Notes left about the early life of Heather Valmai Jones (nee Jenkins), found after her death on 18 May 2006. Going to school at St Francis’ Church in Holloway Road. Fish and chips too expensive to have – sometimes Mum wasn’t hungry. Hurting my left wrist, just after I had learned to write – hence my ability to write with right hand as I was just taught! Whereas my left hand writing has taken on frills and furbelows as all do! Sitting at dinner table, epergne between (me &) Mum. I find the fact that I was choking on a sausage skin in the end stuck fingers down my throat! Always been scared of choking since. The cat letting out the rabbits by diving on top of the hutches and lifting the hook (from the eye) fastening. All of us out, with one torch trying, to catch them. I think there were 10 babies from Billy the English buck and the beautifully soft Dutch doe. Sitting down to dinner one weekend and Dad asking what the meat was – Mum said Rabbit – I shouted “Billy”?? None of us could eat him, probably just as well! Never knew what he died from probably old age or shock of the cats’ endeavours! 9 years – Hearing from someone by the Co-op that King George was dead In the garden heard Dad shriek and saw something fly out onto the grass. Dad had rubbed my wart with caustic soda stick (?) onto a cut whilst shaving instead of a styptic pencil. 11 years – Walking to the bus stop to catch coach to Hayling Island (?) when we got to the Co-op, there was my bike (having fetched some bread for sandwiches earlier that morning!) Must have been about 4 when there was a big row between Mum and Dad and Granny and Auntie Dean as Mum and Dad had left me with them and Granny has shut me in a room all day. Took many years before we saw Auntie Dean again. Going to Brighton to see Auntie Nanny (and Jean) went quite a few times. Auntie Nanny became my mentor for a few years 5-9? Then we stopped going. Why? Holidays (2) at Shanklin (I of W) Horseriding – making a friend – Doreen ? Passing 11+. Had 1st real bike. Gaining place to Headington Girls School – not wanting to go ‘cos they have to wear green knickers? – and the rest of the uniform. Mum & Dad let me choose – so went to Cheney School, one of the first intakes of girls. At 13 wanted to do Engineering but they wouldn’t let girls take it – Commerce instead – the following year they let girls take the path – pig sick! Joined choir early on, fairy chorus in Iolanthe then Mad Margaret in Ruddigore. Basher Baker was choir master – told me he wanted me for my good ear – keeping the other mezzos to the note in part singing! Special memory of Mr Harding, Metal work, who I nursed with spinal cancer years later – he remembered my 1st day as I was the only pupil to come down the path alone! He followed the highs and lows of all my time at Cheney, singing results, all recounted back to me whilst I kept him company through 3am – around 5am whilst the pain was and he could not have any more painkillers. Met up with Mick Hogg and Terry Wellstood around this time – they would have thought it was wrong to help nurse Mr Harding as he had been my teacher, but never was! And I didn’t! Mrs Harding gave me an engraved pen when he died and I lost it in Inverew Gardens, Scotland. Was so sad, searched and searched, reported it missing but to no avail. Sex lessons in the girls loo at Cheney. They all thought I was the font of all knowledge from experience – but I had a cunning plan on how not to let on I unusually didn’t know what they were talking about! After asking (sitting on the top of the stairs as she vacuumed) what a clitoris was and being told “I don’t know, I haven’t got one”! I started my regular trips to the Temple Cowley Library and Pauline. Pauline, the librarian, must have dreaded my arrival – but she enabled me to be well read – the theory then re-iterated at school the next week. Mind you, I never did find out which way up a bloke wanted ones hand to help him masturbate! Cross –country runs in bottle green knickers (with pocket) which involved running up Gipsey lane and …………………. Boyfriends- Doug, Tony Belcher then Ken? Congregational Church – plays, YPF and before that Pilots. Early on using the table as an air raid shelter. Between 8 – 9 years having Rheumatic Fever, Glandular Fever, Mumps and Measles – off school for a year – hearing Ray’s play on Morning Story – all about Pascal being born. Writing to him, his first fan letter. Not knowing it was Ray’s until shouting for Mum, saying “I know this story that is on the radio!” Her coming in to listen and then realising it was Ray’s. YPF Mr Green, Oxford Education Officer saying that No 5 Rupert Road was a home and No6 was a palace. Sunday School arguing that our God was the same as the God Red Indians worshipped on totem poles! Wearing my first new jacketand brown and white down – striped thin cotton one which was poo-pooed by the other girls. Learning to shoot with Mike Clarke and the terrible risk I took when up in my bedroom, I noticed Mick sat on his gate, across the road at an 45 degree angle. What a great idea it would be to shoot at the gate fastening, just under his bum to make him jump but also to show him how good I was. I was not expecting him to run across the road into the house and belt me. AND take the 22 pistol away from me. Absolutely no fear in me at the time that I could possibly miss. Continued on marksman streak with a beautifully crafted catapult with SQUARE elastic and a leather holder for a stone. Impressed Phil no end at Auntie Kay and Uncle John’s. Continued shooting at the range at Morris Garages later on. 22 (?) OK but didn’t like the punch into the shoulder with the 303! At about 4; Mum was expecting a friend with her little girl to visit, so presumably I had been told to be home in plenty of time for a “wash & brush up”. But I came home late, after the visitors had arrived. Totally nude on my tricycle saying “I got hot so I took my clothes off”! Mum supposedly then introduced me to the little girl in a white dress and her beautifully dressed mother. I must have wanted curly hair because I used to have my hair washed then with lengths of rags have it tie up in knots until it was dry or worse still, have to sleep in them. I had a doll called Joyce, who suffered from cold because she rarely had clothes on when placed in the pram. Junior school – St Christopher’s. Chicken Pox, from Christine on my 5th Birthday. Christine’s lovely dog Tinker. We only had cats. The most memorable was Tiger, joined by Tiger Tim. Tiger had so many live; watching the flames in the opne grate and jumping up the chimney to follow them. Mum knitted him pants which were regularly changed until his fur grew back. The he went missing and was found hanging from the chain link fence between us and the Simpkins’s by the gin trap in which his back leg had been caught. He then suffered the indignity of having to endure Tiger Tim’s arrival, I found this young cat being cruelly treated by Saletion (?) College boys in Crescent Road. I remember wading in fists flying and grabbing the cat. They were swinging it by its tail! Never to this day has it occurred to me that someone, somewhere lost this kitten all those years ago! Well, we took in this newcomer. It was great watching these two ‘Tigers’ learn to live with each other after the first…. St Christopher’s The infants is a blur, can’t even remember how many years I attended or if I stayed at St Francis’ for more than one year. Was Mr Halsey’s spelling tests on a Friday morning at the Infants or at the juniors next door? Appendicitis aged 11. Pain started when I was out for the day. With whom? Piano lessons in Holloway – piano playing by itself when I went in the front room. Mum and dad both thinking it was to get out of practising. Finally finding a mouse biting away at the felting and making a nest. Sitting at the top of the stairs listening to Dad teaching euphonium to Dougie Brand, cornet to Rupert Andrews. Dad playing and singing ‘Silver thread amongst the gold’ to Mum. Band contests at Neller Hall and Oxford Town Hall. Hearing the same ‘set’ piece played over and over again. Farcy Aviation winning over and over again. Oxford City Silver Band. Mr and Mrs Arnatt (Sylvia) Uncle Glynn teaching French Horn. Electric storm Rupert Road, everyone out watching when the lightening nearly got Jimmy Simpkins sitting on the fence. When Mr Clements set house on fire (bedroom smoking) and they couldn’t get Johnny out. I went into talk and persuade him, and the ceiling coming down just as we walked out together. The fire at 5 Rupert Road when an electrical fault sparked and hit the gas main to the cooker and heated the lead water pipe – fountain of fire and jet of water quenching it – in the corner of the kitchen. All services’ vans lined up in road, Fire, gas, Water, Electric and Telephone? Everyone making tea (as was the case with the Clements fire) Predicting hole in the road, coming down stairs & telling Mum that there was a big hole in the road – there wasn’t then but overnight one appeared on the corner of Rupert & Fairfax! Our area was known as Brasenose & Westfield and was once a dump for Morris Motors or Pressed Steel. Piano teacher Mrs King ? Round the corner from Ann Laws Kids played with – Alan ? Burden, Jimmy Simpkins, David Woodley, Johnny Clements, later on Malcolm. Skipping with rope tied around lamppost outside our house and Mrs Andrews. Cheney Whistling always, Mr ? No 8, saying how he missed my whistlingwhen I left Cheney, each day as I came home from school. Dad coming to meet me from choir practise and the shame as he put on a black plastic bag at the Slade cos it was pouring down with rain. Iolanthe, great to be part of a production. Roger Twicker et al were Peers chorus and I was a fairy! What pleasure it gave me. Becoming a prefect and thumping David Davis for swearing and cheeking Beryl Barry. Fire hydrant going off top of library stairs. Winifred ?, Philip Jones – Physics & Maths, Mr A Wainwright, Headmaster. Miss Hands, Domestic science. Christmas cake. Forgot to make my design, so on calling for Angela Eden, made it from the fretwork seat in her bathroom with pins & greaseproof. Put on show in the glass fronted cabinet in the school foyer. Ann Fothergill! Outward Bound to Capel Curig, North Wales with Maggie & Beryl. On our night out alone, hitching a ride in a car on the A5? In order to see Anglesey bridge. Beryl& Maggie in the back and I sat in front and struck the internal driving mirror and cut scalp badly, so we all went to Bangor Hospital. Got sent home on the train with someone else. By the time I returned to school I hadn’t fallen down a mountain, into a mine etc, etc. All because the 3 of us swore to secrecy, the fact that we had hitched a ride – against regulations. Telling Mr Bailey in the Human Biology class that I was adopted and then Marjorie Steele going home that lunchtime and telling her Mum. Returning to school that afternoon, having been told “So what? So are you?” At first she was excited but she became more and more strange after that. Never found out what happened to her. Audition for Ruddigore – taken by Mr Horner and Basher Bates, got the part of Mad Margaret by convincing “crying”. Can’t remember who I sang the Matter song with. Suez – Warmer Wainwright called a fire assembly and told us we were going to war – silly old fool – had most of the girls in tears. School outing after ‘O’ levels, supposed to be going to London, but went to Birdland at Bourton on the Water insead. Had the revere taken on my school dress by blue macaw called Captain, who had walked up my arm whilst being offered a peanut & sat on my shoulders for HOURS. Then being told to leave the bird alone by Winny! He just would not move! Leaving school, getting a job at Blackwells Export then walking down to Morris Garages asking to see General Manager and on being shown to his room, asking for a job! Got Kardex Clerk position with switchboard ever Friday lunchtime. Promoted to ground floor receptionist. Working for Tom / & Mr Cox, new sales (upstairs). Dicky Valentine photo of bum. Crown Prince _____ coming in to buy a car in to buy a car, ringing switchboard, on being asked who wanted Mr Cox, turned to him and asked. On telling Alma (Latvia) that Crown Prince ______ wanted him, was told “Pull the other one “ and phone slammed down! Tried again! In the end took him there myself and sorted Alma out later! Tannoy announcement re: accident on engineering floor. Ray?