Miss Crichton and other beautiful things

The decluttering continues, haltingly. Why did I ever keep this project on Mary Queen of Scots from my history class in 1962? 

The teacher who got us to do this project was one of the several eccentrics at my school - which was an all-girls, private one. She was called Miss Crichton and was known among us as Granny Crichton because she was so ancient - though I would be amazed if she were actually a granny. In those days, the retiral age for women teachers was 60, so this old, old lady was presumably about 55. She was always cold, and in winter and summer wore a tweed suit - often a cherry red one - with a scarf. In our school the teachers rather than the girls moved classrooms, and she would come into ours carrying a travel rug, climb on to the slightly raised platform at the front of the class, sit down at the desk, turn the chair towards the radiator, cover her legs with the rug and teach from that position, looking at us sideways. If the windows were open, she would direct us to close them. 

This would not have worked in the secondary school in which I taught. Fortunately we were very well-behaved.  

Her hair was suspiciously black and it was rumoured that it was a wig. It was certainly very shiny, though I think it probably looked wig-like mainly because she wore a hairnet over it, so it was bunched up at the ends. Her face was very round and flat and white - and, as I remember, wrinkled (though see above). 

In the two years that we had her, Miss Crichton gave us three projects that I can remember - the one above, one on the voyages of Christopher Columbus and one on the battle of Blenheim. I think I threw the others out some years ago but the M Q of S one somehow survived. It was long before the internet or even readily available photocopiers, so quite a lot of research went into these projects and we all travelled to museums and so on to acquire postcards as illustrations. There were about 15 handwritten pages in each and they took a long time. On the back of this one, Granny C has written VG+. That's all. Not a single comment anywhere else in the project. Which I now think is absolutely disgraceful! I wonder if she even read them. 

Ah well, this work of research has now been decluttered, along with all my school reports, a good number of my missionary aunt's photos of people unknown to us, all my school magazines and various other bits of paper which I don't want the children to feel that they need to keep once I'm no longer here.

At the Botanics, spring is in full gallop

And so it is, on a smaller scale, in our garden. 

Mr L, Big Grandson's other grandfather and Big Grandson had a grand day out in Glasgow at a model railway exhibition. I think this is an exhibit rather than the view from the train on the way there. 

And Daughter 2 has finished the stool she made at a stool-making class. It's lovely!