It wasn’t always the bike sheds. Sometimes it was the tennis pavilion. Or, in winter, the air vent near the boiler room. We fondly imagined that the teachers had no idea, of course, that it was here that we congregated to gossip, apply illicit lipstick, smoke forbidden cigarettes or meet one of the boys from the neighbouring school. It was here that romance lurked in the shadows…or occasionally in the bushes… where the abhorred cherry-red beret, otherwise worn at the regulation angle, was discarded and where the horrid white socks were exchanged for more womanly hosiery before we left the premises.

Whilst the majority of the girls still studiously spent their time on more acceptable pursuits in the library or debating society, we were the rebels… the bad girls of the Grammar School… the ones who would be regularly hauled in front of the terrifying deputy headmistress for our perfidy…