Every Sunday boarders all went off to church. With Joan Duckett, Unity and Bobby Moff at and a few others, I went to Mowbray Presbyterian Church. Miss Elliott (Aunt Fanny), our matron, gave each a tickey for collection and the few pennies required for our bus fares there and back. In summer we all wore white dresses and wide-brimmed white panama hats with special gold-embroidered hatbands (but this headgear was discarded before I left Rustenburg), and in winter our dresses were navy and we had felt hats. For everyday the school uniform was a blue cotton blouse, a navy pleated serge gym with the girdle round our hips, black shoes and stockings and a light straw hat with the blue and brown school band.

Skirts were creeping up at that time, but Miss Kemp did not approve of very short ones. Our dresses had to be one inch below our knees, and nobody was allowed to have too short a gym; if a girl looked as if hers was too short, she had to kneel down straightbacked for her gym to be measured - if it was more than one inch above the floor she had to lengthen it. We kept our gym tunics tidy by regularly tacking the pleats and putting the gym under our underblankets and sleeping on them overnight.

I wonder if I was still wearing Liberty bodices then - I don�t think so, but I certainly started �bust bodices� after I had told Mother that �everybody� wears them when she queried my need for some. I got my way, and made my own just like other people�s - a piece of plain white material with wide elastic at the back, and ribbon straps. There was little shaping needed, as the aim in those few years was to have a flat bosom. A little later I was into Kestos bras, a style which, with its small cups and long elastic ties, was easy to copy. Diapers were still in use as sanitary towels, but soon for an easier life disposable S.T.s became available. Freda Mally was the first of our friends to use the latter, as her parents, being American, did import and introduce to us many new ideas.

Rustenburg was pushed for space when I was there. It was housed in the historic buildings on Simon van der Stel�s site. The classrooms and Bleby Hall were scarcely adequate, and the boarding accommodation was limited to about 45 boarders, with small dormitories of about five girls in the Cottage and the Lodge, and two larger ones in the Main House. There were netball and tennis courts in the grounds, but for hockey we went to a leased field, and before I left tennis courts had been built at Erniville or Charlie�s Hope, properties on the Camp Ground Road which had been bought as the site for the new High School. The Junior School is still on the old site.

For swimming we went to Claremont Baths, and here again I thoroughly enjoyed the sessions but was disconcerted to find how much better swimmers the up-country girls were than we were. Those of us who had been brought up to swimming in the sea simply didn�t compare with those who had had regular access to pools.