

Well, how could I say no to such a direct approach from someone who combined such innocence and cunning in the irresistable face of a little angel? You know what determined little girls are like when they go after something. They won't let you alone. So I said I would think about it. Jessie jumped up and down with glee and clapped her hands and squealed and ran out of the room down the hall and upstairs to tell her sister the unbelievable news. Clara was a bit glum, because I had promised Jessie I would think about writing a book about her, but what about Clara herself? Would she get a look-in? She didn't dare to ask me anything herself, but I hastened to assure her that they would both be in it if I could think of something to say. And so it was that one morning while lying in bed I did my usual thing of having an idea. I get a lot of ideas in bed, or in the bath. Otherwise I think of things when I have a walk. Funny how one doesn't think of things when sitting, only when lying down or walking! Perhaps this is because when one is seated, one is always either talking or writing, and thus concentrating upon something.
G. K. Chesterton wrote a very inspired essay called 'The Art of Lying in Bed', and was one of the world's great practitioners of the art. I do recommend his essay heartily to one and all who wish to get the most out of their indolence.
Jessie and Clara were pupils at a boarding school called All Hallows School, near Frome, in Somerset. It wasn't just down the road, but it was not all that far either, from our own house in Somerset. Their parents were great friends of ours but always living abroad because Sam was in the Army, and he was then a military attaché at various embassies. His name is Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the same as the poet, because he is the direct descendant of the poet's brother. The girls' mother was one of our best friends, Trish Coleridge, one of whose primary traits is that she is one of the world's natural and most devoted mothers. But because of her marital circumstances, Trish's great trial in life was that she wasn't able to be with her girls and so she often gets mournful and says she 'abandoned' them. As far as she was concerned, she did. But of course the girls didn't really notice, because they had each other and were too busy having fun at All Hallows to think of having been 'abandoned', and anyway there were the holidays.

Jessica and Clara
(Click images to enlarge)
(Click images to enlarge)

Jessica with her friend Peggy Murray
(Click images to enlarge)
(Click images to enlarge)
He had to be 'fooled'. And thus it was that the girls had their great adventure, and fooled Mr. Ketterer as he had never been fooled before.
Now the various participants in the saga have scattered to the winds, but some have scattered back again and we have been able to track them down and get their photos. A couple are still missing, but we are a determined lot and we will find them. We have decided to put the story on the website and all the girls involved and their friends and families, and all the students now at All Hallows can read the Girls' Own Adventure. We have the photos of the girls as they were then, and as they are now. And some of them have their own comments and recollections to add. Enough time has rolled by since 1985 that this is all very much in the past, and we are all enjoying the nostalgia. The comments and mannerisms of the different girls in the story are precisely what they were like then, although some of them may have forgotten. And the argument as to who was going to be the more famous still hasn't been settled yet. So we'll have to wait and see when a few more years have gone by
Meanwhile, we hope you enjoy reading 'the book about Jessie'. Here it is: The Fooling of Mr. Ketterer, and it is only safe to make it public now that the girls are all beyond retribution, have graduated from university, and the only men they 'fool' nowadays are their boyfriends. And we hope they don't do that with any greater degree of damage than they caused the headmaster. For the best thing about the fooling of Mr. Ketterer was that he never knew he was fooled until later, when we sent him the story.