A Grammar School girl

Zelda, second from right, in a school theatrical production at Hornsey High School

The netball team, Zelda at the front on right

Despite the hard time I had at junior school, I passed the scholarship exam. I looked forward to going to Hornsey High School for Girls, and having the opportunity to make a new start and find new friends. Even the school building seemed welcoming to me: the highly polished wooden block floors and stairways; the panelled entrances either side of the big hall, one for the staff and one for the pupils; the laboratories on the first floor with all their wondrous insturments and glass bottles; and best of all, the library. Behind the school wee the playgrounds, the tennis courts, a vegetable garden tended by the biology classes, some rabbit hutches and the hockey fields. At the back of the fields only a wooden fence stood between us and the Sttioners' School for Boys.

My first day there was not the most auspicious. Unfortunately my mother had not got her act together well enough to fit me out properly in the school uniform. I felt very embarrassed walking ino the hall for assembly, but from the first moment there I felt I had to do well. They allocated each of us to one of four Houses and set us on a competitive course. I seemed to thrive on it but there was one goal I could never achieve. I could never come top in exams. That place was reserved for Shizuko Eguchi, a Japanese girl whose parents made her work hard. She was never allowed any let up. No play for Shizuko. My best friend Alice was my only other competitor for a place at the top. She and I battled it out each school year and one year she would be second and I would come third, then the next the order would be reversed, but neither of us could topple Shizuko.

The battle spilled over into the games area, and all three of us got into the school netball team, the hockey team and the rounders team, but ony I got into the tennis championship games. One other field of endeavour was left to conquer - the drama society. I think the teachers knew what was going on between Alice and I, because they seemed to join in the game. In one play I would be given a biggish part and in another Alice would. In only one did I gain any advantage. I played "star" part, Volumnia in "Coriolanus". Alice took it very well. We were good friends.

We went cycling together and once a week e would go to a film. Both beig crazy about Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers we rushed to see all their films and we would sing the songs all the way home. Alice had two brothers and I must admit she had the better of me there. I thought they were both the strongest, handsomest, the cleverest, most heroic boys, but they paid me no heed.

I would meet Alice each morning at 7.30 on the corner of her street to go to school together. We both had a crush on Miss Knight, our gym mistress, and we made certai we caught the same bus as she did so that we could talk to her. That crush was so strong that i can remember to this day the feeling I had when I saw her walking towards me. In the Third Form we were lucky enough to get Miss Knight as our English Literature teacher. Could there ever be anything more wonderful? My favourite subject being taught to me by my favourite teacher. We were studying Mrs. Gaskell's "Cranford" and Shakespeare's "Twelfth night" that year. Every tie I hear "if music be the food of love, play on" I think of her and get butterflies in my stomach. She was tall and had a good figure, even though she was big-boned and had muscly arms and legs. Her blonde hair was cut short and her cornflower blue eyes shone out of her un-made-up face. Her clothes were good but plain, unlike the other teacher I admired, Miss Coe, who taught us French. She always dressed elegantly and was impeccably made up. Miss Keating, the headteacher, was a slight little woman, neatly dressed, and always ready to give you a cheery word as she passed.

The war started when i was fifteen and my education at hornsey High was ended. I was evacuated to Frome in Someset while Hornsey High went to Cambridge. But after the war, already married and with a baby, I was invited to a reunion of the old school. Miss Keating commented that i was still as bubbly as ever and she asked me what I felt the school had done for me. Without hesitation I answered "It made me a communist, it gave me such a good conservativ education i had no alternative but to rebel".