The teacher said: “Sit there you two girls, that’s your desk”. We sat and looked at each other, new school so both new girls together. “My name is Judith”, she said. I laughed and said “So is mine”. That was the start of a life-long friendship. We were eleven years old. We became known as ‘big Judith’ and ‘little Judith’. We sat together in all our classes from form 1R to 4R. Jud was a very good shot-putter, I tried and failed with javelin. They put us in different houses, so sometimes we were pitched against each other. But otherwise, almost always we were together. Mr Parkin, one of our teachers would look down over the stair-well and say: “You two are always last into class and first out” which to be fair we were. Jud became a prefect, which was handy for me. When I didn’t want to go outside I just hung around and if challenged we would we would make up reasons why I was walking round with her. A student teacher started at the school and all the girls thought he was fabulous. One day he called out: “Wait behind, Judith!” I insisted that he meant me, and Jud was not pleased. After the lunchbreak she asked what he wanted me for. I told her that he had given me a glass jar, a pair of tweezers, some water and told me to collect as many worms as possible for dissecting after lunch. She laughed like a drain! Another time we were in the middle of a lesson, sitting at the back as usual when she noticed a bird singing a very melodic tune and whispered something to me about it. I started to giggle, and when she joined in the teacher spotted us and told the class to wait until we were more behaved. What a mistake, the whole class joined in, we were helpless. We giggled a lot, at nothing really, but one of us could always start the other off. We were both called Judith, both left-handed and lifelong friends. Thank you for the years of laughter, love and friendship. Goodbye Judith, sleep well.