I learnt the theory of movement, which I still teach sometimes. I was very, very ambitious to learn a skill.

I sort of was good at writing essays. I was never very good at mathematics, and I was never very good at algebra. I loved science, but I wasn't sure of it.

Once, the parental bed collapsed because all the children sat on it at once.

You never came home for lunch: you just stayed doing, playing, having fun, surfing, running round.

If there was a distraction I'd get up and jump out the window. I was quite out of hand. In schools like that I don't think they expect that girls are going to behave in such an outrageous fashion.

I had a quick ear and could pick up languages.

I spoke French a bit, and I could speak a bit of this and that, and when you were taught those things by people who couldn't really do it, you can do some pretty wonderfully, imaginative horrific things to teachers.