I knew you as a girl....

I knew you as a girl.

I knew you as a girl, with skinny legs, no boobs, and a great smile. I knew you with armfuls of books, and a head full of assignments, and boys. Or at least - the thought of boys. I knew you as a young girl, with hopes and dreams, of midnight feasts on red concrete floors, of short skirts and gold badges and dark blue ties, and gold berets worn when in public.

I knew you as a girl, in stockings in winter, and blowing breath waiting for breakfast to begin, so we can silently stir the coffee during the news. I knew you as a daygirl, bringing treats and smokes, and stories of the outside world.

I knew you. Not very well, but I did know you.

I know how you throw your head back when you laugh, I know how you read poetry out-loud, I know what paintings you created for Art, with Miss Jamison, and what pottery formed under your hands for a Raku firing.

Thirty years ago I knew you. Nights in the library, researching some subject, stale biscuits with cold cordial at night, walking through the gardens on a hot summers afternoon.

I knew you. Sneaking swimming lessons in at night with silence as your friend, the occasion muffled giggle enticing the Headmaster from his home.

The assemblies, the singing, the school sports, the endless lessons.

What are we working for, here at our lessons,
Why join together in book, lore and play?
Forty years on will be answered our questions,
If our School Motto speaks truly today.

I knew you. The letters written to lovers you married, and didn’t marry. The songs to unborn children, to the hopefulness of the future. To your ending as a daughter of scholarly learning, and the beginning of your life as a person of independence and learning.

Hearts bright with hope, with ambition high burning,
Hearts of true women our school time prepares.

I heard your tears, I watched your smiles, I saw you looking into the void conjuring up your future. I was there.

Parted are those who are singing today
When we look back and forgetfully wonder
What we were like in our work and our play.


My memories are not your memories, but they do include you. At times sisters, at times just friends, at times - nobodies, just getting on with our own lives and looking towards the future that beckoned its crooked finger to us.

Come. Play. Live. Learn. Experience!

Then it may be there will often come o’er us
Whispers of notes like the catch of a song.

And now here we are, all grown up, adults, women! Colourful, admirable, interesting lives, cancers, departed family members and parents, schooling, children, travel and life and Tim Tams have moulded and shaped us to forms we cannot have imagined.

Vision of girlhood will float then before us,
Echoes of dreamland will bear them along.

But I do recognise you. I knew you as a girl.