A SPIFFING TALE OF GIRLS SCHOOL HIGH JINKS
"Dearest Ma
An exciting letter from your loving daughter about a school trip we had last week. Miss Python, our English teacher, arranged a trip to the Cope Auditorium, Loughborough, to watch a play, 'Daisy Pulls It Off', about a girls' school by a group called the Falcon Players
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What a spiffing wheeze! The school was just like ours - except all the girls were ladies, if you see what I mean. On the bus back, everyone said I could have been Daisy, she was so like me. A lady called Cathy played her: she was kind, brave and so intelligent (I am blushing!). She won a scholarship from a comprehensive school and had to face all sorts of nasty accusations and bad treatment by two snobbish 'pigs', Sybil and Monica, who thought she was too poor and working class to be there. The two ladies, Jill and Janet really enjoyed their parts, Jill with her flighty pigtails and Janet whose eyes seemed to be as big as saucers.
Beryl and Meryl used to bully me at first: they tied me up and dropped me in a bath full of cold water - my best chum Maisie dragged me out just in time. Daisy had a best friend too, Trixie. Rachel played her really well. I said to Maisie, "She's such a brick", but Miss Python went, "Shush!" and glared at me.
Anyway, dearest ma, Sybil and Monica had a big change of heart when Daisy rescued them from a cliff in a raging storm. That was dramatic and everybody clapped. I wanted Daisy to push them over the edge and say it was an accident. Beryl and Meryl are chums with me now after I'd doctored their cocoa and put them in the san. (and the lavvy) for a week.
I liked the other girls too. Liz and Kathy were such good eggs as the older prefects. I could understand Trixie having a - but we won't go into that. Jenny was always skipping and waving her arms about and Katerina came on side later though I'd have given her a Chinese burn for being a sneak earlier. The teachers were - teachers, all right in small doses. They always forget they were kids once. Miss Granville could have been Miss Python's twin sister and the head, Miss Gibson, just like Miss Meldrew (old Mouldy!) our head. There was a bolshy Russian who turned out a good sport. Not like our Mr Mzczsjerak - nobody understands him. Daisy discovered her dad that she thought was dead, working at the school. A coincidence or what? "My dad's dead - dead drunk," I whispered to Maisie but everybody looked daggers at me. Just a joke, ma. We know he's not (very often!) Sorry!!
As we left I heard someone say the play was a send-up. Something about girls' books in the 30s. What rot! What piffle! Tonight we'll have a midnight feast and dig up the flower beds looking for buried treasure - or that'll be our excuse if we get caught! Look out for the play, ma, 'Daisy Pulls It Off'. You'd enjoy it. Must dash to give Beryl an apple-pie bed and put a toad in Meryl's jimjams!
Your loving daughter,
Dizzy Meredith"
(Review by Roy Jones)