[Edna Bold reflects on the life of her colleague Alice Booth, head of the Junior and Infant Department where Edna was a teacher in the 1920s]

[Alice Booth] had a special liking for folk music and dancing. She held community sing songs in the school hall. Each child and each member of staff acquired an enormous repertoire. Even now I never hear The Three Gypsies, The Cuckoo, The Nightingale, The Tailor and the Mouse, Shenandoah, etc., etc., but she is there playing and singing with the whole of her intense, vibrant personality. I see her as May Day approaches […] literally pushing the children through the intricacies of a maypole dance to the tune of Come Lasses and Lads[.] The Double Plait, The Single Plait, The Spider’s Web haunted all our dreams [...]

During the Christmas holiday before she died, we gathered as usual for the [staff] Christmas party […]

As usual, the meal finished, the table cleared, the furniture moved, the small card tables arranged, the card games began. As usual the sing song round the piano brought the party to an end.