I grew up in Leicestershire, born in 1941 and around my twentieth year our local newspaper reported the story of Eileen’s reasons for her journey to Findhorn. I remember feeling intrigued and rather envious….I had been longing to feel the certainty within me of what she had experienced.

After very mixed life experiences (which I now count as a vague unconscious search) as an au-pair student in Germany, bi-lingual work in Switzerland, and two years flying as an air-stewardess, immediately after which a cut-short (two years) SRN training at a London hospital, my life took me to Paris for seven years where I worked at UNESCO. Returning to do a degree in London in German and French Literature was this latter that perhaps led to my “change of life”. I encountered Anthroposophy (esoteric science to complete natural science), and began training to be a Waldorf teacher. There was a new school starting in South West London very near to where we lived, and in my second year of training, I was asked to help out there temporarily until the permanent teacher arrived. This first for me very scary experience as a class teacher (with just five children) lasted longer than expected; a permanent teacher was found at the end of one year.

Our tutor, (now deceased) Brien Masters read out a list at the end of our training, of schools needing teachers. The name The Findhorn Foundation reverberated loudly in my ears! So after twenty one years the memory of Eileen surfaced with a ‘loud ring!’. It became an absolute necessity for me to come up to visit where Eileen had started, but it seemed a totally impossible idea for my then husband, Francis. He had wanted to become self-employed as an artist but Scotland was just far too far away from everything and everyone he knew!

Nevertheless, I wrote to Peter Klingeman who had come to Findhorn from a Stuttgart Steiner School to help set up the Moray Steiner School. I explained that I would love to visit the potential school and see what had become of Eileen’s work, but that I had difficulties. This elicited a phone call from him unexpectedly, which shocked my husband, but at least an invitation to come up just to see, which he couldn’t really object to.

Long story short….while here I met Judith Meynell, whose husband happened to have been the captain of Francis’s fencing team at school!! Through this realisation, Judith invited him to stay at Minton House with that very person and his family, and this led (after a little plotting involving an Experience Week) to Francis deciding for himself to accompany me and in my accepting the job offered me.

Drumduan 1989

One thing disturbed me. The job offered was for a group of children I felt were still too young (4/5 year olds) for a Class I. But the Class II children I had met, resonated so strongly in me that I felt them to be the ones I was meant to meet. I couldn’t understand how it had turned out so ‘wrong’. They already had a much loved teacher, albeit state school trained, (Annie Blampied) and I would have loved to have her as a colleague, but to me “her” class of children felt like “mine”. When finally, my husband decided for himself that he would like to migrate from London to Findhorn to paint, I was given another meeting where Peter Klingeman explained that, as Annie had decided to go to Emerson College and do the Steiner training, I was now being asked to take her class as Class II from end August 1986. How wonderfully, magically, synchronistic!