On Friday 29th April 2016 I spent the day at school celebrating its 130th Birthday. It also happens to be my last school birthday as I will soon be finishing school!
For those of you who are unsure of what school birthday it is pretty much the same as Founders Day, where you celebrate the founding of your school. In the morning we all sing happy birthday to the school (which I admit is a little weird!), also the Head Girl Team wheel the birthday cake down the hall so the headmistress can blow out the candles (again weird). Once the cake has had the official cut it is rolled back out of the hall and then its time to practise the special unique birthday service ( I will explain later). After the practise (which we had to repeat multiple times as apparently people lower down the school got it wrong!) we went back to lessons. At around 11:45 it was time for the actual service to start. During the service there are 3 hymns that are always sung. The first is ‘Be Still’, followed by ‘Praise to the Lord’ and finally ‘Now Thank We all Our God’. During the second hymn (this is the unique part) we all sing the first verse of the hymn inside the main hall, however, after this it is time to process out into the open quad. This is really nice as it has a pond in it and the whole school gather round and do the rest of the service outside. The service tends to finish at around 12:30 and everyone apart from the Upper 6 get to go home, however the U6 get to stay and have lunch with all the teachers and guests that are invited to the birthday. This was so nice, the lunch hall was transformed into a whole new room! It was just beautiful. The food was also miles better than what we have on a daily basis! I was sat on a table with one of my geography teachers a couple of guests and the headmistress. At first when I saw the seating plan I thought it was going to be a little awkward, however I feel like I had the best table as the conversation just flowed throughout the entire meal. We talked about where we are planning to go next year for uni, we are both are studying geography next year (so Mrs A my geography teacher was very happy!), we also talked about previous geography trips to Sorento and Iceland ( I have a few embarasing stories about Mrs A that was fun to tell the headmistress!). After the meal and the interesting conversations there were a couple of speeches, the first being from the head of junior school as she is retiring this year, her speech was all abour the changes she had made to the junior school over her time as head of junior school, which I do have to admit was a little dull as I pretty much hated the junior school that I went to. The second (much shorter) speech was from the headmistress, she wished all of the sixth form luck for the upcoming exams and also for the rest of our lives as we embark on new journeys into the real world! After this we all took some pictures and went home.
Now onto the outfit, which is probably the bit you actually wanted to read!
For my outfit I wore a dress from Dorothy Perkins that I have had for a while however, it still looks rather smart and my navy blue jacket is also from Dorothy Perkins. I was wearing two badges, one of which is my Prefect Badge and the other is a commemorative badge to celebrate the school’s 130th birthday. My heels were from Marks & Spencers (btw M&S shoes are super comfortable and not that much more expensive than New Look, and such good quality!).
It’s weird that I’m writing this and that I will never go to another school birthday again. School birthday for me is a day I will never forget as it is so unique to what my school do and I am so glad that the weather was on our side and we could process out into the quad. This was my 9th school birthday and by far it was the best one!
Thank you to everyone who made it so special!
~Ciara~
