Friends of my childhood and the Queen's corsets

My partner Mike T served his time as a tool maker at the Vickers Armstrong Aircraft company, the site of which is now a housing estate. He says that my new bra from Rigby and Peter , who hold the Royal Warrant ,is soundly engineered, even a bit over engineered. So it should be for £66.75. I didn't see the Queen waiting for new underpinnings. Nothing so vulgar as a tape measure is used, just mirrors on all sides and assistants, competent and kind, who look at droopy women all day long and send them out into the world hoisted, harnessed and happy.
Then to the Chez Gerard restaurant behind the National Theatre for a reunion with school friends. We first met 60 years ago,nervous new boys and girls at Bishopshalt School in Hillingdon. I wore a second hand WAAF coat , a home made satchel and scratchy wool stockings-so much for the levelling effect of the uniform. We all caught the work ethic, learned to listen to classical music, survived ballroom dancing lessons,always put the date and year on our History homework so that future historians would be able to place it,found out how to use an index and always, and I mean always, got our homework in on time. So lovely to see them all.