TALK of wartime rationing and marmalade pudding helped the years melt away on Monday as 13 former schoolfriends looked back on their first meeting six decades ago.

Dressed in bottle green gym slips, cream square-necked and green buttoned caps, the bright sparks who passed their 11-plus exams to get to Bishop Auckland Girls' Grammar School in September 1944 came from villages and small towns around the south west of County Durham.

At the 'grammar' they found a strict regime of mainly spinster women teachers presided over by the formidable Dr Millicent Agnew.

Confronted with rigid discipline, they found more than a few ways to bend the rules, as they remembered at their 60th anniversary reunion in the Manor House Hotel, West Auckland.

Like many of the year of '44, reunion organiser Joy Townsend lives away from the region and travelled from Essex for the day.

She said: "We have got together twice before but it has always been different people and we wanted this to be as close to the day we started as possible.

"People are scattered all over the country and we had to make contact by word of mouth. Some of us haven't seen each other since the day we left."

Retired nurse Audrey Davies looked back on her schooldays fondly. She said: "The teachers were all in cameo brooches and buns and it was very strict but we managed.

"School was very strict. There was no talking and you had to eat all your dinner. I used to eat my friend's vegetables and she ate my marmalade pudding."