Hi Penny, yes it does seem likely, the trips by the Girls up to the Boys Grammar you mentioned were just starting when I left. I was interested in your references to "celtic" place names etc, and would appreciate any extra info. A Yorkshire lass who married a friend of mine was surprised how at home she felt in Dover. I suppose a lot of it was to do with the same dependency on coal, the sea and the land for your living, I think the pits are all closed now, the fish gone, and probably the land factory farmed for "efficiency". I'm sure that a lot of people in England, let alone the rest of the world think of Kent as a suburb of London. When I was at school the sense of Saxon identity was still strong, and I remember one history master saying that Harold's Corps d'elite were all Men of Kent (that means born South of the Medway for you furriners) and that we would have won at Hastings if the "Sussex peasants" hadn't broken ranks.

Small world isn't it?

Pete M