He smiled when he caught me looking at him.  I smiled back but quickly looked away.  He was in his last year of secondary school and I was a year younger.

We lived a good way from the school and had to take a bus to the Bakers Arms and another to Walthamstow where our school was. It was a mixed school.  We wore navy uniforms with the St. George’s crest on the blazer – the girls had to wear berets showing the crest also.  White blouse or shirt and navy and maroon striped tie.  Short socks for the girls in summer and long ones in winter.  At lunchtime, the boys played at one end of the yard beside the art buildings.  The girls played on a netball court near the main school. Sometimes the boy’s football wandered into the girls area, and the girls passed it around between themselves until it was eventually retrieved. It always caused a flurry of excitement and competition between some of the groups of girls as to who could keep the ball the longest.

I had a crush on one of the older boys. I told no one. Hardly surprising!  He was a prefect. As a result of this title he wore a striped jumper.  We called him ‘Traffic Lights’.  John Lane was his name. He was tall with short blond hair.   After school, instead of getting the bus outside the school, myself and my friend Ann Mallon often waited for Traffic Lights and his friends to leave and we followed them home.  Not to their home exactly but quite a distance out of our way.  Then we got another bus back to the Bakers Arms.  I’m not sure if they ever knew they were being followed as we kept a good way behind them. Today you’d call us stalkers!!

In those days, there was no such thing as having a boyfriend while you were still at school or even letting it slip that you had a crush on someone.

One day I thought I heard a knock on the door.  There was no one there, except a white box that had been left on the step.  I rushed to the gate, looking left then right, and there he was, John Lane,  peddling as fast as he could down the road!  The box contained a Valentine’s card.  It had a white satin heart on the front with the words ‘to the best girl in the world’.  I was smiling from ear to ear and my heart did somersaults.  My first ever Valentine’s card.  He left school that year and that was it!