Ex-student Jo invites me round for a meal every now and then, maybe to thank me for all those years of baby-sitting Ella (who is now 17!) and helping out on the allotment. I will tease Ella when dishing out the food: when she says “a bit”, I will give her one tiny morsel (less than half a mouthful) or, in the case of countables like peas or Brussels sprouts, just one.
Pub colleague Matilde was given a box of chocolate the other day and came into the staff room to share them. I said to Lee, the other person in the room, “Take the whole box and give one back to her.”
When I went back to Singapore in 2002 for a reunion of our batch (1971–1972) at Raffles Institution (RI), Balan, who was giving me a lift to the event, said he’d arranged to meet Siva at the Singapore Cricket Club for a beer before going to Raffles City (the site of the old RI) for the reunion party. We arrived to find Chin Tuan already ensconced at the bar, looking like he’d been there a little while. He shook hands with Siva and Balan, then turned to me, “I know the face but can’t quite place the name.” (I’d last seen Chin Tuan in 1972.) As he was having trouble coming up with a name, Siva prompted him, “The naughtiest girl in the school.” Chin Tuan immediately produced my full name, which is not a common name. And after all these years as well!
It was certainly new to me that I was the naughtiest girl in the school!!
(Singapore, 2002; London, 2010–17)
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