Who was there? Sandy Barber

Who was there? Helen Barrett

Who was there? Sally Beven


Hi, it was lovely to see so many familiar faces in July, and to catch up a little on what has happened over the last 20 years. Yes, 20: count 'em! Well, after graduation I entered the wonderful world of Duracell and worked in UK Sales, based in sunny downtown Quinton for eighteen months. From there I moved into licensed merchandise with a private company, Copywrite, and was given the opportunity to open up the export market for the business. Actually, I think my boss's exact words were "You speak a bit of French don't you? Do you fancy having a go at setting up export business, and don't worry, we'll budget for your mistakes!" This was a challenge that I could not refuse, and before I knew it I was jetting all over the place, selling licensed merchandise for the children's and teen market. It was great to get the ol' French going again. From Copywrite I moved in to the fluffy world of interior design, working for Harlequin and Zoffany (daaaarrrrrrling!) and remained in export for ten more years, covering markets from Canada to Australasia, and loving it. Then, in 1997 a fellow ex-Brummite and house-mate (Diane) introduced me to The Man from Del Monte. All of a sudden I was married with two sons and living near Chester! I am not "working" currently and have no idea what I will get in to once both my children are in full-time school, but I will catch up with you at the next reunion, if not before .

Who was there? Sarah Coyne

Who was there? Madelena Cropley

Who was there? Marie Davies

Who was there? Valerie Duckett

Who was there? Alison Fennah

Who was there? Zoe Fletcher

Who was there? Catherine Fox (Tsetse)

Who was there? Axia Gaitskell

Who was there? Jerry Gardner


After Brum, I skived around the States for six months, mostly in Indianapolis, before returning to London to start making in-roads into the student overdraft. I had a couple of dodge-pot jobs selling advertising before ending up with a small IT and telecoms consultancy called Ovum, doing database admin. In 1991 I met an Irish nurse called Breda, in 1993 we married, followed in 1995 by number one son, Fionn. I ended up staying at Ovum for eight years, going through a range of marketing roles, until the glass ceiling became unbearable, and I jumped ship to Connect Voice Messaging, becoming European Marketing Manager. I spent a couple of years there before getting the big heave-ho on the day Breda discovered she was preggers for a second time. Timing was everything: this pregnancy turned into twin girls Orla & Ciara in 1998. Third daughter - and fourth child - Iona arrived in 1999. After Connect, I worked as European Market Development Manager for a telecoms billing company called Kenan for a few years – fantastic time, the best job and the best people I ever worked with. All good things come to an end, though, and we were taken over by Lucent, an American telecoms behemoth. The meddlesome politics and bloated middle/upper management all got too much, so I left to become Marketing Director for a small telecoms building firm based in Leeds, although I spent most of the week working from home in London. It was fun, but fairly hairy and scary at times, as it turned out that the MD was being charged for fraud! Sadly Tommy Takeover raised his head again, and it was time for redundancy number 2, although at least this time I got a decent pay-off… which very soon disappeared in the six months it took me to realise that the telecoms market was going seins en haut, and that I wasn’t going to get a job easily. So in 2003, in semi-mid-life-crisis mode, Breda and I decided to up sticks to Co Kilkenny, and set Breda up as complementary health therapist, offering iridology, homeopathy, muscle testing and so on. Meanwhile I reverted to the role of househusband, which also includes doing all the marketing, admin, financials etc. for the business. And that’s where we are now: Breda’s business is thriving, and we don’t miss the crap of London one bit.

Who was there? Cathy Gittins

After graduating, I trained with KPMG to become a chartered accoutant. My training was put on hold for 5 years following my move to Cheshire to marry Steve and have a family. Following two disastrous relationships, I moved back to my home town in Boston, Lincolnshire with my two daughters, now aged 15 and 13, resumed my accountancy training with a local firm of accountants, and qualified as an accountant in 2000. From 2001 to 2005 I worked for Boston Borough Council as Technical Accountant, whilst renovating an old house. In 2005, I decided to move back over to Cheshire to marry Steve (the one it didn't quite happen with first time round!). I now work at the University of Chester as Cost Accountant and thoroughly enjoy my role there. My daughters love living in Chester and and all the opportunities that are opening up for them. Since the reunion Steve and I have split (again!) and currently I am looking forward to moving into a new home with my two daughters and our three pet cats. Life certainly hasn't turned out how I expected it to when I graduated in 1986, but over the years I have certainly learnt what is important in life - family and friends.

Who was there? Graham Grant

It was great to see so many familiar faces and catch up on old times at the reunion. After leaving Birmingham I went to London to train as an accountant, which lasted precisely 12 months. It was in June of our final year that Julie (Smith) and I met and started going out. By sheer chance she was doing her teacher training at Roehampton, so we continued seeing one another. In 1987 Julie moved back to Birmingham to start teaching and I went to Sheffield to do my PGCE. From there I worked in Telford and back in Birmingham. We married in 1989 and moved to Devon soon after our first daughter - Helen - was born. Jennifer arrived in 1993 and we continued teaching locally. We now have a son - Daniel - who is 2. I’m Head of Languages in my school, but Julie has escaped from the classroom and is now a consultant, working for the local authority. Having read other peoples’ news it all sounds a bit mundane, but that’s life. Looking forward to the 30th Reunion.

Who was there? Hazel Hall

I am so glad that I accepted the challenge of organising the reunion. What really made it worth it was to see how much everyone enjoyed the day. It was also quite a lot of fun to work with the team as we tried to track people down to invite them along on 15th July. I hope that I will still be fit and able do it all again in 2016.

Here's my news for those who couldn't make it on the day. Not long after graduating I married Tim Read, who is also a Birmingham University graduate (Astrophysics). We first lived in Birmingham. Tim was working for Apricot Computers on the Hagley Road and I was employed by Birmingham Polytechnic (as was) when we both decided in summer 1989 that we wanted to move to Edinburgh. By November we each had job offers in Scotland, and our little house in Northfield went up for sale. Almost seventeen years later we are still in Edinburgh. I still work in Higher Education as a senior lecturer at Napier University. Over the years I've drifted further and further away from the subject of my first degree, and have eventually ended up with a PhD in Computing, completed part-time in just over 4 years (and yes, it nearly finished me off!) Tim works for Sun Microsystems from home as a Staff Engineer for a team that is mainly based in Mountain View, California. Tim and I devote most of our time to work, exercise (I took up running 10k races as "recreation" when writing up my PhD), socialising, and planning holidays on remote islands with our bright yellow tandem. (For those who are interested, there's more on what I get up to at work on the Napier web pages. See http://www.dcs.napier.ac.uk/~hazelh/esis/hazel.html.)

Who was there? Steve Hawkins


Steve's news is in the posting made on 11th July, sent when he thought that he would not be able to make it on the day of the reunion.

Who was there? Stephanie Hickman

Who was there? Bryan Hollamby

Almost directly after graduating from Birmingham, where I did the BA Combined Honours in French and Modern Greek, in September 1986 I went to Greece, as I had a job lined up there teaching English. Although the original plan was to be working in Thessaloniki, Greece's second city, I ended up being posted to a school in a half-horse town called Kilkis some thirty miles to the north, a short drive from the border with the then Yugoslavia (now the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia). I worked at the school for seven years and was offered headmastership in 1992, but by then I knew that my future lay elsewhere: in private tuition. In 1993 I left the school and set up business as a private English tutor, which is what I do to this very day. I have more work than I can comfortably deal with, which is good but tiring.

I married a local woman in 1990, but that proved to be an unhappy relationship and I eventually separated from my wife in 2002. Due to Greek law, the final divorce is still pending after all this time, but I am now living happily with my partner Christina, who is a teacher of French and has her own language school.

After starting virtually from scratch again financially after the separation and moving from rented flat to rented flat, I have just purchased a place of my own, which is still being built, and should be moving into that at the beginning of 2008 - yes, this time (January) next year! I enjoy travelling around Greece and to neighbouring Macedonia and its capital, Skopje, and indulging in my hobby of flying big jets in Flight Simulator on the computer... I also spend time maintaining my business website - http://www.bryanhollamby.co.uk - where I have various pages to do with both my business and my personal interests - including a page with pictures of Skopje and one showcasing some videos of me flying those jets!! Feel free to have a gander...

Life in Greece can be a bit trying sometimes (to put it mildly), but the summers are great and the lifestyle is much more laid-back than in the UK, so I suppose that on the whole I am fairly happy here. I try to visit the UK once a year or so, but often my visits are less frequent than that.

It was great to be able to attend the reunion back in July 2006 and exchange news with old friends. Many thanks to Hazel for making it all possible...!!

Who was there? Jo Langdale

Who was there? Quintin Lever

Who was there? Heather Monk

Who was there? Phil Nelson

Who was there? Nikki Osborne

Who was there? Debra Paterson

Who was there? Carolyn Penfold

Who was there? Susanna Portman

I now live in Faringdon, Oxfordshire, with my husband, Alistair Hunt (whom I first met at school, aged 11 years). He is in the RAF, based at Brize Norton. We have Matthew (5) and Imogen (4), and I have thoroughly enjoyed being a full time Mum since they came along. I have now qualified as a self employed LTA Tennis Coach, a job which I love and which fits in perfectly with the children. Before children I worked for 15 years in the travel industry, first as a Thomson Rep and Ski Guide, then as a Conference and Incentive Manager, and finally an Event Manager, working on major sporting events, looking after sponsors at the Atlanta and Sydney Olympics, Wimbledon and Football World Cup in France in '98, where I made good use of my French! Lyon, where I spent my year abroad, was one of the host cities and it was strange to return there too, after so many years.

Who was there? Priscilla Rathbone

Who was there? Chris Redman

Who was there? Andrew Robertson (Rob)

Who was there? Kate Saunders

Who was there? Jayne Smith

Who was there? Julie Smith

Julie Smith married Graham Grant. For Julie's news, please see Graham's profile.

Who was there? Kirsty Smith

Who was there? Jackie Stone

For those of you I didn’t chat to on reunion day, here is the story of what I’ve been up to since graduation.

After training to become an accountant in Birmingham with Coopers & Lybrand, I stayed in the West Midlands for a good few years in various accounting jobs, some of which actually enabled me to use my French, but most of which I was no good at! I then ran away for a year of teaching English to the Basques of Northern Spain. Returning to the UK in 1994 I took up accountancy training, but that was not a great success either!

In 1997 I married Richard Read, a Birmingham University graduate from the same era, but whom I had not known whilst there. The following year we had Anna and agreed to take on an overseas posting to Shanghai with Castrol, Richard’s employer. After a two year stint as ex-pats (thoroughly enjoyable) we returned to live in Broadstairs, Kent where I had a second child, James in 2001. In 2005 we moved to Cirencester and Richard is back at Castrol in Swindon, now part of BP.

I have not worked outside the home since James was born. I have enjoyed being a full time housewife and mother and after more than my fair share of career disasters I feel I have found a job I am good at and can be proud of. A degree in French is not that useful on a day-to-day basis, but I use skills I learnt at Birmingham all the time. Skills such as finding information - not on Rabelais any more but Romans and Egyptians, justifying my arguments – not on whether Shakespeare really was a renaissance writer but why 8.15pm is an appropriate bedtime, household budgeting, negotiating with fellow housemates, rustling up meals with mince, you get the picture.

Thanks to Hazel’s hard work and determination I enjoyed a wonderful day of reminiscing and catching up with old friends so keep in touch.

Who was there? Mark Tentori

After Brum, I joined Price Waterhouse in London where I got my Chartered Accountany qualification before two stints in Australia with them - the first for 6 months in Brisbane, and then a two-year stint in Sydney. In between I got married to Zoe and we now have two children - Lara aged 10 and Alexander aged 7. After 10 years with PW, I joined the real world doing Corporate Finance for a plc in Milton Keynes and am now Group Finance Director with a business called LINPAC based near the NEC in Birmingham. We live near Woburn, Bedfordshire.

Who was there? Helen Williams

After leaving Birmingham, I did a post-grad bilingual secretarial course in my home city, Cardiff. Then I moved to London and worked in book publishing for four years. I moved back to Cardiff in 1990 and worked as Publications Manager for a project within the Welsh Joint Education Committee. I then married Rhys (my boyfriend since school-days) and have had three daughters, Nia (12), Carys (10) and Anwen (4). Apart from VERY occasional bits of freelance proof-reading and layout design, I have not worked since having the children, which suits me fine!

Who was there? Vivienne Williamson

Who was there? Rachel Wills

After graduating I moved to Berlin, where I have been pretty much ever since. It's a great place to live, especially for the young and single! I've had various lines of work – most of them connected in some way with languages. I spent several years teaching English, but after a while I found travelling around between students a bit of a bore, and in 1997 I returned to the UK for a year to do a Masters in translation studies at Salford University. When I returned to Berlin I expected be self-employed, but in 1999 was lucky enough to land my current job as a translator in the German Environment Ministry. I did get married somewhere along the line, to Jimmy from Bury, Lancs. We divorced in 2000 but have a son Luca, now 13, who definitely made the whole experience worthwhile! Luca lives with me, so most of my time is spent juggling work and parenting obligations. Life can get hectic, but I'm enjoying it. I will be in Berlin for the next few years at least, but my ultimate aim is to move somewhere near the coast (and I don't really mind which coast) at some stage in the future.

Into Sunday morning at the Eaton Hotel

Some of us kept going until into the early hours of Sunday morning at the Eaton Hotel.

Above: Kate Saunders chatting with Cathy Gittins' fiance Steve in the foreground with Jerry Gardner, Rachel Wills and Tsetse Fox across the room.

Above: Tsetse Fox.
Above: In the foreground Hazel Hall chats with her husband Tim, with Jerry Gardner and his wife Breda and Cathy Gittins across the room.

Above: Jerry Gardner and his wife Breda begin to show signs that it is time for bed.

Suicidal hedgehog on the Hagley Road

On the way back from TGI Friday to the Eaton Hotel we found this hedgehog, posing below with Hazel Hall.

TGI Friday and the mystery of Bryan's meal order

There was apparently some problem with what Bryan had ordered...

Evening meal at TGI Friday on the Hagley Road

Some of us continued partying into the evening with a meal at TGI Friday on the Hagley Road. It was very loud and not exactly haute cuisine, but we had a good time anyway.

Above: Cathy Gittins' finace Steve and Tsetse Fox.

Above and below: Breda (Mrs Jerry Gardner) and Tim (Mr Hazel Hall).

Above: Heather Monk and Bryan Hollamby.

Above: Hazel Hall and Jerry Gardner.

Above: Rachel Wills and Kate Saunders.

Above: Heather Monk and her husband Paul.

Above: Nikki Osborne, Heather Monk and Heather's husband Paul.