What do you do when everything is spic and span ready for a Duchess to pay a visit and someone spills a pot of black ink on the carpet?
Don’t panic. They didn’t in the deaf unit at Hutt Valley Memorial Technical College. Just find a piece of matching carpet and cover it up.
No one would even have noticed the extra strip of carpet when the Duke and Duchess of Kent visited the college today, except that Sara Cameron, a profoundly deaf fifth former, included it in her essay “A Special Occasion.”
The Duchess visited the unit while the Duke was shown the college library after the two had been entertained by rousing items from Maori and Polynesian students and the college orchestra.
The Duchess, in a black and white linen suit, spoke to each of the 12 children, all of them profoundly deaf, sometimes using a radio hearing aid.
Unit head Miss Lesley Hamilton explained to her that the group was fully integrated into the mainstream of the school. The unit provided back-up work.
The Duchess stopped first to look at Tracy David’s exercise book and a study on blood vessels.
“I admire you very much. It’s not easy to do this,” she commented.
She told Wayne Dick, busily drawing a vase of irises and gladioli: “That’s beautiful, I really mean it. You will try and colour them, won’t you?”
Sarah, pausing in her chronicle of events leading up to the Royal visit, told the Duchess she intended to find a job after she left school and then travel, in that order. She wasn’t sure, at 15, what she wanted to be.
Photo: The Duchess of Kent and Sarah Cameron: “We had an accident with a pot of black ink… which resulted in black spots and puddles on our carpet. So with an effort, nobody panicked. We cut up strips of remaining carpet and covered it up.”
