COINCIDENCES

This is the monstrous Bucks County Council HQ where Local Studies and the Record Office are housed in the bottom of this horrible building. Sorry, The Centre for Buckinghamshire Studies...It looks like a Reception class lesson where small children stick egg box bottoms onto cardboard... Can you tell I don't like it? It 'won' a TV competition some years ago for the most disliked building in the TV area.

Anyway, yesterday my friend Chris and I went into Aylesbury to continue transcribing the Bucks County Pauper Lunatic Asylum Admissions Register for our Stone Parish Records which we've been working on for 10+ years, on and off.

It's a quiet atmosphere in the Record Office where everyone is busy researching local and personal history so we try to be quiet as Chris reads from the register, which measures almost a yard wide when it's opened, and I transcribe the selected information straight into the computer. Yesterday it was an all-women table, plus one man, so was quite relaxed.

I heard one researcher talking to the staff (who are very knowledgeable) asking about Prestwood. (You do tend to 'ear-'ole' to conversations). I lived there for 20 years and taught for 14 or 15 years in the First school so, never averse to talking to strangers, said this. We got talking and she asked my name.

When I told her she said, 'You taught my son.' Further conversation revealed that he's now the deputy head of a school 'up country', I can't remember where. We had an audience by now, as you may imagine.

When I came home I found my class photos and there he was, dressed just as she said he was, in blue shirt, short trousers and grey jersey on which was pinned an 'I am 6' badge.

If I hadn't spoken I would never have found out that bit of information, which I passed on to another class teacher who had taught him as he moved up the school.

Ain't being nosey/curious/interested/helpful wonderful!

(The photo comes from the Images on BCC site).