Things that happened at school

I'll start this with something that happened to my sister at school: Once our Biology teacher stuck a tube down his throat and extracted a sample of his own stomach acid for a demonstration. Yep, it was a good school. I sometimes think that this is the kind of behaviour that they're trying to breed out of schools with league tables and examination focus and it's sad. Maybe some of the silly things still happen out there, adding wonder and mystery to those dull school days. It's more important to open people's minds than get exams passed. You can't run services for profit as the profit is the service! Get wise, people up there in the Ivory Towers.

Hmm, what else? My maths teacher used to lie down on the front empty row of tables during class to help his back. Mr Physics used to play 'Chariots of Fire' on a two (or maybe more) note xylophone on school sports days. I walk raced other kids around the school sometimes just to get them to leave me alone. Once a king bully actually stopped to chat to me alone because none of the bullying was working. Ah, those rose-tinted grim old days.

<smiles at Clompie. Clompie throws an anvil.>

I like anvils. Here in Wales, schools have little competitions called Eisteddfods (there are big national ones too). In our school we were split up into three Houses (no Hufflepuff I'm afraid) called Caradog (I think), Glyndwr and Myrddin. Myrddin was where they dumped the English speaking slime so I was in there. There would then be some kind of mammoth talent show / skill contest of some kind and points would be allocated. One of the other two houses almost invariably won. There was a big sword that the Biology teacher carried maniacally at the beginning and the end of each ceremony. I think he was amazing in retrospect.

In the sixth form we had our own little house with two rooms for our own leisure. It was amazing! Unfortunately that got turned into one room in the main building near the end. No more grape fights after that happened, although I never used either anyway. Self-imposed exiles had other ways to spend their time, mostly involving the library. I really should return that school library book. Is 15 years too long to read 'Ivanhoe'?

These quaint things seemed to fall away once the new Headmaster took over. It was sad. Everything seemed to get more Welsh-centric. I think the school is being merged with the Welsh-medium school sometime soon, and that is even sadder. It's not so much the change as the fact that English-language pupils are getting less of a fair deal as time goes on. That's a debate for another day though.

School days? Who needs 'em? WE DO!

O.

PS According to Mr Computing it was always best to rob supermarkets rather than banks as they had more cash. How unbelievable. Tish tosh. We don't endorse crime here.