A friend of mine wrote on her Facebook page the other evening that "You know you're past middle age when your memories mean more than your dreams". Oh dear me. How depressing is that? I was about to let rip and give her a kick up the backside, but just in time I recognised the irony given how I had spent the morning that day. If you fly into Edinburgh Airport from the south west and are sitting on the right side of the plane looking out of the window, just moments before you land, you might have noticed a castle next to the Glasgow motorway, but otherwise surrounded by huge trees, a river, the Grand Union Canal and a lot of non descript shacks which, for your information, happens to be a chicken farm. The "castle" is in fact a mid 19th century baronial style building, occupied for the last 80 years or so by Clifton Hall School, my alma mater. The tower on the right, at the top of which was my dorm when I first arrived, is still apparently occupied by the ghost of the Green Lady.
I caught sight of the place flying in on Easyjet at the crack of sparrows on Wednesday morning and as I had a couple of hours to kill before a hectic series of meetings I decided to go and have a look round. I had not been back since I left the school in July 1976! THIRTY SIX YEARS AGO. The mental scars of having been sent away to boarding school aged 6 and a bit obviously run deep. By the way perhaps don't mention to the powers that be what I get up to on my trips to Scotland, but in my defence I was shown round the school by a very chatty 15 year old girl who was interested Formula One so I her talked her through the proposed IPO. I had such a lovely time wandering around reliving these halcyon days of the early 1970's until the headmaster announced that they had recently stumbled across some archived records within which he might well be able to find my old Common Entrance results. Retrieve them he did together with those of my younger brother. I have a reasonably well developed ability to laugh at myself, but I was not amused in the slightest to find that Jamie's results were infinitely superior to mine and indeed that I had only just managed to scrape into Glenalmond. Here is a sample of my results and the somewhat extraordinary comments.
54% in English I - " Comprehension showed no obvious talent "
52% in Maths II - "Q6 was not done and his main weakness was in Q2 " ( that implies to me I would have been better off omitting to answer Q2 aswell ).
55% in History - "One question well answered, otherwise knowledge often inaccurate."
39% in Latin - " Very weak and should't have attempted part B " ( common theme there! )
33% in Maths III - " Insufficient knowledge "
50% in French Oral - the comment on this one really annoyed me - " Rather like Morrison, though a bit better in Q.4 " What do they think they are doing comparing me to him? Morrison played rugby for Scotland. Started at Barings the same day as me. He couldn't speak French to save his life and when he tried his accent was horrendous. I am told I sound like Prince Charles when I speak French but I'm quite proud of that.
Oh well. There is one positive aspect from roaming around in the past. It makes my own children's efforts seem quite encouraging.
Friday, 15 June 2012
Friday 15th June, 2012
A friend of mine wrote on her Facebook page the other evening that "You know you're past middle age when your memories mean more than your dreams". Oh dear me. How depressing is that? I was about to let rip and give her a kick up the backside, but just in time I recognised the irony given how I had spent the morning that day. If you fly into Edinburgh Airport from the south west and are sitting on the right side of the plane looking out of the window, just moments before you land, you might have noticed a castle next to the Glasgow motorway, but otherwise surrounded by huge trees, a river, the Grand Union Canal and a lot of non descript shacks which, for your information, happens to be a chicken farm. The "castle" is in fact a mid 19th century baronial style building, occupied for the last 80 years or so by Clifton Hall School, my alma mater. The tower on the right, at the top of which was my dorm when I first arrived, is still apparently occupied by the ghost of the Green Lady.
I caught sight of the place flying in on Easyjet at the crack of sparrows on Wednesday morning and as I had a couple of hours to kill before a hectic series of meetings I decided to go and have a look round. I had not been back since I left the school in July 1976! THIRTY SIX YEARS AGO. The mental scars of having been sent away to boarding school aged 6 and a bit obviously run deep. By the way perhaps don't mention to the powers that be what I get up to on my trips to Scotland, but in my defence I was shown round the school by a very chatty 15 year old girl who was interested Formula One so I her talked her through the proposed IPO. I had such a lovely time wandering around reliving these halcyon days of the early 1970's until the headmaster announced that they had recently stumbled across some archived records within which he might well be able to find my old Common Entrance results. Retrieve them he did together with those of my younger brother. I have a reasonably well developed ability to laugh at myself, but I was not amused in the slightest to find that Jamie's results were infinitely superior to mine and indeed that I had only just managed to scrape into Glenalmond. Here is a sample of my results and the somewhat extraordinary comments.
54% in English I - " Comprehension showed no obvious talent "
52% in Maths II - "Q6 was not done and his main weakness was in Q2 " ( that implies to me I would have been better off omitting to answer Q2 aswell ).
55% in History - "One question well answered, otherwise knowledge often inaccurate."
39% in Latin - " Very weak and should't have attempted part B " ( common theme there! )
33% in Maths III - " Insufficient knowledge "
50% in French Oral - the comment on this one really annoyed me - " Rather like Morrison, though a bit better in Q.4 " What do they think they are doing comparing me to him? Morrison played rugby for Scotland. Started at Barings the same day as me. He couldn't speak French to save his life and when he tried his accent was horrendous. I am told I sound like Prince Charles when I speak French but I'm quite proud of that.
Oh well. There is one positive aspect from roaming around in the past. It makes my own children's efforts seem quite encouraging.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment