Autobiography
After leaving Morgan in June 1995, I spent the next three years training as a Primary School teacher. During my final term at Dundee Training College, my teaching practice took me to Dundee High School. While I was there a post in the Junior School became vacant and I was persuaded by the Head of the Junior School to apply (I must have done something right to make him think I would be suitable for the post).
August 1958 saw me take up my first teaching post in the school Morgan pupils always considered to be “The Opposition”. However I must say that the next three years were very happy ones in a school that had a very similar ethos to Morgan.
In July, 1961 I was married to Peter Close, also a teacher. At that time High School did not employ married women on their staff so I had to leave. As Peter taught in Madras College, St. Andrews, our first home was in the nearby village of Strathkinness. Once settled into Fife, I managed to get a teaching post in one of the St. Andrews’ primary schools and remained there for the next three years until our daughter, Elaine, was born. She was followed two years later by our son, Christopher!
In 1969 we moved to a house in St. Andrews where I am still living. Elaine started school at Madras College primary but unfortunately it was a time of educational change and Madras primary was closed and all the classes were moved to a newly built primary school in the town. The school was on an open-plan system where the children seemed to be able to wander around the classes at will and where a child was only taught to read once he or she asked to do so. I am getting onto my high horse now but these methods were not for me.
My husband and I decided to remove Elaine from this environment and in 1972 she and Christopher became pupils at Dundee High School. As luck would have it, once again a teaching post became vacant and it was offered to me. (By this time the school had moved into the 20th century and accepted married women onto the staff). This suited me down to the ground because it meant that the children could travel with me each day across to Dundee.
It was quite amazing how many Morgan F.P.s were on the staff of High School at that time. No wonder High School had such a good reputation! I remained on the staff for the next twenty two years, the last few years as senior teacher in charge of Primary V1 and V11.
I loved every minute of my teaching career – I had never wanted to do anything else but teach and it proved to be a very rewarding profession not just in the classroom but taking the children on school trips, watching them and encouraging them on the sports field and generally seeing them develop into young adults.
However a new phase in my life was beckoning. As Peter had already retired in 1992, I decided to join him and in 1994 became one of the happy band of retired teachers. As both our children were now settled into their careers, Elaine in London and Christopher in Edinburgh, this now gave us the freedom to do some travelling, something Peter and I both enjoyed. I have wonderful memories of trips to South Africa, Costa Rica, a great many of the states in U.S.A. and the east and west coasts of Canada as well as the European countries. We even sampled cruising. In between we made time to spend time with our daughter in London and our son in Edinburgh.
I was dealt a great blow in January 2006 when Peter died suddenly after a short illness. Life has again changed and for a long time it was strange having no one to make plans with and with whom to carry out these plans but I am lucky to have a great many friends, many of them friends from school, and we have great times together with many laughs as we reminisce about our schooldays and "recall with pleasure our dear 'Morgan' on the hill".
St Andrews, July, 2010
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