Mad Cook
Master Chef
I loved the Chalet School series (English boarding school tales set in Austria in 1925 through to Switzerland in 1970). I was enthralled by the idea of boarding school. (I later taught in a mixed boarding school but I'm not sure whether "The Chalet School" helped my career or not ).
My other favourites were the Romney Marsh series by Monica Edwards. The stories were very well written and while the adventures were out of my league they weren't so far-fetched that the reader would think them silly. Oddly enough, when I was going to hand them on to my god-daughter, I read them again to see if they had stood the test of time (they were written between the late 1940s and the 1960s) they had done so. It's the test of a well-written children's book that it stands up to being read by an adult.
I also had a passion for the "Biggles" books by Capt W E Johns when I was eight or nine. Made me want to learn to fly. Quite by chance, when I did a stint working for British Gas (I got around a bit!) I won a prize in a competition which had various flying-related prizes. Some of the other women were quite shocked when I chose the flying lesson and I actually did it, while they were whingeing that the prizes were only for men. The prize coincided with the chance to buy Tetley. A hard decision had to be made and so the flying lesson was a one-off and I bought my lovely horse - couldn't afford flying lessons AND a horse.
My other favourites were the Romney Marsh series by Monica Edwards. The stories were very well written and while the adventures were out of my league they weren't so far-fetched that the reader would think them silly. Oddly enough, when I was going to hand them on to my god-daughter, I read them again to see if they had stood the test of time (they were written between the late 1940s and the 1960s) they had done so. It's the test of a well-written children's book that it stands up to being read by an adult.
I also had a passion for the "Biggles" books by Capt W E Johns when I was eight or nine. Made me want to learn to fly. Quite by chance, when I did a stint working for British Gas (I got around a bit!) I won a prize in a competition which had various flying-related prizes. Some of the other women were quite shocked when I chose the flying lesson and I actually did it, while they were whingeing that the prizes were only for men. The prize coincided with the chance to buy Tetley. A hard decision had to be made and so the flying lesson was a one-off and I bought my lovely horse - couldn't afford flying lessons AND a horse.
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