A WINCHESTER instrumental and class music teacher, Geraldine Eves, retires at Christmas after 22 years teaching flute and clarinet at The Westgate School.

Geraldine began her teaching career in 1975 as a classroom music teacher at Hamworthy Middle School in Poole before moving to Swindon a year later.

In 1980 she took time out to bring up her two daughters and returned to teaching in 1987, this time working at one of Swindon’s comprehensive schools.

In 1991 Geraldine and her husband Duncan moved to Winchester and she became teacher in charge of music at Harestock Primary School, teaching music across all the ages and working with the school orchestra, choir and recorder groups.

That same year she began teaching flute and clarinet at The Westgate School. Gillian Davies, who was then deputy head at the school, asked her to introduce a weekly music session into the newly-opened Rotherly Nursery, and every week since then Geraldine has been encouraging the little ones to sing and act out everything from flowers and trees growing in the spring to dinosaurs stomping through the forests.

At Westgate Geraldine also taught some lower school music classes for a short while and has always played a major role in running the school windband and its recorder groups.

She retired from Harestock Primary School in 2011 and will also be leaving the Rotherly Nursery at the same time as she leaves The Westgate.

In her career she has taught pupils from age three right through to age 18 and has worked under eleven different headteachers.

An Ofsted inspector at Harestock Primary School was so impressed with her work that he gave her the unique description of ‘virtuoso’!