witches britches

built for comfort, not for speed

I spent my last year of primary school at Shelford C.E.G.G.S. in Melbourne in 1968, before my father took a sabbatical that saw us living firstly in Germany and then in the USA. My favourite teacher was Mrs Marjorie Pownall, who led us on observational expeditions “into nature” and had us examining our small world closely and making drawings of what we found. It was she who had us all take a piece of string as long as we were tall, tie it so that it formed a loop and then lay it on the ground before making a hand drawn map of all that was in it. She read us “The Railway Children” by Edith Nesbit, with all the voices perfectly articulated. She was tiny and brown with brown curly hair and looked like a pixie. I loved her.