Year meme, part 2

[owl]

kajcarter asked for 1997

Really when you're young you don't define years in terms of calender years, but of academic years. 1997 was when I moved up up into the senior school in September and started working towards my GSCEs. In our system, that's the biggest change in your school years, after changing schools at eleven. In junior school, we had all our classes with our form class (registration group). Mine was F, and although they were organised more-or-less alphabetically, it had the reputation of being the worst form class in the year. It was mostly the boys, although there was one girl who was a complete trouble-maker. Half the class would disappear during the week of Balmoral Show (the main agricultural show in Northern Ireland), which was winked at by the teachers in that rural area, but that group would come back with a haul of pencil cases, sweets and other portable items they'd stolen from the stalls. By this stage, it was also the cool thing to smoke. At that time in my life, I was more comfortable around boys than girls, but fortunately my boys were more geeky and less petty-criminal. Our status symbol was having made it through the unabridged Lord of the Rings. I'd done it during second form, including the Appendices, while the boys were still stuck on the Council of Elrond.

In the spring we chose our GCSE subjects; I went with maths and sciences. I was very glad to get rid of art and home economics and music. I wasn't so pleased to get Mrs C., the maths teacher from hell, for 10 periods a week. Her temper was infamous. If anyone questioned her, it would be "I'm the one with the maths degree.". Our Add. Maths class were the recipients of the occasion when she snapped, "I might as well talk to the wall," and proceeded to do so. "Brick wall, do you know the answer?" We got good marks (I got two A*s, for which she never congratulated me, even though I was at the school for two years after I had escaped her), because we were too scared not to. She wouldn't give me actual panic attacks until my fifth year, though.

Apart from that, life was pretty good. I loved Triple Award science, fifteen periods of it, when I would sit somewhere near the back (being relatively well-behaved) with L. and K. We had the most fun in biology, because Mr M. generally was too dopey to notice what was going on. We watched a lot of videos, but we did get to dissect a pig's heart and lungs. L. was going to be a doctor, so she was determinedly not disgusted. I was genuinely unfazed, and was pretty proud of it when the boys laughed at the girly shrieks. L. is one of the few schoolmates I'm still in touch with. She's an SHO or whatever they call it now. I see K. in the paper sometimes; she's working in PR for the Department (of Agriculture, which is always the default).

I had Mr C. for physics. He used to turn up ten minutes late to class, clutching his lunchtime coffee, and was reputed to be more interested in coaching hockey than in teaching physics, but we still managed to get through the syllabus somehow, and I did very well. He used to throw tennis balls above our heads to demonstrate Newton's Laws, and he said I was obviously a good physicist because I didn't flinch when the ball wasn't going to come anywhere near me.

I had the friendly, black-bearded Dr C. for chemistry (L. started the course by smashing two or three pieces of glassware; she did this most years), Mr S. of the ratty tweeds and the pink and yellow teeth for English and Eng. Lit. (Macbeth and Seamus Heaney, and F.M. who never brought in her coursework, gentle blonde Mrs A. for Spanish, and Mrs F. for geography, which was the most boring subject I did.

All that isn't what I think of first when someone mentions my school. What I think of is sitting on the grassy banks around the lower rugby pitches on a sunny day, eating milk lollies and watching the boys play football. And probably I have an new library book or an old favourite, because football isn't really that interesting.

This was the era of Professor L. He came between the rotating pulpit supplies and calling our own organising pastor in 2001. He was a retired minister and had been preaching for about 50 years by then. His sermons were like precision engineering. He could say as much in half as hour as most sermons would in three quarters, all bright and clear and sharp. I'm really thankful to have known him.



Comment if you want to be given a year to write about.

Comments

[richenda.livejournal.com]

I'm not absolutely sure whether I want a year to write about, but I loved the "brick wall" bit - I don't suppose that you know whether she gave her husband's steak to the dog?
"Milk lollies" - I remember those in about 1956, and it's good to know that they were still around in 1997. Were they still rather small - say about an inch and a half and cylindrical?
Oh perhaps I'll risk asking for a year - after all, you were one of my first two LJ friends, so if you laugh it will be kindly

[owl]

Yeah, that's what our milk lollies were like. Dunno about Mr Campbell; I suspect he was exceedingly henpecked.

What about 1971?

[richenda.livejournal.com]

A quick google tells me that in 1971:

Idi Amin seized Uganda
US astronauts drive on the moon in a 'Moon rover'
London bridge moves to Arizona
Decimal currency introduced in the UK

Not a good year for me – a longterm relationship had ended

That was also the time when working life was disconcertingly divided into live-in work in rather luxurious accommodation for nine months of the year, and hand-to-mouth life in rented accommodation for three months of the year.

There were a great many children – Girl Guides in a London church hall, and long-legged ballet dancers playing cricket. (Have you ever watched a 13 year old girl or boy doing ballet steps in the outfield during the exchange of batsman? It’s worth seeing.)
The Summer must have been a fairly good one – don’t remember any extremes, but quite a few sunlit scenes
Swimming, fruitpicking – eat as much as you like, which probably lasted all of ten minutes, Hever Castle surrounded by bright water, walking on Welsh hillsides
Indoor memories – might have been any time of the year
Oxfordshire pubs
Learning to cook with Cooking In The Corner (Whitehorm) and trying to read The Philosopher in the Kitchen – I’ve still got it and might finish it some time
Marylebone library
A day at Aldershot, being entertained by several young men wearing an alrming amount of – is it called scrambled egg?
And wasn’t 1971 the year when a fishing vessel was renamed Greenpeace, and so began almost 40 years of green politics and, unlike events in London in the 1950s, succeeded in making civil disobedience a respectable activity?
1971 records remembered
(rather influenced by spending much time with children)
Grandad, Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep, -Ernie (the fastest milkfloat in the west), Knock Three Times

[lilliburlero.livejournal.com]

I had a Maths teacher a bit like that: if you asked her a question she would swoop on you screaming "Don't panic!" and go into an utter headspin. I seem to remember her uttering something like the "I'm the one with a maths degree" line too. This remember-a-year meme is good for my swiss-cheese memory, so may I have one, please? (b. 1978)

[owl]

1994.