Janet Betham recalls Christmas at GGS and a trip to Italy.

Janet Betham (57 – 64) says:

I feel very old not seeing my contemporaries in the newsletters but everyone being there after me, apart from one or two older ones.  As you say, there’s not much from my era so I’ll look out some photos if I can – I think I even kept some of the dark green Godhelmian magazines.  I looked at your one from 1964 which was my leaving year and pinnacle of achievements, sports and academic, so it was good to find a picture of us as prefects and remember the happy times.

I especially loved Christmas as there was a huge colourful tree in the entrance hall and we all brought presents of second-hand toys wrapped and labelled for age and gender, which were then taken to the children’s homes.  I loved passing on my toys and imagining the child’s excitement as they unwrapped them!  When it wasn’t Christmas the hall housed the tuck-shop run by Mr. Jones, the maths teacher, and the sixth form prefects used to lower a basket with their order in at break from the top-floor prefects’ common room!  Nigel Forde springs to mind, who went on to become a famous poet, actor and broadcaster.  Such happy days, I loved that school.  We used to have photos all down the corridor which showed how we have developed from age 11!  I found a picture of my friend and me as the leading ladies in Arsenic and Old Lace which was an unbelievable achievement by Mr. Needham, geography master, who produced lovely shows.

My best memories are of Mr. Johnson leading us on two school trips, the first to Florence, Rome and Naples and the second to Venice and Verona – can you imagine taking a group of mixed teenagers on a couchette train across France and Italy and not losing anyone?  The boys were given a pet talk to tell them to protect the girls from the Italians’ wandering hands!  That produced my love of Italian which I then studied at University with an A level in Latin, and went on to work for Alfa Romeo in London and Italy.

Happy days!