Another corner: Junior study. I get a pain in my tummy in sympathy with the "wind" I used often to suffer from during the hour and half of evening prep. "Mother Lenahan!" I hear myself exclaim, "Sitting up here on a raised desk." "She was fierce," conies a rejoinder. "Lenny the Lion was," I remind the unknown companion, "but not Lenny the Lamb."

"Oh, gosh, yes! Lenny the Lion and Lenny the Lamb! I'd forgotten'.' So had I. I hadn't thought of those two elderly sisters who shared their vocation for how many years, I wonder. They had sprung out at me from around yet another corner.

Past the sixth form common room and into la. There is nothing here to surprise. I have carried the memories of that room around with me for nearly forty years, carefully preserved. It was here that Miss Wood had set me my first grown-up essay on "My Classroom", and corrected my assumptions that classrooms, and the education one receives there are about getting good jobs, having successful careers and being rich and famous.

It was she who taught me that education is about becoming a fully fledged member of the human race. She was for me that one special teacher. Everyone should have a Miss Wood.

I could write for pages about the moments of delight waiting round all the corners. The moments when everyone around says,"Oh yes, that's right", and the moments, like when I stood outside Sister Bernadette's Linen Room and recited the verse she used to pin on the shirt-shaped hanky-bags she used to make:

"When your handkerchiefs are dirty
Put them in this little shirty
Pop them in and let them stay
'Till you send your wash away,"

which was met by a sea of blank faces. "Funny the things people remember," said one, flatly. Funny indeed.

But it was when I returned to the Hall that the corners finally spiralled me into that vortex of memory that allows for no space between past, present and future. It is duller, bleaker and colder than I remember and yet exactly the same.

The great, grand anchor: O Crux Ave Spes Unica - Hail, Cross, our only Hope.

Such Hopes! Such Crosses!

The place is full of couches and contraptions for practising Chiropractic on, and little knots of people. As I sit on the Stage Left steps I hear my own young voice assuming that of an old woman "O My Legs! My Legs! That 'ill's finished 'em".

Lines from "The Boy with a Cart" by Christopher Fry. This is not the first stage I have been on, this audience not the first to confirm with its applause my feeling that this is where I come alive. This is certainly where my career, if not my education begins.

The moment is too poignant. I have to leave, to find my way back around the corners that will take me out of the memory maze and into the present again.

Allison Hancock

Allison (Dorothy) left the Convent in 1969 and trained at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School. She works as a professional actress and as a teacher of Speech and Drama. Married to actor Geoffrey Drew for twenty six years, they have 2 daughters.

She recently co-founded the Isleworth Actors Company, where they live in West London.

Several people wrote or phoned to say that they were unable to attend. Some letters were displayed at the reunion but for those who did not manage to read them or were not present I reproduce extracts here.

Sister Mary Agnes (Norah Loftus) wrote from Cameroun

Dear Jean, Mary Brooks and all Boscombe Past Pupils,
As I cannot be with you for the Jubilee Year celebration, I thought I would write a few lines to greet you all and to let you know I shall be united with you in spirit. I hope that the gathering will exceed all your expectations and that it will be a most joyful occasion filled with happy surprises and plenty of chatter and laughter.

I shall look forward to having echoes when I receive the Newsletter that you so kindly send so faithfully to me. Thank you for that.

We now have four houses in Cameroun, and I have transferred to the French speaking part in Nkongsamba where we have opened a Novitiate. At present two young teachers are novices here.

They followed their period of Postulancy in Bamenda with Sister Catherine Morton as their guide. Happily, more young women are beginning their formation, eager to follow Jesus as Sisters of Christ.

Our Communities here are international. With me are two sisters from Madagascar, one from France and the two Cameroonian novices, Victorine and Hilda. These two both came from Anglophone part of Cameroon, but they have made great strides in speaking French.

However, for Divine Office we alternate weekly - French/English so all have a chance to praise God in prayer that is more familiar.

I send greetings especially to my class-mates and the boarders 1943/44, to all my "little" pupils in the Junior School 1950-59 and all my "charges" especially those of St Michael's Dormitory. May God continue to bless each and everyone!

Affectionately,

Sr Mary Agnes (Norah Loftus)."

Sister Margaret Scott thanked Jean for the invitation to the reunion but she would be "on business of the congregation" in the USA at that time.

Sister Margaret wrote - "Please convey to everyone my apologies and my very good wishes for the reunion. You will all be very much in my thoughts and prayers."

Sister Bernardine wrote from Rome sending her best wishes to all at the reunion and expressing her regret at not being able to be present. The full letter was read out at the reunion.