Romeo and Juliet - School Day Memories

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We subscribe to Sky satellite TV and have opted for the movie package which means we get some of the top movies that have recently been in the cinema as well as a load of older ones. At the moment we have a 'Costume Drama' section. We're offered the usual Titanic, Greatest Showman, Chariots of Fire and Gone With the Wind but I also noticed that they're offering the 1968 movie Romeo & Juliet ... a Franco Zefferelli movie staring Leonard Whiting and Olivia Hussey. This brought school day memories flooding back! I can remember we were studying Romeo and Juliet in our English classes probably round about 1973 or 1974. This movie was being shown at the ABC cinema in Norwich (our local city) purely for students. My class was selected to attend. The girls in my class at school were supposed to arrive at school as usual and wait at the school gate. A coach had been arranged to pick us up there and we'd travel to Norwich with the head mistress, Miss Smiley, and our English teacher, Mrs Reynolds. I lived in a small village about 7 miles or so away from North Walsham where I attended the girls' high school. There were two other girls from my village who also attended the school, Anne Howard and Julie Woods. The strange thing is that the 'movie bus' would be coming through our village but we were told we should still get our normal school bus. We caught the 'school bus' but on this particular morning it broke down about halfway there. The bus driver said we'd be late into school but we should all stay on the bus until another one arrived. I told the driver that Julie, Anne and I were due to go to Norwich to see a movie so he suggested that us three girls should cross the road and wait on the grass verge and hopefully our 'movie bus' would see us and pick us up. If it didn't then we'd just have to go back and wait on the bus with the other students. So us three girls crossed the road and lo and behold a coach indicated that it was pulling up where we were standing. We clambered aboard but were surprised to see that the bus was full of boys and not girls! It was a bus full of students from Paston Boys' Grammar School (which had been attended by Admiral Nelson in the past!). The school's English teacher came up to us and asked what had happened. We explained and he said that his boys were also attending Romeo and Juliet so we may as well travel with them. There were no spare seats so we had to squeeze onto seats with the boys. We duly arrived at the cinema and waited in the foyer for our school to turn up. Miss Smiley was amazed to see us there so we told her that we'd travelled there with the Paston boys. I thought she was going to faint! Young ladies from the girls' high school DID NOT come into contact with boys and MOST DEFINITELY did not sit three to a seat with them!! She was horrified!!! But as far as Anne, Julie and I were concerned, it was a thrilling adventure!!!! I'm not sure whether Miss Smiley had words with the headmaster of Paston about the incident but I don't think I'll ever forget the raised eyebrows and slight twitch at the corner of Miss Smiley's mouth when we told her what had happened. Not sure what she thought we were going to do - not much room when you have three people squeezed onto a seat designed for two, besides which, back in those days, I don't think we even knew what mischief we could have got up to!!! Innocent days.