A tale of two sisters

Tracey and Jane were amongst the first BSB students who share with us some of their early memories

Sisters Tracey van Putten (nee Campbell) and Jane Campbell were at BSB from 1970 to 1974. They recount their early memories of the school first opening. Building 1 (now Nevejean) wasn’t ready, so they started in offices in Rue de la Loi, in Brussels. ‘For playtime we had to pile into coaches and go to the local park. It might have even been Cinquantenaire. We would gather at the end of the day to line up for our respective buses: it was in a big room, which during the day, had some sliders to divide it up for classroom usage,’ remembers Tracey. When they moved into the first completed building in Tervuren, the far two ends of it, which were supposed to be halls, were also divided up into classrooms until the second building (now Tintin) was finished. ‘We then had music lessons in there and did country dancing, which I loved’, says Tracey. ‘We used rainbow books to learn to read’ continues Jane, ‘I particularly remember the indigo and violet ones. We would go up to the teacher in turn and try to read together in English: and in my case, with a terrible French accent.’ When Prince Philip came to open the school in December 1970 the children were all very excited and dressed in their ‘best’ clothes. ‘Early on there was a Gym Club - I simply loved it, said Jane. We even travelled to Taunton for a gym competition and stayed with families there. Trips were an important part of school life. I remember a trip to Normandy and the D-day landing memorials, Omaha beach, the Loire valley and the chateau of Amboise, Mont St Michel, (collecting shells which subsequently made my school bag smell badly for days)! One trip involved learning the new metric pound currency, which made so much sense to me since I didn’t know anything about the old system of sovereigns and shillings. We had trips to the Museum of Central Africa too, which I remember as being really old and dusty’. Both Tracey and Jane recall calling the teachers by their first names which was quite a novelty compared to the Belgian school system they attended previously. ‘Drama was important too: ‘Joseph and his multi-coloured dream coat’, Jane adds. ‘Hilary, my seventh form teacher, would try to get us to write and we could either invent a story or she would read a story that we would then have to rewrite as homework’. ‘I remember the Maths class’, said Tracey, ‘as well as working with wood, metal and having art classes where we learnt so many techniques including batik and lino-engraving. Domestic Studies were in an amazing room with small little kitchens. The first thing we learned was how to cut a grapefruit and decorate it with a glacé cherry, then we moved on to rock buns!’ Sport was important. Both remember athletics and the long-jump. They would go to the German school by bus for their swimming lessons. Both loved the choices and one was cross country running – running through the woods behind the school and coming up into the park of the Museum of Central Africa next door. 50 years on, this is still happening today! ‘I was only twelve said Jane, and yet we were having discos at each other’s houses, in long dresses!’ Finally, they both remember fondly Alan Humphries the first Headmaster. ‘In short, it wasn’t until years later that we realised how privileged we had been to be in this school, with such an amazing infrastructure and a modern participatory way of teaching.’