St Mary’s parents, and Upper VI girls, were lucky enough to be invited to a talk by the photographer Eddie Parker who showed us some amazing photos taken from all over the world on Friday evening whilst the rest of the school finished some study and prepared for the weekend.

Some girls had a Hockey match in the morning on Saturday followed by a Netball match in the afternoon and they played some excellent sport, with a 5 – 0 win in the Hockey against Bournemouth but a hard-fought loss to Kings School Bruton in the afternoon (1st VII.)  (For a full Games report, see what Lucy and Alex have written)

Mr O Hare, not happy with total retirement, still comes in to school and this weekend enthralled Hewarth girls with a quiz which the “Brainy Bananas” won.  These girls then went for a swim before supper and had some time to prepare for the evening’s “SMS Factor.”  This is a talent show to see who has the St Mary’s Factor and it was lovely to see the younger girls participating, as well as some Upper V who took a break from their revision to do “St Trinians.”  It was one of those evenings when, at the end of the show, lots of girls wished they had taken part!  (Well there is always “Opportunity Knocks” later on in the year.)  Upper VI girls were entertained by the Upper VI of Sherborne Boys’ School in their Sixth form centre “The Stick” and many renewed old friendships with boys they were at Prep school with before returning in the minibus to Mary Ward House.

Sunday was a lovely day with many girls out in the morning visiting Donhead St Andrew Church with Mrs Rowland and Mrs Rushton for a service for Christian Unity.  Francie and Polly sang, Rowena played her flute and several girls took part in Readings, Bidding Prayers and a small sketch about Christian Unity.   At the same time, our budding UV lifeguards and new Gap assistants were being put through their paces at an NPLQ lifeguarding course at school.  We are hoping to increase our lifeguards by 8 by the end of this term and several schools which use our pool to teach their pupils swimming also have the opportunity in cutting down their costs by providing their own lifeguards through this course.  Our hopeful athletes had the opportunity of doing some Athletic training in the sports hall before lunch before getting ready for the afternoon’s entertainment. 

Laura was representing Dorset in the Under 17 county hockey competition at Bristol with Miss Walker where Dorset came a very creditable 4th whilst Rosie was at an Under 14 County hockey training session at Sherborne.

Sixty girls from LV downwards set off for the BIC winter skating rink and had a fun hour on the ice with elegant skaters such as Miss Walker (Library,)  Mrs Holman, Mrs Sudlow and Estelle whilst Mrs Webb and Mrs Seal-Newman bravely looked after 60 bags, coats, body warmers and cuddly toys!  The hour was over all too quickly so after collecting our shoes and buying some well-earned refreshments, we took a walk down to the beach at Bournemouth.  It was a blustery and fresh afternoon and we did have to work hard to discourage some hardy girls from taking off their shoes and socks and venturing into the sea!  This was the first trip to the coast for some of our foreign girls and it was very exciting. 

Mrs Rushton and Mrs Smith took our skiers to the Dry Slope Skiing piste at Christchurch and had an afternoon of fun there.  Many of these girls will be going on our ski trip, organised by Mrs Rushton, at Easter and had their first attempt at skiing. Hopefully learning the Snowplough will be enough to see them through their first day on real snow in Italy at Easter.  Others just wanted to make sure that they could remember what to do!

We had an 18th birthday to celebrate in Mary Ward House as well as the welcome return of our 6th form choristers who had been to York to sing at the Bar convent over the weekend.  Next weekend is Exeat but we are already looking forward to the weekend of 1st – 3rd February as we have a Guest Music Concert Socials for UIV, LV and UV, a Choral day, Pottery Painting, a visit to Paris for the Sixth form who are interested in “the Future of Europe” and a visit for the little ones to the local Pantomime “Old Mother Hubbard!”