THS Reunion - Part Three (and the final part!)

Reunion – sweets, drinks, dinner and departures

The school tour was made even more memorable by the appearance of Baronness Tanni Grey-Thompson, Paralympic athlete, BBC Sports Personality of the Year, Honorary Blue at Heriot-Watt University, to name but a few titles we could give her.   I had met Tanni when she came to my workplace, Heriot-Watt University, to speak to the Sports Union and receive her Honorary Blue in 2005.  She had been accompanied by her young daughter Carys who was just three years old at the time.  I took it upon myself to entertain Carys and brought some toys (no, i don’t have children but i do usually have some toys around!) so Tanni remembered me when we bumped into each other in the foyer of the junior school.  I stopped for a chat and discovered that she has moved to live on the Avenue so that Carys can be educated at THS!!!  The girls persuaded me to ask if we could have our photo taken with her and she very graciously agreed.   

Carys and friend snuck into the picture too and apparently haven’t stopped talking about it since!  What an honour, not just to speak with Tanni again but to be photographed with her, to discover how highly she thought of THS, and then to receive a personal email from her saying how much she enjoyed meeting US!  It has left me with a smile that keeps turning into a broad grin.  How can one small Welsh woman cast such sunshine to all around her?

After a final farewell to everyone at school we walked back up the Avenue and returned to the hotel...well, eventually, once we’d mourned the loss of the zebra crossing, checked that Sam the lollipop man really wasn’t still leaning against the wall waiting to cheerily get us across the road (memories of who came after he retired are hazy, Sam had an impact!), and walked along the road towards the train station to see if we could still buy a quarter of our favourite sweets from the corner shop.  We couldn’t but there was still a shop there and we amused ourselves picking out bottles of pop (and i think somebodies bought some wine?), packets of crisps and bags of chocolates and Food Doctor luxury fruit, nut and plain chocolate drop mix.  Yes, i confess, i was the only one who got excited about this product but Sarah was very gracious and kept me company and we even had a little chat about Dr Gillian McKeith’s posture and the possibility of scoliosis or some other musculoskeletal issue.  Oh, Sarah!  How lovely to get to know you, you might regret sharing your mobile number and email address with me in the days, months and years to come...

Extra sitcom moments were to be had as we turned the corner back on to the main road to discover that Melissa’s vehicle had been blocked into the hotel car-park.  Granted it wasn’t our hotel’s car-park but did they not realise the important mission she was on?  Sarah, who is obviously trying to get her Equity card, volunteered to go into the reception and plead with them to let her car out, despite the fact that she couldn’t drive it herself.  The rest of us, barring Melissa, decided we should slope off rather than stand in the wings like extras on Coronation Street and were relieved a few minutes later to be honked at (now that’s not a phrase you come across very often, is it?!) by a jubilant Melissa and her diva passenger, Sarah.

We entered our hotel and immediately reverted to teenagers on an overnight school trip.  Whose room should we crash in?  Bring all the glasses and mugs you can find!  Who’s got the bottle-opener? (actually, that last one’s completely fabricated as these recycled teenagers had wisely purchased screw-top bottles!)  It was great to simply slob out for a bit in each other’s company.  Davina arrived for a brief visit and soon there was excited chatter about children and careers and deeper sharing about the tragedies, crises, and other challenges girls have been facing.  My other self observed from above, could sense the cameras shooting their film from the doorway, focussing in on faces as they were mobilised into shapes of joy, horror, surprise, sorrow and love, zooming in on hands gesticulating, wringing, and soothing.  It was a scene of wondrous love, wisdom, humility and laughter.  There was no time to linger in pools of pity but a sense of there being all the time we needed to reach out to one another, re-establish bonds of friendship, and remind ourselves that we are connected as kith.

Time to move the party downstairs where more girls were arriving.  I was very grateful that there was no arrival en masse, that there was time to absorb each person’s appearance but it still all became rather a flurry of hugs, kisses, whispering in an uncertain ear who someone across the room was, checking on sisters, brothers, parents.  Two of our teachers, Mrs Smith and Mrs Hartness, joined us for drinks, Kay and Michelle appeared (still best of friends and living round the corner from one another) and Gillian too and i had a moment of soul-ache as i realised how much i had missed being with these wonderful women.  Looking round the room all i could see and hear was happiness.  I had my laptop with me and sent messages on Skype to Jamie in Australia and Rebecca in the States.  Soon i had Rebecca and her 6 month-old boy, Edward on my screen and, despite the slight time delay and the time zone difference, they were part of the gathering, chatting to various girls and also to the teachers.  Davina had to leave again and the teachers went on their way too.  More hugs and kisses!  Susan arrived and then there were fifteen of us sitting down for dinner.  Granted we were much later sitting down than we had planned but the head waiter’s strop-meter was hitting the danger zone and his blood pressure must have soared through the roof and through the ozone!  Fortunately we were enjoying each other’s company too much to let his attitude bother us.  During the meal we were able to chat on Facebook to several girls who couldn’t make the reunion in person and we also spoke with Helen on the phone.  Melissa called Rebecca and completely forgot that she was making an international call on her mobile (a charity collection will be taken to get her out of debt once the bill arrives!).

We had such an amazing time.  After the meal we went back through to the lounge and continued chatting until one by one we each slipped away, some to home and family, some to hotel rooms.

Saturday morning there were five bleary-eyed recycled teenagers.  Some of us managed solids for breakfast before we packed up, checked out and headed into Yarm for a final cuppa in Strickland and Holt and then the final farewells came to pass...

[I don’t think this will be the end of my writing about the experience by any means but that’s the blow-by-blow account finished!  Apologies for any errors or omissions.  Please feel free to enter corrections by way of comments on the blog or email me directly and i’ll edit the entry as need be!]