Scottish Blog

Wednesday 21 August 2008

No blog at the moment since I am on holiday amongst the beautiful hills of Scotland. I came up by train yesterday and was able to get a bit of work done then - no internet access! I am sitting at my desk now looking out over gardens, trees, fields and distant hills, with a wide expanse of sky, filled with heavy foreboding clouds, bearing down on us. Not raining at the moment though. A lovely hotchpot of red and grey-green slate roofs in front of me, a tall tree with long, droopy, green leaves right in the middle of the scene - our next door neighbours’ - and, in the not too far distance, a Saltire fluttering proudly. What a difference from looking out over a block of dirty flats and a busy main road!

In the corner, the TV flutters - I still don’t want to miss a moment of the Olympics! I have really enjoyed following the Games this year. As I write, the rhythmic gymnastics are on, with girls in sequinned leotards leaping, pirhouetting and barhetting (?) around with ropes and hoops. I am looking forward to the ribbons and balls coming out! It never ceases me to be amazed at their agility, strength and precision. Philips Idowu has just missed out on getting the gold, which everyone (apart from the Portuguese, obviously!) is disappointed with. However, it is amazing that anyone can jump that far at all! Of course, Usain Bolt has been the talk of the Athletics recently, and I was glad to be able to see the race last night - sorry I missed it live when I was on the train. Quite a feat. Two world records. And what about Chris Hoy? Three gold medals ... and it’s possible that his father did my parents’ kitchen many years ago.

Anyway, I need to get my work finished now so I can get on with having a nice relaxing holiday!

7pm: Have finally received news of our exam results. The department seems to have done slightly better than the overall A*-C including English and Maths pass rate. However, it is a big drop on last year. I would be interested to know what our A*-C overall rate is, not including English and Maths, and I’d also like to be able to compare it to the English pass rate. Overall I think it’s possibly a bit better than we might have expected, although obviously we always hope the result will exceed our expectations. I wonder how my individual pupils have done, and also what my class results will be. I expect them to be very poor indeed. After all, a quarter of the students are in top sets and I teach the third set, so I doubt I’ll have any Cs. I just hope the majority have passed. I don’t know how many Us we got.

I have high hopes for next year. I am very tempted to start with the revision ... get the bare facts out of the way before working on the exam questions, the Bible quotes and the details. We’ll see. I am teaching a few members of my own form this coming year. Fingers crossed!

8pm: Having worked a bit and soaked my feet, I am looking round at the books in the study here. Memories of growing up! So I thought I’d record a few for posterity.

Hilda Boswell’s Treasury of Poetry ... The opening poem is called “Firelight”, by Irene and Aubrey de Selincourt. It is beautifully illustrated over three pages, little fairies, gnomes, castles and forests of red, orange, golden flames. I realise that over the years whenever I’ve seen a fire, and watched it flicker and change before my eyes, I have thought of this poem ... although not in the words which I record below.

I like to sit by the fire and stare
At the curious things I can see in there;
It’s better than pictures in a picture book
To sit by the fire and look, and look.

I can’t see the things that Anne can see
(Anne, she’s seven, but I’m just three)
Faces, and rivers, and forest, and all -
(Anne’s enormous, but I’m quite small).

But the fire makes a nice sort of creaky song;
It popples, as it it were running along;
It talks quite soft, and it means to say,
“I know a nice quiet game to play.”

I don’t want to jump, and I don’t want to shout;
Mummy says, “What are you thinking about?”
But I’m not thinking; I just like to sit
Quite still by the fire, and stare at it.

Then there’s Edward Lear’s wonderful Jumblies - they went to sea in a sieve, they did! Each verse of their adventures once again illustrated in greens, reds, blues and yellows.

Far and few, far and few,
Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
Their heads are green and their hands are blue,
And they went to see in a Sieve.

Later is the first poem by William Blake that I learnt: Little lamb, who made thee? Dost thou know who made thee? ... Later I learnt that not all Blake’s poems were songs of innocence, as this one is! And then there is the bittersweetness of The Lost Doll, by Charles Kingsley. The prettiest doll in the world ... lost, then found in the heath one day, her paint all washed away ... but still the prettiest doll in the world. That’s love!

Wynken, Blynken and Nod in their wooden shoe ... The Song of the Engine - “I think I can, I think I can ...” (this one is marked with a scrap of yellow paper - obviously a favourite, and I have just realised that this poem by Christine Weatherly is the one I was thinking of some time ago when all I could find was the Night Express (I think?) by Robert Louis Stevenson or someone or other). The Spider and the Fly, and another favourite of mine - The Wraggle Taggle Gypsies (O!). That poem I learnt one year as my Hallowe’en party piece. I was dressed up in a long gypsy skirt, with long hair and a scarf around my head, all in the style of the gypsies in my book. I look again at the ten verses ... this is why I always secretly, quietly, despair at the sorry excuse for guisers we used to get at our old house down south. If you were lucky, the prompting of, “And are you going to say something?” would elicit some half baked, murmured joke about snap, cackle and pop, whereas in my day, we prepared songs, poems, magic tricks, dances, duets ... we could not leave the house without a complete performance. We didn’t expect to make money, we did hope for an apple and some sweets if we were lucky, and it’s probably just as well we only visited each others’ parents, because with four or five of us travelling around together we must have been in each house for about twenty minutes at least! Ah, those were the days.

Anyway, that has been a nostalgic half an hour, and now I really need to complete my work before our visitors arrive tomorrow! So off I go again ...