Friday 9^th November 2007

Sally Bowie (Carr) was keen to hold a Fest in Leicestershire and went to great trouble to choose a suitable date – it would have to be after half term (Sally has two daughters at Tudor) and before the Christmas rush! Sadly a few prep schools had a late half-term, which threw her numbers slightly. Sally and Robin’s beautiful Grange, a short distance from Market Harborough, was a perfect venue not only for Leicestershire OTs but for those from Rutland, Nottinghamshire and Cambridgeshire. Her guests were of varying vintages and it was lovely to see mother and daughter OTs Susan Darby (Simonds) and Louise Newton (Darby) as well as Jo Riley-Smith (Farnsworth), Emily Eadie (Mortenson), Henrietta Bolton Carter, Vanessa Fairhead (Thornhill), Emma Leeming (Woodward-Fisher), Caroline Bird (Brankin-Frisby), Cags Gilchrist (Walker) and Lavinia Tomkins (Lowther). Sally had also invited Diana Muirhead who was delighted to meet up with many of her star netball players.

It was a wonderfully relaxed lunch party, much laughter and reminiscing mostly about the years of Margaret Blyth and her inimitable style, the eccentricity of some house staff and the affection that they all had for Lavinia Jenkinson who used to teach French in the Golden Hind which is long gone but where the ‘new’ but now ‘old’ dining room used to be.

SB