Your Space -- K

Alison Kirby

 

E-mail from Alison Kirby received 1 September 2009    kjmiller@nildram.co.uk

Well...where do I begin?

Firstly thank you so much for creating this site and for making Bush ‘real' again. What I wouldn't give to go back in time and stand in the tea queue, starving after a hard class with Miss Percy. Sometimes the queue would trail all the way down the stairs to The Dive - that corridor of tuck boxes, drinks machine, day girls area and of course the piano room where I had many lessons with Mrs Parker.

Then there was the covered walk way that I'd swing on between Charters Towers and the dorm where my time at Bush began with nanny. Remember the fire drills climbing down the vertical ladder?! Also doing dares after lights out, running round the long tables in the middle of the room.

Other memory snippets from 1976 - 1981:

•  Wearing headbands and pink and white spotted dresses in the summer
•  The crunch of resin under ballet shoes
•  Cleaning tea trays and serving food
•  Weekly phone calls home trying to say goodbye after the pips
•  The dreaded weigh in at the beginning and end of every term
•  Feeling sick after eating too many sweets on a Saturday
•  Floundering in the ‘swimming pool' in summer
•  Mrs Cherry giving me an essay on, “Why I must not climb out onto the roof”
•  Christmas parties in the hall
•  Deserted viz weekends because I lived too far away to go home
•  The summer shows (the Grand Défilé CD sent shivers down my spine)

The list is endless but I'm sure others will fill the gaps. The days were disciplined but always full of fun and adventure as all formative years are. The work ethic and self sufficiency has stayed with me and despite not taking up the dance profession I consider myself privileged to still be a Bush Davies girl at heart.

After gaining a degree in art and design, I ended up working for local government where I am currently a team leader managing procurement and web systems. I am married to Keith Miller and still live and work in Preston, Lancashire.

Alison Miller (née Kirby or Kirby Grip or Slow Kirby) - I was a late developer ok!

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