Connery made a better Bond but as a person he is a bit of an arse....
Handmade cards to e-cards, caroling to MP3s… How has technology changed your holiday traditions?
Sponsored by LifeScoop: Bringing You Tips for a Connected Lifestyle.It hasn't.
What was your favorite class in high school? (And no, lunch doesn't count.)
Unlike everyone else who seems to be answering this with tales of drinking, smoking and shagging, I was dull, boring, well-behaved and ridiculously shy at school. I didn't have any girlfriends and there was no promiscuous consorting of any kind going on. I didn't drink at all until I was eighteen and only took up drunken smoking at the tender age of twenty two.
My favourite school classes, therefore, were actual classes. I loved A-Level German. I relished going into this class for several reasons. Firstly, I could "research". Doing a modern language means you can sit in the library for hours on the internet reading football results, movie reviews, articles about your favourite bands as long as they were all in your foreign language of choice. Secondly, there were only two of us in the class. The other girl was a holier than thou Brethren girl. I'm not entirely sure what the belief systems of the Brethren are but I imagine they float vicariously between the Mormons and the Amish. She wasn't allowed to wear trousers and most brilliantly had no television and "the devil's music" on the radio was outlawed. The "media" module in A-Level German was a breeze. The final piece of brilliance relating to A-Level German was my coursework. The theme was Berlin and every Tom, Dick and Harry in the UK and Ireland wrote some banal piece about the fall of the Berlin Wall or the Allied Forces airlift there during the war. All very clichéd and yawntastic in my opinion. History doesn't change if you only ever hear it from one side of the fence (or more accurately, the wall!) So in my wisdom I decided to write my piece from the point of view of an East German radical terrorist member of the Baader-Meinhof gang. It appealed to my warped sense of Northern Irishness I guess. It also picked me up a whopping 97% in my coursework mark. Score.
In other news. I was madly in unrequited love with a girl in the year above who also was part of the German A-Level department. I never told her that though. In fact I could probably count on one hand the number of times I actually spoke to her.
With all that in mind, you'd assume that German was me favourite class. But no, this is just a preamble by way of introducing my actual favourite lesson of the week. German class came immediately after the 11.05 break time on Wednesdays and was closely followed by double history. History has always fascinated me and the teacher was a fantastically intelligent man but this is neither here nor there when it comes to my love of this particular class. During the first period, midway through some tale of Tudor Dynasties or peasant's rebellion a piece of paper would be passed around the class onto which everyone scribbled down some items, these items would then be taken to the front of the class from where the teacher would read them down the phone to...
THE LOCAL CHINESE TAKEAWAY!
The second period of history was a fest of gluttony as boxes full of steaming sweet and sour, chow mein, fried rice, honey chilli chicken, chips and coke took up the deskspace and books were temporarily pushed aside while the teacher regaled us with stories of war, lust, and other such Tudor and Elizabethan past times. As the bell sounded at the end of that class to mark the beginning of official lunch time we rolled from the classroom into the corridors, stuffed full of spices and fizzy drinks with a whole hour to kill before the afternoon's lessons began. Ample time to nip up into town and pick up a CD from Woolworths.
LOCATION: Lake Tahoe, California
TIME: August, 1963
SUBJECT: Mother
ACT ENGAGED BY SUBJECT: Swimming
b. Dogpaddle
IDENTIFYING MARKS: Dark Sunglasses
CURRENT CONDITION OF SUBJECT: Fabulous
I am sitting at the dining table trying to organise Christmas Amazon orders to various family factions.
I am facing the open french windows and looking down to the bottom of the garden where, under a startling pink bower of Bourgainvillia, Sprog has set up a small table and chair. She has very carefully carried her bowl of porridge and her cup of milk down to her table. She is sitting in state, putting me in mind of a Victorian jungle explorer taking tea.
Wilf has gone down to bug her and she is distracting him by singing her very own version of jingle bells. Rattling a jingly baby toy she is lustily singing "Jingle bells! Jingle bells Jingle all the WAY!! (Hey!) Ohmah fahhh eddesterahhh! Amana OPEN SLEIGH (hey!)"
Wilf is clutching his nadgers and dancing from one foot to the other, laughing like a drain.
They are both starkers.
Life is good.
What was your favorite class in high school? (And no, lunch doesn't count.)
Lunch class? Pah.
How about smoking behind the newsagents across the road class?
Or bunking off and going to Drummonds class?
Or maybe those free periods either side of lunch when my friend would drive us to the Dome on the Kings Road and I'd drink gin and tonics before returning to my A Level English Literature class?
Lunch class, schmunch class.
Hello internets. Just thought I'd pop by to let you know that:
(a) the PGCE is going great guns (though I haven't actually been allowed near a child yet, so this may well be the calm before the storm)
and
(b) well, I think this one deserves a picture:
The poppy is an uncomplicated creature. It has one color. It is not parasitic or solitary. It grows simply, and in groups, like schoolchildren.
But its symbolism is rich, with a magnitude that has spanned many countries, and many centuries. For such a little flower it carries meanings that are vast and weary; that are eternal and quiet in the earth.
In Greece and Rome the poppy meant sleep and death - worlds beneath the cold eyelid. Opium was extruded from its seeds and sleepy breaths colored ancient dens and palaces. Poppies decorated the tombstones of their dead, welcoming the lengthy sleep. In Persian literature, the poppy is called the eternal flower - for emotions unrelenting and without end; for loyalty without limit.
The poppy fields in The Wizard of Oz were billowing and fearsome, promising an everlasting sleep. In Egypt opium was daubed on the neck and wrists like a hypnotic perfume.
It wasn't until 1915 that the significance of the little red flower passed into Europe as well, when the ground was already red. Towards the end of the year a poem was published - a trifle sentimental, a little maudlin, as most affairs of the heart are - and its beginning is familiar:
"In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row...
The fragrant drops of blood growing amongst the white purity must have been a shocking sight to the soldier; in a poem it might be less awful but no less meaningful. The poppy had become a part of their spoiled landscape.
"That mark our place: and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below
1915 was a terrible year. Gallipoli - Ypres - Nueve Chapelle - Loos - The Battles of the Isonzo...the poppies must have shuddered in the stinging breeze.
"We are the dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders Fields
When the war was over, and the hardness and the bitternress had set in, the poppy had adopted another symbol - the four blasted years that had called the Edwardians in from their play, that had rubbed the gilt off the lily. Its brave, bloody image was burnt on the dying soldier's eyes.
On Veteran's Dan/Remembrance Day the popppy is worn, sewn into wreaths, displayed in houses (Aubrey does this): it is still held high.
"Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields"
There should be alcoholic tea.
Sometimes you really need a cup of tea, but you could also do with a drink.
Some people put whiskey in tea. But then your delicious tea would taste of whiskey. Yuck.
Cognac, I suppose, but again, it would be ruining both a perfectly nice cup of tea and a glass of cognac.
Coffee lends itself so much more to the addition of alcohol, but coffee doesn't scratch the itch that tea does.
An evening drink that combines the oooooh of a good cup of tea and the ahhhhh of a gin and tonic. Then my life would be complete.
