Those Hastings windows

I agree with Steve that it should be commemorated somehow. Meanwhile .....

some of you may have read this before - I wrote it for the end of Palace Chambers .....

In Poland, where I am now, and probably elsewhere as well, there are a lot of people who know the word 'Windows' from their computers, but not what windows really are.

I first worked at ih Hastings in summer 1978, with just a few months' teaching experience. There was a list of locations to choose from and Hastings was my second choice. (My first choice was Oxford.) I didn't know, and at the time I probably wouldn't have cared, that Oxford was just a summer operation, whereas Hastings was a year-round school, with a teacher-training department, even, and with enlightened and generous provision for in-service training. Anyway, I was happy to be given my second choice. I'd never really been anywhere in south-east England before. And everything about Hastings, starting with the journey from London on one of the old narrow-bodied diesel-electric trains, which some of you will remember, turned out to be far more interesting than I could have imagined. I came back in 1981, in response to a long handwritten letter of invitation. I think it was for two months, and then three, and then four, and I ended up staying eight years.

Eight years of continually expanding horizons and new perceptions. The windows at the front of Palace Chambers - which it used to be called, as some of you will remember - took on a symbolic significance, and I used to spend a lot of time looking out of them, a fact which was occasionally commented on by students and people observing my lessons.