Geography A-Level & GCSE

I’m a bit hard pressed to write this cos I wasn’t actually involved. So here’s a third party view:

Catherine and Marie selected Geography for GSCE and then A-Level, and so started a love affair with the subject, the class, the field trips… You guys still talk about it now so there must have been something special happening there. I am going to make no suggestion that it had anything to do with the boys in the classes.

OK, so someone better jump in with a better account than this…

xLuce

French A-Level

Ah, we had a good time in this class didn’t we…. Great crowd, great teachers, I think we may have even got quite good at speaking French. Do you remember being told that we should have a glass of red before our oral exam cos it would help us relax and speak better French. Can’t imagine it would make any difference these days, probably just make me hungry. Anyway, there was the French Exchange as well, where Marie landed the high school delinquent, ha.

Now, if I was a clever girl I’d have written this in French. But we all know you two are far far better at this than me so I’ll leave the cleverness to you…

xLuce

English A-Level

Do you remember how much fun we had in this class Marie… A great crowd and teachers that we liked and, well, stuff we liked studying.

Course, you know what I’m going to say, the bit that sticks in my mind is how we used to practise writing our short stories and then meet on the corner to swap over and critique each other’s work. Such good girls.

Correct me if I’m wrong, did you once write a line about someone frowning and their “two caterpillar eyebrows meeting in the middle”. I thought that was legendary.

Also, (and this won’t surprise you either) but ah, Cuthers. Sharing all his wisdom about English Studies, university, life, and as I recall telling us about Yo Sushi when it was a very new concept!

xLuce

Sixth Form

I suppose really everything has gone quickly but Sixth Form seemed to go especially quickly! Personally I mostly recall the daily challenge of figuring out what to wear, having to juggle school & work for the first time, and trying to do well at driving lessons, ballet exams and partying at various 18th celebrations. The pressure!

I guess this is when we really started to make the choices that influenced where we are now. Am I right in thinking:
Catherine: Geography, Sport Science, French
Lucy: Economics, English, French, General Studies (seriously worth the paper it’s written on), Spanish GCSE
Marie: Geography, English, French

Of course there’s lots to remember from these years. Here are some specific bits:

• All of us learning to drive at various stages. And then some people having cars. And, well, basically, starting to drive everywhere.
• Fwaaa, just as I was writing the above I remembered ‘thingy’ week, the one where we had to dress up every day. What was it called??
• We all did French together which was a giggle and led to the semi-legendary French Exchange… (only ‘semi’ cos I didn’t go )
• Of course the major difference, apart from the no-uniform thing, from school, was the free periods. Which, for myself, I used ever so productively, lying on the common room sofas talking about the ‘ideal man’. I most certainly did not do this on my own.. who else was there??
• Nights at the Embassy
• We started looking at universities. There was heaps of chat about what, where, why; trips around the country checking places out; and those bl**dy UCAS application forms, needed a degree to complete one of those…
• We all had Saturday (and the rest) jobs, let’s see if I can get this right…
  Catherine = Halfords
  Lucy = M&S and waitressing
  Marie = Safeway
  ???
• Actually, off the back of the Safeway crew (I believe) a Friday-night-in-Reigate-routine started. We were talking about that when we checked out The Cage for your 30th birthday Catherine…
• Of course there was actually doing all our mock exams, coursework, A-Levels and then the reward of Zakynthos…
• Lots of ‘dress up’ parties, 18ths, and – it feels – non stop parties at Katie’s, actually how many excuses did we come up with to have parties at Katie’s??? (Thanks again Sheila…)

I don't remember what Ball this was but who cares, this picture is GOLD!

(Photos courtesy of Aine. Thank you!)

(Photos courtesy of Catherine. Thank you!)

(Photo courtesy of Monique. Thank you!)

xLuce

Zakynthos

June 1998

(Photos courtesy of Aine. Thank you!)

(Photo courtesy of Catherine. Thank you!)

(Photo courtesy of Monique. Thank you!)

There’ll be a lot to say about this and many people more competent than me to give a full and accurate account! In short, what a holiday! The ultimate girlie, post a-level, let your hair down two weeks.

Highlights:

• Matching t’shirts, and thinking that we were original for having them!
• Correct me if I’m wrong but did I take a ghetto blaster????
• Personally I liked how we went out for dinner each night then came home for casual boozing before going out again
• Dancing on the bar. A life ambition ticked off at the ripe age of 17. ha ha.
• Paragliding was something of a highlight for me.
• The pedal boating / turtle spotting / skinny dipping outing. Simply too funny for words. Am I remembering right that we should thank Roz for this particular ‘excursion’?
• Of course, Helen’s bikini going ‘missing’ (here’s your chance to put a confession in writing Katie..?!)
• The last night when we pretended it was our birthdays to get free booze! (Like we needed to attract any more free booze.)
• When we went in to school as soon as we got back and we were all brown as nuts!!

I will say right now (and sorry if you didn’t know this already) but I lost my Zakynthos matching bracelet some time ago. I’m not altogether convinced it made it home! Ah well. As they say, I’ve got the t’shirt….

xLuce