15. Pat Meara
Miss Meara (pronounced Mara) was Australian, or at any rate had lived there. She did not have much of an Australian accent but did not quite sound pure English either. In my later years at Caldecott, she looked after the upstairs dormitories in the West Wing. She was small, slightly dark-skinned and had, I would say, a very strong-willed personality. I doubt if there was much messing about when she was in charge. As a senior boy, it sometimes fell to me to “babysit” for her on Friday evenings. “Babysit” in this case meant sitting in her room while she attended staff meeting. I was there just in case anything happened but as far as I can recall, nothing ever did. I just sat there reading and helping myself to her instant coffee. I suppose my temporary young charges were fast asleep. If they had known I was in the room, not Miss Meara, I am sure a few energetic pillow fights would have broken out at the very least. When Miss Meara came up from the drudgery of the staff meeting, I was usually invited to have another cup of coffee and we talked a bit. She was something of an expert on recent translations of the Bible and introduced me to “The Jerusalem Bible” at a time when “The New English Bible” was still stuck at the New Testament and looked like never getting any further. I made a trip to Canterbury to buy my own copy of “The Jerusalem Bible”. It was also Miss Meara who introduced me to “The Bible as History”, a book that showed with archaeological evidence that far more of the Biblical events had demonstrably happened than was normally supposed. Presumably I did not only talk to her about religion but that is the particular door she opened to me. As I recall, she later married a man who lived down the Ridgeway, near the junction with the A20, and settled down a stone’s throw from Caldecott without having anything further to do with it.