Yesterday I said that one of my school teachers seemed to believe that pleasure taken in the sound and general impression of poetry was more important than the ability to understand and explain the details of each word and image. Forty years later, I am very glad that was her attitude.
Another memory from that time at school was the context – or, more accurately, lack of context – for the poetry we were studying.
Continue reading “more school memories”
(Click here for a picture of male and female kiwi flowers)
We are gradually trying to replace our old grape vine with a kiwi vine. Our reasoning is mainly that the old vine is not very healthy and produces huge quantities of wasp-attracting fruit that gets mildew and moulders on a grand scale each year.
Since there’s some sixty square metres of trellis, it’s probably not surprising there’s more fruit than we can deal with. Kiwis seem as if they might be rather more controllable.
The photo shows a sucker on one of the kiwis we planted a couple of years ago. The vivid vermilion of these new shoots, and the furriness of the stalks and young leaves, never ceases to amaze me.
Continue reading “of kiwis and poetry”
On a recent visit to Madrid I spotted the Colegio Arzobispal in the photo:
I think it’s fairly obvious that not all the children who study there grow up to be archbishops, but do you have to have studied there to be considered a candidate for such a post?
It clearly is a school, not a theological college, as the yellow traffic sign in the wider view shows:
Continue reading “religious education?”
Despite being as ready as any of my classmates to chant the rhyme –
Latin is a language as dead as dead can be;
It killed the ancient Romans, and now it’s killing me.
– Latin was actually my favourite school subject and I have long believed it was the most useful subject I studied.
Continue reading ““it killed the ancient romans…””
don't confuse the narrator 