At last! Someone else who remembers! I was beginning to think perhaps I'd dreamed it up. SMT was how Sister Marie-Therese signed school reports, and those of us upon whom she never smiled but glowered used to imagine a little 'u' in there and nicknamed her Smut! I recall all those teachers bar Mrs Green (perhaps she was Miss someone when I was there?). Our biology teacher was a Mrs Van Der Koon (Koen?) who gave us a sex lesson, all about frogs mind, delivered to the clock on the wall at the back of the biology lab!
I remember queueing for lunches, but they weren't so good in my day - they came in aluminium tins in the back of a van from the education dept's city centre kitchens - cold lumpy potatoes with blackspots in, gritty lettuce in summer, and everything tasting of aluminium.
We were allowed to run riot a bit on foundresses' day, and we would turn sky parlour into a haunted house and charge juniors sixpence to be admitted and have goo spread on them and cotton threads dangled in their faces, to the ghostly sounds we made. All funds for charity tho.
The school outfitters, Henry Barrie of St Anne's Square, gave an annual prize for progress, though it was rumoured it went to whoever had bought the most uniform. I was never going to win this, as I was wearing the same gaberdine in the upper sixth that I'd started out with in first year! My parents couldn't afford to replace it, so the two foot hem gradually got lowered each year, but the coat wouldn't meet in front eventually, and the sleeves gave it the look of a straight-jacket! No wonder SMuT glowered at me. She didn't approve of poverty. My elderly next door neighbour used to tell me to enjoy my school days, since they would be the best days of my life. If she were still around today, I'd be able to contradict her. Almost every day of my life since then has been deliriously happy by comparison!