Life’s a bit like this - my musings on the world
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There’s something magical about making the trip to work on the first day of half-term.
Suddenly, the roads are clear of 90% of traffic. The pavements are clear of another 50% of pedestrians. The trains are clear of another 20% of commuters.
All in all, an exceptionally pleasurable experience on a crisp, sunny October morning. Shame it only lasts a week!
I was walking home the other night from the chip shop and couldn’t help spotting a TV flickering through someone’s front-room window.
It was one of those 95-inch screen jobbies that you can see from space, so I was hardly snooping… anyway, that’s by the by.
Who should I see on screen but my former History teacher from school. And having Googled him, I now discover that Alex Kershaw is an author of some note and repute.
He was a talking head on one of those History Channel documentaries about WW2 from what I could tell and, even though it’s almost 20 years on, he looked very similar to how I remember him.
Alex Kershaw was one of those teachers you love as a pupil. As a sixth-former studying Contemporary History, it was pretty cool to be taught by a 24-year-old teacher almost fresh out of university with a passion for left-wing politics and bags of charisma with it.
I remember one particular trip into London to go to the Imperial War Museum when he was happy to take a few of us to the pub before the proper business of the day.
For some reason that escapes me now, the watering holes of London were left untouched, but the sentiment was there.
The moral of the story here, though, is keep an eye on people’s front room windows - you never know who you might see.
We always think that we learnt nothing from school, don’t we?
Well, tonight I discovered that some things do stick. I got home to discover that Ava can now roll her tongue.
The conversation went like this:
C: Well, you and I both can, so of course she’ll be able to
Me: No, that’s not true. It’s an example of discontinuous variation
Yup, the fact that Ava can roll her tongue has nothing to do with genetics.
I actually felt quite smug. Next, I’ll be remember what caused the Liberal Party’s fall from power in the 1920s. Answers on a postcard, anyone?
