Mix up

I was out walking in a bluebell wood with my friends. 

“Their first exam should be over now.”  I text them.

“No reply?” asks Diane.

“Nope – there are far more interesting things going on.  They’re all having a weepy final assembly dressed as Disney characters.”

But over lunch, Carenza rings back.

“Yeah the paper wasn’t the one we were expecting –it was Latin language not literature...”

I am flabbergasted  - how did we get that mixed up?

“…but it went alright anyway.”  She summarised the Tacitus and Cicero that she’d had to translate  and the stories sounded coherent.  If, on the other hand, the story sounds rather like the plot of Mozart’s Magic Flute, it’s a sign that something’s gone wrong with the translation.

“How did Perran ‘s go?”

“Okay, I think – we raised our eyebrows at one another across the exam room.”

Afterwards, Diane and Carol tell me I went white and I have to explain about the Latin paper-swap.

We are knee deep in bluebells when Perran rings and he is using Carenza’s phone – where is his phone?  I decide not to probe.  There’s a lot of background noise.

“Are you in the pub?”

“Sorry – I can’t hear you – I’m in the pub.  About the Statisitics – it was tough but I think it went okay.”

As for me, as soon as I get home, I’m going to check the exam timetable that I’ve pinned to the kitchen wall to make sure there aren’t any more interesting surprises.

 

 

Drolls and Weirds - Robert had heard stories of beautiful fairy children reared by humans - they were called changelings - But of course, he did not believe in them. Read the latest chapter of my story of love and mystery set in Cornwall by clicking here. Or read from the start.

 

 

Lift

White Queen

Something I’m ashamed of – I’ve given the twins quite a few lifts to school over the years.  It’s not the distance – it’s the huge schoolbags, not to mention the saxophone.

Even last night, Perran called me from school.

“Just why should I come and pick you up, Perran?”

“Because I’m on antibiotics for tonsillitis, and I’ve been revising for hours and I’ve got an exam tomorrow.”

Any excuse.

And now, this morning, the final dilemma.  It is a fact that pupils are more acute after a morning walk.  That’s doubly important just before an early exam, and this morning Carenza has Latin Lit and Perran has Statistics.  They should walk.

But it is also the official “last day” with fancy dress and an assembly of mock awards and nostalgia, all on top of the exams.  So here they are in front of me dressed respectively as the white queen and a playing card soldier from Alice in Wonderland.  It is raining and we are a mile from school.  I have a vision of Perran’s playing card costume slumping into papier mache around him while he glares at his exam paper.

I don’t know what to do for the best.

But the twins know –

"We'd rather walk and be alert for the exams, Mum."

So I grab 2 bin bags and stuff the playing card costume in them.  Perran and Carenza put on their raincoats.  We pray for focus in the exams and off they go.

Leaving me to stuff my warmest duvet into another bin bag, ready for a weekend of glamping.

 

 

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Like an Express Train

Perran and Carenza first day at school, 2006

It’s all rushing at us so fast, like an express train.  Yesterday, I had my last Latin lesson with Carenza and Beth.  Beth gave me a lovely card and flowers.  It was both the end of an era –

“But we’ll be seeing you again, Beth.”

Of course I will, but never again as teacher.  And also the beginning of something –

Beth’s well-written “thank you” showed me that a good teacher will receive respect and affection from her pupils – my year’s PGCE training ahead will lead to a rewarding future.     

Last day at School

Today is also the last normal day of school.  Perran wore black because after this year his form will be no more – there is an extra tutor group in the twins’ year due to a bulge in numbers, and that class is dissolved for ever from tomorrow.

Tomorrow is dressing up and a final assembly with silly awards.  It was meant to be light-hearted, but people’s sense of humour is somewhat frayed just before exams.  Apparently, nobody appreciates being voted “person most likely to become an axe murderer”, so things have been a little frought.

In the middle of this, there is also a smattering of first exams – Perran will be sitting Stats, Carenza Latin literature.  I haven’t dared to ask whether they’ll be wearing fancy dress in the exam room or not.

And me – I’m slightly dreading our University reunion weekend, glamping.  I don’t know if we’ll all manage to get on, and even more importantly, I don’t even know if we’ve got a cosy yurt or a drafty tipi.

 

Drolls and Weirds - Robert had heard stories of beautiful fairy children reared by humans - they were called changelings - But of course, he did not believe in them. Read the latest chapter of my story of love and mystery set in Cornwall by clicking here. Or read from the start.

Glamp 2

Can you spot Carenza, Nigel, Perran and Pascoe?

I mentioned a couple of posts ago that we and our university friends are in the run up to a weekend of glamping to celebrate our joint fiftieth birthdays.  I guess I’m a bit apprehensive  - it’s a time of stock-taking and comparisons, and sometimes the unkind jibe that one made in 1983 can come back to haunt. 

With the same group of friends, for a number of years, we holidayed together in the Lakes, but the advent of children made it tough.  Nothing could be harder than reconciling four or five different approaches to bedtime, quirky eating and discipline.  Add in a few dogs and cramped accommodation because we were all skint and you have yourselves a picture.  Who would have known that an evening barbecue could become a cauldron of smouldering tensions?

So for over a decade, we stopped.

But if not now, when?  Two of our group have died and one or two others have had serious health issues.  It makes you think – we shouldn’t leave it too long.

So we are all set, packing the insect repellent.  And one of us is now a practising counsellor /therapist. 

Does he deal with emergencies?

Drolls and Weirds - Robert had heard stories of beautiful fairy children reared by humans - they were called changelings - But of course, he did not believe in them. Read the latest chapter of my story of love and mystery set in Cornwall by clicking here. Or read from the start.

Cultural Exchange

If you are reading this as a prospective UK student, then I want to make you aware of a great opportunity you will have as a fresher.  Many universities integrate overseas students with UK freshers in their accommodation and you will get to know people from all over the world.  In particular, avail yourself of the chance to learn to cook a variety of cuisines!

But don’t be fooled – it is not just that you will learn about overseas cultures.  The questions that these bright undergraduates ask you about your own culture will make you see things that you have taken for granted in a new light.  I still remember trying to explain the links between Father Christmas and the Story of the Nativity.

“No.  Okay.  You’re right – there isn’t one, after all.”

That was one of the best Christmases our family has had, when Shuyu Song came home from UEA with Pascoe for Christmas because China was too far to go. 

Pascoe has since shared accommodation with Irene from Spain and Jenny from Canada.  However, it is Shuyu Song that I will always remember – thanks for coming and belting out the theme to Titanic in our midnight kitchen, and for sliding down icy country lanes with us.  And God be with you as you return home to China today.

 

Drolls and Weirds - Robert had heard stories of beautiful fairy children reared by humans - they were called changelings - But of course, he did not believe in them. Read the latest chapter of my story of love and mystery set in Cornwall by clicking here. Or read from the start.

 

Glamp

So the run up to my fiftieth birthday earlier this year was traumatic enough, but now we have the run up to a reunion with our university friends and their partners – a joint celebration of all our fiftieths .  The arrangements have been rumbling on for some time, with the only fixed idea being that we are “glamping”.   Glamping is a form of luxurious camping, if that isn’t a contradiction in terms.

Annabel  finally managed to forge a consensus among us and to make a booking, but by this time, I was barely paying attention: “Whatever, Annabel – here’s the deposit.”.  We have opted to share accommodation with Nick and Jackie.  As the time approaches, I consult the website of the camping ground in Herefordshire.  I find it impossible to read aloud from it without assuming the voice of Neil – the hippie in “The Young Ones”. 

However, I now see that there is a vital difference between yurts and tipis.  The coded language on the website implies that tipis are perhaps more suitable for “hardened campers”, containing chimeneas rather than proper stoves and with smoke vents that have to be opened with poles from the outside.  The weather forecast isn’t good.  Suddenly it matters.

I ring Jackie,

“Are we in a yurt or a tipi?”

“I can’t remember.”

“The yurts look much nicer.”

“I expect we’re in a yurt then.”

Carenza has been passing through.  “Oh Mum, you’re so middle class.” She too mimics Neil – “Are we in a yurt or a tipi?”

But are we?

 

 

Drolls and Weirds - Robert had heard stories of beautiful fairy children reared by humans - they were called changelings - But of course, he did not believe in them. Read the next chapter of my story of love and mystery set in Cornwall by clicking here. Or read from the start.

What not to do in Exams 2

The memories are flooding back now.

Helen, how could you possibly have failed to secure the lid of the food processor in your domestic science exam?

Tracey, when in English ‘O’ Level, they asked you to “write an essay on this postcard”, they meant for you to take inspiration from the picture, not turn it over and physically write an essay in very tiny handwriting on the back of the card.

Kath, when they asked for somebody who “was to animals as a doctor is to humans” the answer they were looking for was “vet”, not some species of animal that was skilled in diagnosis and healing. (Although actually I see your logic on that one.)

As for me, I turned over too many pages in my booklet of ‘O’ Level history questions and accidentally sat my exam on the wrong period of time.  Note the word “accidentally”.  But I recently heard of one of the twins’ contemporaries doing that deliberately because he had done so little revision that he actually thought he stood a better chance on the other stuff.

Oh, and once midway through an exam, my hair uncoiled with force and shot a large plastic clip across the room onto the desk of a middle-aged man who must have been an external candidate.  Tense? Me?

 

Drolls and Weirds – "How did those men lose their eyes?"-  Read chapter 7 of my story of love and mystery set in Cornwall by clicking here. Or read from the start.