Memories are the making of a book like this: set them alongside facts and a story emerges. Some people can hardly remember anything about childhood, never mind school -- they 'put it behind them' -- while others have what seems like total recall. If the latter take pleasure in writing then memories may be shaped, and a few go as far as putting them into print. Word-processors come to the aid of even quite elderly women nowadays. The one who 'reconstructed' the wartime experience of George Square -- inquiry plus memory -- was glad to have been nudged into organising her notes from a time, years ago, when she helped to organise a reunion. Another old girl, dux of a different school, sent seven thousand words beautifully hand-written in a notebook. A telephone inquiry confirmed that this was not a fair copy ('no time to do it twice') nor was it a careful construction. It reads very well, despite apologies: 'I'm afraid the request landed at a difficult time of year -- I didn't think I'd find so much to write.'

Once the process of bringing back to mind is begun, memories increase -- perhaps by interview, or listening to a guest speaker on the subject of schooldays (one group imaginatively hosted a 'Crème de la Crème Tea'). It may work better in association with others, but reading about schools in general regenerates thoughts of one school in the solitary page-turner. Memories tend to be positive, which probably explains the adage that schooldays are 'the happiest days of your life'. Unhappy days surface less often. Commanding headmistresses always remain. Favourite teachers are often credited with a positive influence, usually put down to 'personality'. They are rarely praised for lessons taught, exercises marked, or the actual work of teaching. At the other extreme, few people think to mention these daily sessions in the playground where, it has been argued (by me among others) children learn to be social beings through their play. Former pupils have had interesting things to say about most of the topics arranged here in chapters, but memories cannot always be pigeon-holed for the sake of a theme. Some are too particular to mean much to anyone who was not at that school then. You had to be there. But curious, wonderful stories about school life remain to be told. If there were no other justification for the unclassifiable collection which follows, it would be that so far nothing has been said about school dinners. Food takes first place here with a variation on the dormitory feast of schoolgirl fiction. It comes from St Hildans looking back to their boarding-school days in the Edwardian period -- under the influence of Angela Brazil. The school's cubicled dormitories were photographed for the prospectus, but the place chosen on this occasion was a music room on the top floor. On lights duty, Mademoiselle had reported to higher authority: 'A quick firm step approached the door. Rat-tat-tat! We were chilled to the core. This must be the H.M. herself. We all looked at each other in despair, then quietly scuttled around trying to cover up the goodies which had so delighted us a few minutes before. Rat-a-tat again -- "Open your door at once!" Someone reluctantly turned the key. What a funny bunch we must have seemed. She looked round coldly and said, "Do you not know that night is not the time for eating but for sleeping? Get a tray and take all this fine collection down to the kitchen. It is all confiscate." Then Gussie Graves Law stood up (how pretty she looked with her blue eyes matching her dressing gown and her fair loose hair falling to the shoulder -- how could anyone resist her?). She seized a plateful of éclairs, and holding it out said, "Please eat those at once, Miss Stoltz, they won't keep." The H.M. pulled out her handkerchief and seemed to ram it against her mouth. . . The last we heard as we filed out was, "Don't trail your eiderdowns on the stairs that way." This was our first full-scale midnight feast, but let no one think it was our last.'