she may have been formal over names, she was always quick to laugh and eager to chat. A lovely old lady.
I pushed the bike down to the main road, through the deep snow, and continued doing so to the junction of the A41 for Berkhamsted. Before reaching here I met a super couple, who took my photograph on the canal bridge and chatted for a while. On the A41 cycling was impossible so I pushed the bike for a couple of miles but the snow started to fall again.
On reaching a nearby road junction with a
bridge overhead, I sheltered for about an hour, reading a book, before the snow
stopped falling and I was able to leave the A41 in order to try the adjacent A
road. Snow had started falling again when a familiar face came towards me. It
was the man from the couple I had met back at the canal bridge. His name was
Richie Finger and he could see the state I was in, snow-covered and dithering.
I was lonely, I was blue!
At once he insisted that I came home with him
and stay the night at his and his partner, Maddy's house. Once having accepted
his kind offer, he turned around and it was then I realised that they lived
back in Hemel Hempstead! No escape would be possible this day.
What a wonderful snowman greeted us on
arrival at their home; a large, tall, sculpted French-looking waiter of a
snowman holding a tray, which was being used as a bird table replete with bird
food. So creative, maybe you will think of doing the same next time we have a
snowfall and help our feathered friends.
The rest of the day was spent chatting with
Richie, and with Maddy once she arrived home from work. Richie was fascinating
and his collection of music was the largest I had ever seen. An enthusiastic
collector of Disco music but not the Saturday Night Fever material of the Bee
Gees, Donna Summer and the like but a broad eclectic mixture of thousands of
hours of music and musicians all stored on his computer, file after file and
folder after folder. Then there was the vinyl; four long and high shelves of
it, taking up space of a whole long wall in the very contemporary apartment.
Maddy turned out to be a teaching assistant
at a local school where she works on a one to one basis with a statemented
Special Needs boy. Now twenty four, Maddy had been educated at two Rudolph
Steiner schools, one being in South Wales. Rudolph Steiner schools are a little
different to the mainstream experience and I would suggest that one takes a
look at what they stand for. Indeed, look up the life of the Austrian founder,
and consider the benefits of such places for children. I had always wanted to
teach at one.
Back when I was a Primary School teacher at
the amazing Merridale Primary School in Wolverhampton, one of the governors and
parent of a child in my Year Six class, Peter, was also a teacher at a Steiner
School. I remember at the interview for the teaching post at Merridale, a one
term temporary position, Peter was on the interviewing panel and delighted in
telling me that they wanted to make my position there a permanent full-time one
instead of just for the one term and that their decision had nothing to do with
the fact that I had egg on my chin, as the expression goes!
Eight years at Merridale Primary School
included some of the most wonderful times I ever had during my teaching career.
An open plan, very multicultural school with wonderful staff and a headteacher
who upheld the creative and inclusive principles of the previous head. Brian may
have left partly due to the initiation of the National Curriculum in 1989, the
reason I left Secondary education but he left behind the most fantastic school.
Caroline, the superb head whilst I was there, continued with Brian’s almost
Steiner-like philosophy of education : creative, child-centred, imaginative and
exploratory with investigations and lots of art, music and drama. Nature played
a large part in creating the right environment for children to use all of their
senses. The school had carried out some incredible habitat creation projects
during Brian’s time and could boast two large peat bogs, a large hay meadow
with masses of wildflowers, woodland areas and an avenue of interlocking trees
that created a hundred yard archway for the children to promenade through.
There were large fruit trees in various parts of the school grounds and I
remember taking the children out on sunny summer afternoons for picnics and
storytelling. A proper bird hide was erected near to a scrubby area of
Blackthorn and a line of rope had both bird feeders and plastic pop bottles
strung along it; the latter to stop the squirrels from getting to the bird
food.
Children at break or lunchtime were allowed
to go out in all weathers, each child had their own school provided wellingtons
and waterproof coat, to explore all areas. They were encouraged to make their
own dens, to climb trees and ask questions.
Everyone at the school was onboard with the
school’s aims, be they the teaching staff, the dinner ladies, who included the
sister of the Famous Wolverhampton Wanderers footballer from those times, Steve
Bull and the amazing caretaker and his wife, Ray and Gill. It was Ray who with
Brian and a now City councillor and a Senior Lecturer from Wolverhampton
University, had drawn up the plans and executed them for the various habitats
at the school. Half a mile from Wolverhampton Centre and an area with such a
diversity of wildlife! At my job interview, when being shown around the grounds
I remember shouting out, “you’ve got Royal Fern!”
Such happy days at the most wonderful of
schools, Ray was my best man when being at Merridale coincided with marrying
the most fabulous woman, Karen.
On a weekend of contact with my two beautiful
children, Joshua and Rebecca, I was holding their hands as we walked back from
a local shop, Biddle’s, to their grandparents when I spotted a fossil amongst
the pebbles on a driveway. The drive had a parking area made of limestone
chippings and the small brachiopod had caught my eye. I went onto the drive and
picked it up. As I showed it to Josh and Rebecca, a beautiful black-haired
gypsy-like woman came out of the door, her two small daughters hiding behind
her long dark red skirt and asked, “what are you doing on my drive?” A
reasonable question one would think, I showed her the fossil. We married three
years later.
Whilst at Ritchie and Maddy’s, I used their
computer to write the blog and sort out the emails, which included one from
Leica offering me a fleece; an offer I gratefully accepted. There were quite a
few good luck messages and two exceedingly kind offers of accommodation. The
kindness of people, complete strangers, over the coming year would be a thing
that always surprised and delighted me over the year.
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