The Magical Group

When you hear that Alan and I live in the south of Spain, if this conjures up images of ex-pats lounging around a pool with a G&T, erase them. We were part of that wave of students who came abroad in the 70s to study the language and soon realized that we needed to teach English in order to survive. Like many others, we found that we enjoyed living Spain and so settled here, still teaching, and raised a family. We first lived in Seville in the 70s, then moved to Antequera - a smallish town north of Málaga- in 1980 to start up our own language school in partnership with another British couple as a way of sharing childcare and work. Some fifteen years and three children later, we moved down to the coast to Rincón de la Victoria, about 15km. east of Málaga and opened another school. Since then, I’ve been back to University to retrain in the Spanish system and have been working as a teacher in State secondary schools for the last seven years – it’s great, you get paid holidays, sick leave & don’t usually have to work in the evening, unlike my years of being self-employed.

Our eldest, Sam, has just finished a Ph. D. in Physics at Granada University ( all our kids have come through the Spanish education system) and is doing post-doctoral research at Oxford for at least year. Thanks to our elder daughter, Abby, we now have two small ( 3 & 5 years old) Spanish grandchildren, while our youngest, Jazz ( from Jasmin, but she prefers music to flowers and plays the flugel horn ) is nearing the end of a degree in Psychology from Málaga University.

I used to sing with a local choir for a few years, until work commitments made it too difficult to get to rehearsals, but I’m afraid my first soprano days are long gone. Instead, I’ve discovered the delights of singing harmony with the contraltos.

The chances of my getting over in October are pretty slim – although I will be in Sussex in July. Anybody live around there? I’d love to hear how everybody’s getting on. The only one I’ve been in touch with now and again is Andi Broom (now Collis) as we were together in Seville years ago. The only thing I really missed about school was the music, and I still sometimes catch myself humming snatches of “The Silver Swan” or “Your Shining Eyes”. When I mentioned the madrigal group to Jazz, she did a double take and looked rather surprised. She had misheard it as the “magical” group. Nice, don’t you think? Brian Manners as magician!

Jenni Jones
P.S. Please pass on my regards to Mr Coates. Both he and Mr. Deasy were very good English teachers and I remember his classes with affection.