A frozen turkey that Terry paid a tenner for at Christmas in 1979 is my sentimental reason for seeking donations for the SHS, School-Home Support's welfare fund. The unsentimental reason for the welfare fund rather than any of the other things SHS does to support kids getting to  school is that I know that the current austerity cuts, which make those of the 1979 early Thatcher days seem like a picnic, make emergency money ever more necessary.  Last year SHS spent £57,000 in small payments to tide families over while better support was sought. They could have spent many times more and the deprivation gets ever worse. Terry, who co-founded SHS, phoned me on the last day of Christmas term to say he had spent all the cash he had, that tenner, on a frozen turkey for a pupil's family. I made some crack about free range but that was the East End. No free range! SHS grew out of the Langdon Park School Fund which Terry, then head of First Year and his co-founder, Bridget Cramp, the school's education welfare officer, set up as the first Thatcher cuts - and yup, she was elected on May 3 1979, my birthday - started to hack away at the pastoral system and primary-secondary links they had been building.

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