I was just checking Friends Reunited as a distraction from the depression of my blog going wrong. A pointless exercise as in the two years since I put myself on only one new person from my year at school has appeared. Out of a possible 80 there are 25, none of whom I liked or knew very well.
Lately they have added new group categories like Favourite Teacher; First Day at School and.. Famous Ex-Pupils. This would obviously be quite interesting as my school - in a Muriel Spark-like way - used to actually tell us that we were the creme-de-la-creme of English girlhood. As the school is in a major university city they were inundated with the daughters of brilliant academics and had a really tough entrance exam. I got in as I was always good at English, partly from reading so much when I was little. In fact I got 97% in the English section, so they overlooked the 40% in the Maths. section as some kind of fluke. (An optimism which turned out to be sadly misplaced).

They were obsessed with getting girls into Oxbridge and long before the recent school league tables came in there was a Double Secret League Table just for Oxbridge entrance numbers. On the first day of every Autumn term the headmistress would read out our ranking, always either first or second. First - wild cheers; second - muted clapping.

So .............. in this small island, how many of my school mates are now household names? Up until 1940 there are two relatively well-known novelists. From 1940 - 1980 - NO ONE. From 1980 to the present. Two TV. presenters, one for a car programme, and an Olympic gymnast. Hello ..... we were meant to be a collection of some of the most intelligent girls in the country. A clue might be in the School Memories section where comments like, 'I have never been so unhappy in my life'; 'I left with my confidence at rock-bottom'; 'It took five years of therapy to restore my self-esteem' etc. were the norm. (Apart from one sad entry 'I am sorry that so many of you were so miserable. I was really happy here'). There was an atmosphere of grinding hard work; art and even music were thought of as pretty trivial and any mark below an 'A' showed that you just weren't bothering to try. As I was told once, 'If you can get such high marks in English, you can get them in anything'. Errr...?

By chance, last year, I was introduced to a woman at a party here in the country. It turned out that she had just moved from Cambridge. 'Oh, I was at school there', I said, 'At the .....'. She actually backed away from me, flapping her hands. 'Don't say that name again', she said,' So was I, but I try never to think of it'.


- posted by Iris @ 11/14/2003 01:48:00 PM comment