Haydn sets me off again ...

It happened again. That sudden tide of memory washing over and through, this time triggered by four notes: the opening of Hadyn's Symphony No. 104, The London Symphony. I opened the door to the room where the radio was on - Radio 3 - and the D minor introduction coincided with my arrival. That was all it took to whisk me back to another spring - yes, spring again - and the earnest preparation for the Glasgow Music Festival. I played second violin in this symphony, and if memory serves me correctly it was the last time our school orchestra competed and failed to win the senior class. The following year - when I was in S5 - we played Beethoven, and we won, and long after I had left my successors won again and again.

But that's not the point. What this memory took me to was a reminder of what a privileged education I had. I attended Hillhead High School in the days when it was a Glasgow Corporation grant-aided school: we paid minimal fees (£3.19.0 a term in secondary) and bought our own books and jotters. The classes were big - 40 was normal - and the classrooms bizarre because the corridors were open to the weather, with partitions that could be slid back to cool the room. Rumour had it that the school was designed for Kuala Lumpur and had somehow ended up in Glasgow. The music department had begun to grow when I was in P6, and by the time I reached The Big School and the Secondary orchestra there were two orchestras. By the time I left there were also several choirs and chamber music groups, and it was possible to forget that anything else actually went on in Hillhead. We played Mozart, Beethoven, Handel, Schubert, we sang madrigals and Parry, the chamber music groups tackled Gibbons. We did Haydn's "The Heavens are telling", complete with orchestra, choir and soloists. We were given no quarter when it came to repertoire, and we were expected to work till we could cope. We performed at the school concert in December - and after the St Andrews Halls burned down, we had three nights of these in the school hall to accommodate all who wished to attend them  - and at the Festival in May.

We took these performances very seriously. I never did learn how to deal with circles in Co-ordinate Geometry because the class did that bit when I was at an extra orchestra practice, and I would take the bus into Hillhead every afternoon of exam leave during my Highers because the Festival was always just after the exams ended. I had my first ever migraine during Festival week when I was in S6, brought on, I'm sure, by the stress of the occasion on my adolescent brain; it vanished the moment the results were announced (we won). I remember Herbert Howells, who was adjudicating one of the chamber music competitions, asking if this school covered the whole of Glasgow; there seemed to be at least one entry from Hillhead in every competition he judged. And I remember walking home with friends, all carrying our instruments, over Gilmorehill through the quiet May evenings, quite convinced that this was the best life would ever have to offer.

When I left school, it was the music that I was most distraught to leave behind. My experiences at school were certainly responsible for more of what happened in later life than any of the subjects I actually pursued formally, though I did study for a Higher Music in S6 and have Ordinary Music as a subject in my MA. But it is this time of year that brings it all back to me, Haydn and all.

Lucky. Pure, dead lucky. As my younger self would say..

Scraps of memory

Does the pic above stir a flood of memories, dear reader? If it does, I fear you may be approaching the sere, the yellow leaf, as I am ... but let's have another wee wallow in the 50s, huh? For some reason I cannot fathom, I bethought me the other evening (what has happened to me? Shakepeareitis?) of the days when I used to collect scraps and, in the appointed season, to exchange them with other small girls in a highly ritualised form and always in the same place.

If you don't know what I'm talking about, I have to explain that Googling "scraps" tends to take you to strange places; "die-cut scraps" provides more information. And that's what they were - coloured pictures, of all manner of people/animals/flowers, die-cut either into squares (boring) or round the outline of the picture, as in the illustration above. These were sold in sheets, linked as shown, often but not always of the same picture. You carefully took them apart, trimmed the paper tags, and put them into your collection. Strangely, it was more fun to acquire sets of scraps by barter than be simply buying them. You would look out for pictures that you already had an example of - these blooming angels came in many sizes and cloud-colours - and traded your own less precious scraps to acquire them. The most precious of all were "pre-wars" - though now I look at example of Victorian scraps online I wonder which war we were referring to. They were identified by the muted quality of the printing - fewer dpi, I think - and the quaintly old-fashioned subjects, and they were worth any number of scraps bought just last week.

The sacred place for the Scrap Season (remember how there used to be a time for skipping, a time for ball games and a time for scrap swapping?) was the shed of the girls' playground in Hillhead Primary School. Along the wall on the right in this photo, there used to be a bench, and it was there that we sat, usually on wet days, with our scraps in convenient books, one scrap (or set, if you had different sizes of the same scrap) to a page. I had two such books, which I think were old school text books, with cloth covers and plenty of pages. When a potential customer came along, you handed over your own books and took hers; you then leafed through the pages looking at the scraps lying inside and when you found one you wanted, you put it up in the manner of a bookmark. The books were returned, and you then went through the marked scraps, either putting them back inside the book as not being available, or offering them for one you wanted yourself.

I feel sure my books are still lurking somewhere in the midden I call home, but I can picture them now. The top right corner of each page is dark grey with years of spitty fingers, and the books are entirely dog-eared. The Season came and went, and the scraps returned to obscurity until the next year. I don't know what made me think of it, but I have already spent over an hour looking for the collection. I can't see my grandchildren being at all interested, but I can't help wondering if the only people who might collect scraps nowadays will be my age. Take a look here if you're interested.

Looking the part

I'm off to school again tomorrow, for the Easter Assemblies. I suddenly find myself thinking about work clothes rather than prayers, for I hardly ever wear, say, a formal jacket these days. It's rather like when I returned to work after the eight years of mummyfying (no, I know the spell-check doesn't like that. Tough) and didn't actually know what to wear.

It's living here that's the problem. There seems no reason ever to wear a coat other than a waterproof; absolutely no reason to appear properly dressed in Somerfield's; certainly no reason to go for a walk in anything other than one of my many cagoules and techy trousers. After all, I'm in a seaside town - a holiday town, only no-one really comes here for holidays any more - and ever since I arrived here, from Glasgow, I've dressed as though I was on holiday. Except, of course, when I was working, when I could have been anywhere. And the new school seems to be such a very warm place that layers are essential - can't exactly strip off to the semmit, now, can we?

And that is why, tomorrow, I shall look out a jacket and a shirt and look .... purposeful.

Holy snipers

A visit to my old classroom (strangely unaltered after almost two years - see left) prompted a range of emotions and a chain of reflection. It was great to feel so at home in school, even as I rejoiced in the ability to walk out of it again after a couple of hours; it was good to catch up with former colleagues and to catch pupils waving in a friendly manner across the playground as I went in.

Now, of course, much of my contact with the world of education is online. I find that the blogs I read fall for the most part into two categories: educational and church-orientated. On one side the posts and the comments are largely supportive, appreciative, gentle, careful of one another's egos, putting forward helpful and often innovative ideas for all to share. On the other side the posts are often self-aware, sometimes outrageous, often critical, and the comments snippy, defensive, brittle, caustic. You might think it obvious which group is which, but to avoid confusion I should point out that the latter group are the church folk, and the professionals at that. I find the contrast between expectation and reality interesting. Could it in fact be the burden of that very expectation that causes such hard carapaces?

And a final thought about school and church. When I was in the Infant class, we all had to say the Lord's Prayer every morning, standing beside our desks, eyes closed, hands piously clasped before us. The girl immediately behind me always muttered something different - a rapid, distracting mutter. One day I asked her what she was saying. "The teddy-bear's picnic" - quick as a flash. I thought this wonderfully rebellious. Later, much later, I realised that she was Jewish. At the time I was merely aware of a gulf between us, the gulf between my ignorance and her defensiveness. I remembered this today when I heard a rebel in my own congregation muttering her "Teddy-bear's picnic" - the Grey Book liturgy, to which she clings and which this morning had been abandoned in favour of an out-of-synch indulgence in the Blue Book.

Trouble is - we're supposed to be a unity. We don't half make it difficult for ourselves.