Occasionally a phrase in a news story or online article brings me up short and demands to be noted and preserved in some way.
The phrase that caught my attention this week comes from an article on the current all-time high of double births, which has been so widely reported under headlines that use the phrase “Twins peak” that I can only assume that is an exact quotation from a press release.
Continue reading “counting on it”
In yesterday’s post, I touched on how the natural world is changing and how, while words I learned as a child are being lost from children’s vocabularies, there will presumably be a need for new words for the invasive species that are making their way to the UK common.
This got me thinking about how so much of what I learned in school has been superseded.
Continue reading “irrelevant facts”
I’m far too old for school myself and have no children, grandchildren, nephews and nieces, etc. – in fact, I don’t think I even have any neighbours with any of the aforementioned minors – and I haven’t been a teacher for a couple of decades. Despite this, my email inbox is full up with Back to School promotions and special offers.
I’ve been visiting my aged mother and this morning, long before I would normally consider it a civilised time to have a conversation on a Sunday, I found myself caught up in a discussion of yesterday’s unseasonal weather, school holidays, and the fact that mothers must be glad if the children are going back to school tomorrow. I think the implication was that it must be hard to keep children entertained when they can’t go outside and play.
Continue reading “back to school”
It’s summer and the park is knee-deep in meadow flowers.
It’s also the end of the academic year – time for sports days and garden parties, which explains the following notice, tied to gates of the local school:
Continue reading “picky”
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”
don't confuse the narrator 