Tag: School

What nickname?

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What’s the story behind your nickname?

I don’t have a nickname anymore. I used to have one, but I’ve forgotten it. I’ve changed as I’ve got older and only my hubby would use a nickname for me, and he stopped that a few years ago.

So when I was a child I was called nicknames by the school bullies. They took my surname and changed it to blueband (there was a margarine by that name) and used to shout it at me. I hated that. So I was pleased when I moved up to senior school and the bullying stopped.

As I say I had a nickname given me by my hubby, it was something silly, but I truly can’t remember it. So I guess I’ve answered and not answered the question.

Plus, what if I use my ex-nickname as a password for my computer, some of these questions rely on you being honest, but what if someone else reads it and uses the data? That’s a good question. Thankfully I’ve never used blueband as any kind or part of my passwords (plural), and now I’ve mentioned it I never will! Put that in your thesaurus and smoke it!

Teach more art

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What would you change about modern society?

So many schools seem to concentrate on “worthwhile” subjects, Sciences, Mathematics, English. The old fashioned three R’s reading, ‘righting and ‘rithmeric…

But we need creative thought as well as producing drones that do productive work.

If you learnt technical drawing you could design cars, create architecture, produce blue prints for engineering. Yes it’s all at the press of a button now, AI does so much, but artistic ability can help with innovation and ingenuity.

Art helped our understanding of medicine, Leonardo DaVinci undertook studies of anatomy that were well before other medicine caught up. Look at his drawings of dissections to understand his fantastic knowledge.

Art is in advertising, illustration, magazines, books, clothing, wallpaper design, surface pattern, product design, ceramics. That worthless degree that our government might close down could be the next big digital game, the shape of rotor blades that save energy for planes or wind turbines. Even a more readable font for someone who is dyslexic.

So art really should be a big part of modern society. Without it there would be no fashion, no special effects for TV and film, no beautiful make up for theatre or other creative productions.

Life is not just bean counting, it’s about passion and beauty. Otherwise we might as well all be clones, in grey jumpsuits, working 9 hours a day, sleeping when we are told and not attempting to be any different than anyone else.

My first crush

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Write about your first crush.

I was seven, he was eight. I think his name was Henry? We were in the same school. All the girls liked him. He had a nice laugh, he was tall, (about 3 ft 6 inches?) and he had blond hair. He was in the class above me.

I can remember playing tick and chasing round the playground after him. I remember standing on the wide shallow steps where we waited to go into school after breaks and jumping down them because he encouraged us to play tinker, taylor, soldier, sailor. Many old nursery rhymes had games made up to go with them. I don’t think he was bothered about me with my hornrimmed glasses and pudding bowl haircut. But it was only a crush, I was far too young to have any real interest in boys. I think I liked him because he was clever and kind…

I think he moved to a different school when he left junior school. I don’t remember ever seeing him again. It’s funny how you don’t think of anyone for years and then a prompt like this sparks a memory and there you are back in the past…

Just rememberd another nursery rhyme:

Georgie Porgie pudding and pie,

Kissed the girls and made them cry,

When the boys came out to play,

Georgie Porgie ran away!

And I remembered my grandmother has a teacup with a cartoon of this rhyme on it….

Freedom to think

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What does freedom mean to you?

Above all, freedom means being allowed to think, to care about people, to learn and find out things.

It must be important to have freedom of thought and speech. I don’t mean hate speech, or sharing violent or abusive beliefs though. Too many times people have been bullied and harassed by others who think they have all the answers. But it’s hard to work out what is the right thing to say… One person’s truth is another person’s lie?

Fake news does not help. Fact checking is important, if it’s done properly, I use websites like Snopes to check dodgy facts. I think the freedom to receive a good education is very important for both boys and girls. There should be knowledge shared around everywhere. If it means that all the world can act together and reduce pollution and save energy. Something must happen to improve everyone’s freedoms. I’m probably naive but we must try.

Childhood memory

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I used to climb up the sides of an old slide like this not the steps to get to the top. These was tarmac underneath that I could have fallen down onto, but I didn’t. Goodness knows why I did it. I also used to hang upside down from the top bar of the swings. I would climb up via the three legs holding up one end and then climb over. I don’t know why I stopped, maybe I was told it was not a thing girls did!

At the end of term at school we used to play pirates in the gym. They would pull the wall bars out and lock them in place and there were three or four ropes hanging down from the ceiling. The challenge of pirates was to play three dimensional tag. I would climb up the bars or a rope and if anyone tried to get me I would reach over and climb onto the next rope! I often was the last person standing (or hanging!)

Photo courtesy of a friend, hope that’s OK?

always an artist

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Daily writing prompt
When you were five, what did you want to be when you grew up?
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I always drew for as long as I can remember and I knew I wanted to  be an artist. I stuck drawings up on my bedroom walls as I got older, i would copy pictures of Asterix the Gaul, or draw Elizabethan people with ruffs round their necks and wonderful clothing. When the walls got covered I strung string across my side of the bedroom and hung my drawings and paintings on with clothes pegs or sellotape. As I got better at art I was asked to do a painting for one of the deputy head teachers who was retiring. I remember painting portraits of some of my school mates as if they were in the school playground in clothes that would look very old fashioned now. Eventually one of my paintings got sent to a display of childrens art in our twin town in Germany. That was a big highlight of school life. Luckily I got to go to art college, and here I am, still doing art all these decades later!

So long ago?

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Who was your most influential teacher? Why?

My most influential teacher taught Geography. He was very good at explaining the subject, but he was also very humane. He would put information in context, and talk about how the world was changing. I think he talked about the population explosion. How people were being exploited, and how countries were growing cash crops despite their populations needed food for themselves. So as well as learning about oxbow lakes and contours on maps we learnt a lot about the world. I don’t think we would have been taught like that today.

Nursery Rhymes

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I think seeing the white rabbit picture this week pushed some memories forward from the back of my mind…

Some of them I haven’t recalled since my childhood, and I don’t know if anyone else remembers them. I can remember two fully…

Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water,

Jack fell down and broke his crown, and Jill came tumbling after.

Up Jack got, and home did trot, as fast as he could caper.

He went to bed, to mend his head with vinegar and brown paper!

And…

See-saw Marjorie Daw

Jenny will have a new master

She shall earn but a penny a day

Because she can’t work any faster!

These are memories from the 1960’s. Boy I feel old. I wish I could fully remember Oranges and Lemons, said the bells of St Clements. Or George Porgie, pudding and pie…

It’s funny what you have contained in that greyish pink blancmange called your brain. It can hold information that has slurped about inside it for decades. Like I think I know the triumvirate in the Russian revolution was Kaminev, Zinoviev and Trotsky (I learnt it for history and it stuck).

Memory is strange and sometimes randow. But as they say, we are our memories, and our experiences teach us how to manage life.

Funny face

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When I drew a very grumpy picture of myself today I remembered how much I used to like pulling faces. Then a memory came back to me… I suddenly remembered that I won the funny face competition and my twin won the funny walk competition at a school sports-fun day one year. We won a pound and a half of full cream chocolate! I think we must have practiced a lot, but I’m not sure I knew that this was what the prize was.

It’s funny because I can remember the scene as if it was yesterday now. A group of children on the sports field and kids taking it in turn to make the others laugh. Whoever had the idea was a genius, much more fun than running races. No doubt influenced by ‘Month Pythons Flying Circus’ TV show which was on at the time. (Which I wasn’t allowed to watch because it was too ‘rude).

Hay-fever

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Today is dry and windy. I might go out later but the pollen count is very high. I’m allergic to grass pollen. It started when I was a child, I would wake up with ‘sleep in my eyes’ gunged up with mucus. Then I did a painting in situ in the school playing fields, I was drawing and painting a van dumped on the field. In the week it was there I sat and drew it most lunchtimes. By the end of that week I had full blown hay-fever! I think it was because the grass was really tall and was distributing pollen.

Nowadays there are much better antihistamines, eye drops and nasal sprays. Thank goodness, the situation without them would be horrible. I walked past a garden full of overgrown grass a few years ago and I could not breathe! Sneezing, running eyes, all of the symptoms. I had to buy hay-fever tablets straight away to calm it down.