Scrap Books - 2

Much of the space in the four scrap books is given over to what was going on in school in the years between 1990 and 1997, though this is the only photo of me doing what I did day in and day out for almost 30 years. It was taken late in my time at The Plume School, when I had responsibility for the Sixth Form and we needed a picture for our prospectus of somebody actually teaching - and no-one else was prepared to have the photographer experience one of their lessons.

The only other places where I appear is in pictures of field trips, when students brought along cameras as they had to write up their fieldwork for assessment towards their 'A' level grade. This picture was taken when my first Geology 'A' level group went to Shropshire.

Other school photos are of events such as this, when we held an open day and invited staff to attend in fancy dress. Our headmaster, Alan Bilby, was a retiring man whom I came to like and respect, and he surprised us by entering fully into the spirit of the occasion.

These two letters bring back memories of another aspect of my teaching career. For some years I became very involved in my union, the NAS/UWT, becoming secretary of the federation of Essex branches and, through that, elected onto the local exam board's council and as teacher representative on the Essex education committee. 

By 1996 the final scrap book was beginning to show signs of the radical change of direction that was a consequence of a holiday on the Ardnamurchan peninsula, after which we decided to leave Maldon and teaching and build a new life up there - so the cards suddenly started reflecting the great change that would come.

The album has many of the cards given to me when I left but this is my favourite - a group of us had formed a syndicate to improve our chances of winning the National Lottery and I was the treasurer.

The last scrap book ends a couple of years after we moved to Kilchoan on the Ardnamurchan peninsula, I suppose partly because, while the Christmas, birthday and Father's Day cards continued, and our youngest, being in primary school, kept bringing work home which I kept, I was probably too busy running the shop to worry about maintaining this way of recording events, which is a pity.