I'm now at Grammar School, aged 12

This photo was taken at my Grammar School in 1968, I am now 12 years old.  Can you spot me on this photo - please take a guess and post a comment.

Our school uniform was claret/wine/red and blue.  Striped tie, white blouses, navy blue skirts,  red cardigans or v-neck jumpers, white knee length socks, a beret and striped school scarf were optional  red blazer for the summer with our motto on the pocket 'Tenax et Fidelis'.  In the summer girls could wear checked summer dresses.

P E kit was culotte style shorts and airtex shirts.  Sandshoes (pumps), hockey boots.  By year 2 we'd banished the culotte shorts and started purchasing stretch nylon shorts which just covered our bottoms!!!! not sure how we got away with that!  We played netball, hockey, tennis, rounders, did athletics and gymnastics in the well equipped gym.  I loved climbing up the ropes in the gym.  I was first to volunteer if the teacher needed someone to climb to the top to untangle the ropes!  I hated hockey but loved gymnastics.  I competed in a cross country on Sports Day the first year I was there and came in about 17th or 19th out of something like 120 pupils, gaining points for my house which was Trevelyan - colour blue.  The other houses were Collingwood - red, Percy - yellow and Ridley green ( may have got the last two colours around the wrong way).

When we started Grammar School they put you into Forms according to when you were born so I ended up being in a Form which had none of my friends from Primary School in it, I was aghast.  As I have said, I was a shy, timid child.  I had been at Primary School from 5 years old and had close friends in my class, I expected to be in the same class as all of them.  Three of the girls, including my cousin and best friend, ended up in a Form together, and the other girl from my Primary School ended up in a separate one on her own too.

Luckily I did manage to become good friends with two of the girls in my Form, and an acquaintance to the others but I did seem to be the odd one out because they all appeared to know each other from their Primary School.  One of the girls I became friends with sadly passed away from Cancer at the tender age of 21.  In fact there are a few of my school friends who have passed away too early in life.

When we moved up to Year 2, it was very nice because I ended up in the same Form as all the girls from my Primary School because they decided to put all the children who had not studied French at Primary School into a separate Form so that we could concentrate on learning French before embarking on a second language.  The children who had studied French, did a second language from Year 1, they did German or Russian.  We did not begin to learn a second language until Year 3 I believe, we got the short straw, lumbered with Latin - although I must admit that I did quite enjoy it and can still remember some words - my best friend from school says she can't!!!