West, West, you’re the best

I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore, is the rallying cry of a group of Conservative Eurosceptics. An emergency meeting of Tory party heavyweights have declared that the European Union is past its sell-by date. The sprouting of measures from Brussels that infringe on national sovereignty has grown too far, too fast and too furious for the right-wingers in this country. We should close our eyes and go West, say the Atlanticists. America and not Europe is where it is at.

In a startling pamphlet issued by the separatist group, “Withering Europe, a non-starter” (WEANS), they have proposed various ways of becoming closer to the United States of America. Post codes are to be replaced by the zingier method of posting known as ZIP codes. The advantages of this change are bountiful. Britons would take great delight in being asked by cold callers “What is your ZIP?”.
“She asked about my ZIP, heh, heh.”

In ZIP’s there are no letters to be remembered, only numbers, which makes it easier for this cell phone generation to take in. ZIP is faster to say than post code. And the struggling post code lottery that exists in this country would be replaced by the more snazzier titled ZIP lottery. Having a matching ZIP as someone else would be a novelty that would never wear off. Think about it. Even in ten years time, “We’ve got the same ZIP” is a good line.

Right, we should definitely look to the West as all good things are on the left hand side of the map. The land of the Free is home to Giant Redwoods and is there anything in this world better than a Hershey Bar? However, too many Hershey Bars can give you trouble fastening your zip.

Rugby Prayer

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“Rugby fans are being asked to pray for the E.P. Kings ahead of their make or break Currie Cup promotion match against the Cheetahs on Friday.

The appeal was made by E.P. Kings rugby boss Anela Pamba as his team bid to pull off rugby’s “fight back of the century” at the Nelson Mandela Bay stadium.” (report here)

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I was thinking of something along these lines…

Continue reading “Rugby Prayer”

Apologetic pupils

I expect some cherished colleagues have seen this piece in DT, following on Michael Gove’s apology to his former French teacher.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/9628673/Dear-sir-weve-all-got-a-lot-to-be-sorry-about.html

It got me wondering whether I owed any apologies to any of my old teachers.  There was Mrs M, the maths teacher, who never managed to convince me there was any point in learning geometry theorems by heart.  I was glad that someone had discovered that the sum of the angles of any triangle make two right angles and I hoped they’d had good weather for it, but what had it to do with me? Faced with a circle and a triangle and some odd lines, I never could work out what theorem to apply.  I know my ability to score 100% in algebra and arithmetic drove the lady wild, since those were the days when 100% in algebra and 10% in geometry did not lead to Higher (this being Scotland) maths.  “No problem”  I said.  “I won’t sit Higher.”  No, I don’t feel like apologising, Mrs M, since you couldn’t enthuse me.

Then there was Miss M, the RE teacher who only saw us once a week and didn’t bother to learn the names of all the girls in the class.  Instead she simply picked those whose names she did know – me, because she knew my parents – to answer all questions. Came the day when she bounced into the classroom waving a hot-off-the-press copy of the New English Bible and invited us all to choose a passage we would like to hear from the new version. “Right, lady, you asked for this!”  So I chose one of the passages that reads “Tom begat Dick, and Dick begat Harry, and Harry begat …  Miss M looked at me coldly, said that it was much the same, and thereafter stopped asking me.  No apology there either – a teacher must learn the names of her pupils.

Perhaps some cherished colleagues do feel there are some teachers they “done wrong”.  Perhaps my lack of penitence comes from over 20 years of teaching myself.

October poetry winner

I’m astonished by the amount of entries in this month’s poetry competition and also by the quality. Picking a winner was a difficult task as I liked a lot of the submissions. As individuals took the time to enter I feel it polite to put the time in and respond to all the poems singularly. It was fun finding the various film titles. Remember I sit on the fence on the big issues around here so I’m not a judge. Continue reading “October poetry winner”