Written By Matthew Eastley
Room at the top
I usually prefer pictures with people in them but this particular image takes me back to those days when I would stare out of the window across Sidcup Place pondering what life had to offer beyond St Mary’s.
This was taken from the very top of the school and is surely a view that most boys who went to St Mary’s will recognise. Unofficially known as the ‘French room,’ it was reached by turning right at the very top of the main central staircase, climbing up a couple more steps and going through some swing doors.
This took you to a small access area. To the right was a classroom which doubled up as the music room before a new purpose built room was built as part of the 1979 extension. This class was my form room (2A) in 1978/79.
But taking a couple more steps on the left would take you to this room which afforded this rather impressive view across Chislehurst Road, the pitch and putt course, Sidcup Place and beyond.
Down the years, the likes of Adrian Jarvis, Fr Tom Goonan, Neville Wilkinson, Paul Juckes and Susan Worthington would all have plied their trade in here, holding up a biro and proclaiming ‘c’est un stylo’ to wide-eyed boys.
Many a hour was spent daydreaming in that room. I remember during one lesson, Mrs Worthington telling us that a boy from the year above us (1976 intake) had taught her a new word. Our ears pricked up, thinking it was going to be something slightly risque. It turned out to be the disappointingly dull adjective ‘cosmic.’
John Kane and I used to try to sit next to the window and, to while away the time, play a game called ‘Ford v Vauxhall’ or ‘Austin v Morris’ and count the makes of cars as they went by.
What I should have been doing is concentrating on the exploits of the Marsaud family in the Longman Audio Visual filmstrip.
But with no disrespect at all to Mrs Worthington, sometimes that rolling greenery outside la fenetre seemed to hold more promise.
Not the greatest image admittedly but who can resist a Terrazzo-tiled step? When I saw them after 40 years, the years rolled away and I was back at the St Mary’s I remembered
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