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Cheltenham oh beautiful spa town!
The picture shows the municipal offices of Cheltenham. Beautiful isn't it? Ha ha.
Well people here is where I spent some of the best years of my life (age 15-18), in the days when I had no wrinkles, no
cellulite round my thighs, and plenty of youthful energy. I cannot recall what I did in those few
years, except that I seemed to be a far more cultured person then, no beer-swigging (but plenty of strong spirits!!), and a lot of time
playing in piano quartets, orchestras, jazz bands and the like.
The college orchestra was admittedly not of a particularly high standard, but we did have some very talented players.
There are a few friends of mine whom I would like to mention specifically... Shireen Kassam, who
having been at St. Mary's, London to learn how to chop up corpses is now a
doctor. She is an amazing pianist and violinist, and she played in the National Youth Orchestra until she got fed up with it.
Then there is Hermione Gough, who read Economics at the other place
until she joined the Foreign Department (I think). She plays the flute, the piano, AND the viola (which she taught herself) to a very high standard (grade 8+).
And Sarah Nichols, of course, who went to Christchurch college,
where she played the viola in the Oxford University Orchestra (I can't remember whether she is in the Symphony or the Philharmonic)
and where she just
won a music exhibition.
Samantha Monk, who was in the same quintet as moi, went on to St.
Hugh's to do I gave up --- Physics!! (urgh...) before joining an investment
bank.
And there are many many more.... but I cannot mention them all. I hope there will be a
Cheltenham alumni page soon. Someone do something!!!!
And what college did I go to? Well, it is...you guessed it, the renowned Cheltenham ladies' College, known for its petty rules and all, but the last time I heard, everything is
different now -- that is, no compulsory church services (yes you can lie in on Sundays!!), no tucking in your shirt, and prefects are no longer immortal. Well so far it goes, anyone
from Cheltenham reading this page, send me a mail! And don't forget to sign my
guestbook!!CLC did not have a web page when I first started this web page, as the "network room"
I went to boasted only computers in a network of their own (meaning, of course, that you
have nothing so wonderful as internet or even e-mail). But wahey!! Do
times change or what? You can now go to the CLC web page by clicking on
the picture below.
What did I do in Cheltenham? Well, I went there when I was 14 (3rd year), and things were pretty nasty back then. You see, it WAS an all girls' school..... and people in the first five years live
in junior houses. There are many of them, and I was at least fortunate enough to be in St. Margaret's
(not our university church no), which was furthest away from the main college campus, and right next to
our sports fields. Along with Glenlee and Falconberg (all near the playing fields too), we were the best house at sports. I wasn't particularly good at
hockey (my chin got bashed in by a short-corner swing and it was black
and swollen for two weeks) and I never did give lacrosse a go (I thought it was a silly game, you have to run around twiddling this stick), but I did play in the
basketball team for a while. I also played in the
college second netball team....
There were other things like swimming (we had our own pool!!), cricket, rounders and all, but on the whole I think I just lazed around......
When I got to lower sixth (called SFC1, standing for Sixth Form College 1, just like Oxbridge Cheltenham had its own fancy vocabulary), I left St. Margaret's
and went to one of the sixth form houses, Beale. We had to have the nicest house staff -- they were drunk most of the time and didn't care much what everyone did,
as long as they have seen our faces at 10:30 p.m., they are satisfied that we hadn't run away.
It was at Beale when I made some of my best friends. After all, except for the weekends, there was nowhere to go after supper (no going out after 7:00 p.m.) and so
there was nothing better to do but to chat chat and chat. In case any of you guys are reading this page, hi!!! Some of my best friends:
Shahrina, a budding lawyer who studied at SOAS
and is now practicing in Malaysia; Chermaine, a double scholar (sick eh?) at the other
place who is now working at Morgan Stanley DW; and
Katie Kwan, now taking a couple of years off Goldmann
Sachs to go to business school.
For A levels (my they seem such a long time ago) I did physics, chemistry, further maths, further maths and music... I achieved okay grades for three of them and really atrocious ones for the other two (which I would rather keep a secret from my tutors!!!)
I don't think I did much in terms of work and revision for any subject, most of time was spent riding, rowing and eating
loads. But then anyone who knows me now probably isn't surprised at all....
We spent a lot of our weekend in the local pubs and other restaurants which served strong spirits!! Our fave hangout had to be , where we nicked off a copy of their
cocktail list each and ticked off everyone as we ordered them, hoping to have tried all of them before we left Cheltenham. I
personally went through about half of them....
Well I think that is all I can say about Cheltenham and my five years there. I haven't put much photos in this page as most of them are taken when I was drunk, and I don't want to give a bad impression do I now??
If you want to have a look at some Cheltenham pages (though not of the college itself, I am afraid), please click
here
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