Sheena McDonald
(Class of 1972)
GWLC 150 Reminisces
There are thousands of old GWLC girls, each with singular, different memories – some shared, like the buildings and rooms (Room 40, the room with the most light, where art was taught; Room 22, where drama was performed and choirs practiced) – most personal and particular. Now, almost fifty years since I left, I am thankful beyond measure for what GWLC gave me in terms of tools with which to negotiate the world – so I do metaphorically “visit” my old school from time to time.
But we were not encouraged to look back. Miss (May) Nicol, who taught me history for six years, and was possibly the teacher I most admired in the phalanx of strong, intelligent women who sought to develop and improve my mind, was typically clear and direct in her final lesson: “I wish you well, girls – and I should tell you that any girl who comes back to visit their old school after leaving I count a failure.”
Our teachers did not patronise us, and expected us to meet our potential: Miss Carnon, who introduced me to the plays of Shakespeare and the poetry of T.S. Eliot (“Carnon has seen Eliot,” she majestically declared, recalling a public event at the Usher Hall many years previously); Miss Littlewood, who sat on a desk at the front of the class, accidentally (I think) revealing her knee-length bloomers, to share her insights into vestal virgins; and pre-eminently Miss Fortescuse, a somewhat dishevelled woman who belied her disorderly appearance with her laser-sharp intellect. Each lesson began with vocabulary - half a dozen words a day, to be inscribed in a book: where is it now, I wonder? So we learned the difference between ‘venal’ and ‘venial’, ‘arrogate’ and ‘abrogate’ - and legion more examples of the richness and mystery of the English language.
My French teacher, Miss Doull, spoke French throughout each lesson, from start – “Levez-vous, la classe…Bonjour…Asseyez-vous, la classe” to finish, although she was not herself French. The other phrase I remember from her classes was the one she used most often: “Mademoiselle, voulez-vouse que je vous defenestre?!”
I was neither head girl nor dux – but nor was I a dunce. My eventual working life as a broadcast (radio and TV) journalist may have owed something to my school activities: I was never top of the class, but won prizes for verse-speaking (in English, French and Latin) and, more mysteriously, dance.
I directed the annual House Shakespeare competition one year – a scene from Macbeth, with Martha Kearney playing Macduff (‘The horror! The horror!’). Our house, Greyfriars, won.
Chronologically, Watson’s became my second home when I was seven. The primary school was then in St Albans Road, so for three years I walked from my home in Seton Place to school and back, whatever the weather. I learned independence, fairness and discipline.
‘Independence’ was rooted in my walks to school, usually alone but sometimes with a fellow-pupil, Rowan Flett, who lived in Marchmont. We would meet in Dick Place and walk down the narrow defile which my mother had expressly forbidden me ever to walk down – Lovers Loan. ‘Discipline’ began before you left home: school uniform rules were strict. Every girl must have two pairs of shoes – outdoor shoes which were swapped for indoor shoes in the class cloakroom. Two pairs of underpants were also mandatory – an inside pair and a navy blue outside pair. These details may seem trivial or even absurd today, but they inculcated in a simple, utilitarian way a sense of order.
I learned ‘fairness’ indirectly, and was reminded of this by my niece Sarah, who is at GWC in the footsteps of her mother, Alison, my younger sister, who was born too late to enjoy the peculiar virtues on all-girl school.
I asked Sarah what she might ask an old (old) girl if she were collecting memories of GWLC. She thought for a moment: “What punishments did you get?”
Aha! I remember no punishments in senior school: obviously I had been rehabilitated at junior school! Indeed, I had arrived at St Albans Rd with a record. During my two years at a different primary school, I had been caught imitating another (regularly naughty) girl, and taking three straws with my free milk at morning break. Only one straw was permitted. We were made to stand in the school hall for the rest of the morning as classes passed by, witnessing our shame.
You might have expected me to classify ‘punishment’ in the ‘discipline’ category. See what you think: my first junior school crime, when I was eight years old, happened during an arithmetic class (mathematics being taught some years later, when a slide-rule became a standard daily necessity - and we certainly did not use calculators).
I had trouble with a sum, and had to continuously rub out my inaccurate attempts, until eventually I rubbed right through the page of my jotter. For this crime, I was called to the front of the class where the teacher - Miss Boyce, I think? - strapped my palm with a ruler twelve times. It was sore enough, and shaming - and, I thought, not fair. I had only been trying to get the sum right! It wouldn’t happen now.
My second junior school punishment came after a short season of bad cloakroom behaviour: someone (I knew who) had been throwing school berets and blazers onto the floor when no-one else was there. The junior school headmistress, Miss Clark-Maxwell, appealed to the culprit to confess. Nothing happened for some days. “If the girl who has done this does not own up by Friday,” said Miss C-M, “I will name her at morning assembly.”
I was being brought up in a manse, so from an early age had learned about good and bad, right and wrong, and so on. My involuntary response to the headmistress’s threat was to blush! I was not guilty, but behaved as if I were. Miss C-M noticed this, I knew. I saw her lowering her glasses, and glaring over them at me. I remember that image to this day, over fifty years later.
Sure enough, Friday’s morning assembly was rendered exciting for some and black for me when my name was intoned. My punishment was to write one hundred lines: ‘I must not throw berets on the cloakroom floor’. When I got home that day, I told my mother, who was rolling pastry in the kitchen. “It’s not fair!” I said. She did not look up but said, “Life isn’t fair.” She was right, of course. We live and learn. ‘Fairness’ may, perhaps, be an unambiguous concept, but not its application.
Random memories persist: walking across the Meadows to George Square for eight years; spending break-time in George Square garden, where a couple of girls used to cut their arms with razors – self-harm was already an issue in the 1960s; watching a black-and-white sex education film at 10 which began with the sperm wriggling its way up the fallopian tube. This engendered animated discussion on how it got there: we concluded that it got in via the navel. When my friend Fiona revealed the truth as we walked back from school I was horrified; this was amplified a little later when my father stood up at the tea-time table to announce that my mother was going to have a baby. Privately, I was appalled.
I greatly enjoyed singing in the choir, and Miss Traves set us proper challenges to practise and perform at the annual Usher Hall prize-giving and concert, like Constant Lambert’s RIO GRANDE. The school orchestra was also very good – I was not a member but an enthusiastic listener: I remember with great pleasure being introduced to Handel’s ARRIVAL OF THE QUEEN OF SHEBA. And I did make it to Colinton Road - on Friday afternoons in 6th year, for lessons in ballroom dancing with the boys. I never felt the need for boys in the classroom, but they had their extra-curricular uses…for instance drama: I performed in a joint school play, THE RIVALS by Richard Sheridan. I was Lydia Languish, while my friend to this day, Vicky, was a splendid Mrs Malaprop.
I left George Square in 1972 – except I didn’t, really. Despite my parents’ strong desire for me to leave the city and broaden my experience, I chose to study English Language and Literature at the University of Edinburgh. So in the autumn of that year, I was still in George Square. ‘Gap years’ did not exist then – but summer jobs did, so I had worked as a part-time cleaner at Pollock Halls and saved enough money to travel Europe on an Inter-rail ticket for a month, before the days of internet and mobile phone. Independence and discipline were making me a woman of the world!
In retrospect, becoming an under-graduate in George Square was ironic, since as schoolgirls we would look out of the window at passing long-haired, scruffy students with disdain. But ‘retrospect’, despite Miss Fortescue’s best efforts, was not part of my vocabulary: 18-year-olds did not look back. Fair enough? I think Miss Nicol would have approved.
Sheena McDonald (Class of 1972)