School-days & school-friends: where are they now?

As you get older you find yourself sometimes drifting in your mind to past times, places and especially people. I often think about friends from long ago, even though it's decades since we've been in touch or even, as is the case of one very good childhood friend, that they have passed away. Yet somehow memory makes up for the intervening years and blows them away as if they were not there. Once again you can spend a moment with that friend, reliving the same stories and jokes, the same good times and perhaps even the not-so-good ones as well.

We lose touch with people for all sorts of reasons. Maybe we move away from each other, or change jobs, or simply outgrow the friendship, yet the friendship itself seems to be there to remember and pull out of the memory occasionally.

All of the relationships that we develop throughout our life have an impact on the sort of people that we become. Some people, of course, have a greater influence than others. I think that the greatest influence in my own life, outside of the family, was my first school-teacher when I ws at the Infant's School. I attended a school called Cheviot House, and it was run by Miss Bailey, a kindly but firm teacher who was loved by the children in her care. How well I recall the blackboard on wheels that was moved forward for the lessons, held in one of only two classrooms. As a child it seemed to be HUGE! There were smells associated with those schooldays as well that still seem to linger in the nostrils on odd occasions. I remember the smell of wet raincoats hanging in the open passageway that divided the two classrooms, the scent of leather that drifted across from the small glove-making factory across from the window, the fragrance of the wood-block flooring that was scuffed by the feet of so many generations of infants. Then there is the very individual smell of the warm milk, served in half-pint bottles at break-time. The bottles of milk were crated in metal crates that were lowered into a wash-boiler for a few minutes prior to the break. But most of all I remember Miss Bailey, and the warm motherly fragrance that emanated from her when she comforted you after a fall. She's been gone now for many years, yet here, in my blog, she lives once again for a moment.

I wonder who you remember as having been a great influence in shaping your young life, and whom you recall occasionally still?