My first school was a school on Richmond Hill called the Old Vicarage. I believe now it is quite a posh sort of school but in my day it wasn’t. It was only one year after the war had ended so things were still rather chaotic. When I was 7 my mother went back to work fulltime – she worked in the city – so I got myself home from school each day on the bus. I walked into Richmond and got the bus, came home, had my own front door key from the age of 7 – as children did in those days. They were allowed to.

It was a small prep school and we used to play netball in Richmond Park. The school only had a very small playground and no playing field. So we played in Richmond Park. I then took the entrance exam when I was 9 for Surbiton High and I got a place there.