Tempus Fugit

Here's the secondary school I attended, Roundhay High School for Girls, Leeds, pictured on an Open Day in the year 2000. It's just round the corner from where I live and it then looked very much as it did when I was was there. A worthy, solid building, built in the 1930s.

Brick corridors, parquet floors - it wasn't hard to imagine all the girls who had walked or, disobediently, run along those corridors:

Here's one of the science labs, just as it was in my day (I found some graffiti I wrote on the desk about how dull Physics was - perhaps I wasn't as good a girl as everyone thought):

But I have fond memories of the tennis courts, where Sarah and I played almost every lunchtime and evening the summer we were fourteen:

All those girls: all those teachers: all those days of school, of missing the moon landings because of a test next day, of forgetting my cookery apron (O sin of sins!), of chatting with my friends in assembly (another sin), of treadle sewing machines, of dreary Friday afternoon maths lessons that seemed as though they would never end. Happiest days of my life? No, of course not, though there were some excellent teachers and I had some good friends.

Here's that view of the school and tennis courts, last week:

Gone. They knocked the lot down shortly after I took the photographs, replacing it with a new Roundhay School nearby.

As I said, this field that used to be the school is just round the corner from me. As I round the corner, every time, for a fraction of a second I see the school. Strange how what was such a big part of your life can just disappear.

Oh yes, and we were very lucky in that the school had its own swimming pool. A swimming lesson every week: many swimming galas: family swimming on Sunday mornings.

They've kept that building. It's a canteen now. That's progress for you.