This photo, originally sent to me by Duffy while I queued at Passport Control in Stansted Airport, shows the final moments of my last classroom in Dunoon Grammar School. if you look very, very carefully you may see a scrap or two of the yellow paint I chose to brighten up a north-facing room - a colour scheme which the painters loathed because they were sick of it by the time they'd done, but which the classes loved because it made them feel cheery in the middle of winter. The business end of the big digger thingy is resting where my bookcase sat. Quite moving, really ...And because the old school (well - this bit went up in the last 25 years) is being demolished, our choir is moving too. After last week's horrendous practice in the new school building, with the sound of the pipes vying with our attempts to sing in tune even as we succumbed to various allergies, we've found another venue for our rehearsals. Apparently we may have to move on from there too, as the building has dry rot and other horrors, but for the meantime we're content.
I just hope that some of my teaching was less flimsy than my room.
I hope some of you get the literary allusion in the title of this post. Do tell me!
It was quite moving to watch, I have to say. I think I miss the old school!
ReplyDeleteAre you in the same venue as my good self? Possibly Hunter St? If you want a place with a good piano then try St John's. They have a beautiful new baby grand
Of course I got the quote so I will leave that to your other readers! My last place of work had all yellow walls and it was a delightful building.
ReplyDeleteI didn't notice that wee bit at the bottom... I knew you were going to use that as a heading, though. Know your intelligence too well!
ReplyDeleteI don't get the reference - though it sounds like the start of a possible title for a Christopher Brookmyre opus.
ReplyDeleteWhat is exercising me at the moment is why the instructions for using HTML tags (below the box one types in) are in German. Appropriately, being at the bottom, they are translated, it seems.
abf - must be an anomaly all your own; they're in English chez moi.
ReplyDeleteStrange, your MND ref - I've just used that very quote on someone else over on Facebook.
I shall leave you all hanging for a bit, till I see if anyone else recognises the allusion in the title.
see ma mammy;-)
ReplyDeleteI had forgotten that poem. I'll read it to my class soon.
That may actually be the one poem I can still quote in its entirety without having to read it again, first.
ReplyDeleteIt, and its accompanying translation for the English, used to be my friend Elaine and my party piece.
Sorry to be irrelevant and obsessive, but it's in German at home, too. Was ist los?
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ReplyDeleteThere is something strange going on with comments. I don't have any German cropping up, but the mailed version of the comments are appearing complete with all the html, which makes for difficult reading off-site. and then you get authors deleting comments which have already been mailed to me - very odd.
ReplyDeleteThe title is a quote from the poem "Lament for a Lost Dinner Ticket"!
You need to get to the bottom of this mystery. With the help of a surgeon it might yet recover and prove... Or ask someone oberon Facebook if they can explain it. Otherwise we'll all be going to helena handcart. Stop! I'm being a ninny. Goodnight.
ReplyDeleteAh ABF, bless your lily lips and yellow cowslip cheeks - why, pray, are huge chunks of that so memorable? Is it the rhyme? or is it just that I can still hear in my head the wonderful BBC film version with Helen Mirren as Titania?
ReplyDeleteMaybe, in my case, because it was the first Shakespeare I was exposed to in S1. Then, we did the funny bits; in S6, we did the rest. Also, Benjamin Britten's version sticks in the mind because the music seems to glue the words more firmly in the mind.
ReplyDeleteI go, I go... (let's not start that one again!). I'm off to the USA on Tuesday and won't be commenting for a couple of weeks or so. So, as our PT English once memorably said as the lunchtime bell rang, "Let's leave it to Puck and the fairies." Unfortunately, he committed a Spoonerism, and left his class repressing paroxysms of choking. Well, it was the late Fifties, and we were a bit salad-y in our judgement.