Monthly Archives: January 2023

Paul Selby, Hamlet, and Sebastian Faulks

It was late-September 1977 and our English A-Level class were an unprepossessing group of Sixth Form College students. Standing at the front of the room, Paul Selby, our tutor, must have felt it was going to be a challenging two … Continue reading

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A teacher who feels like Owl

I have the First Years after lunch tomorrow. Their capacity for tangential thinking seems to become magnified when lessons are in the afternoon. Yet they haven’t yet developed the skills for diversion possessed by the Year 8 students in the … Continue reading

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Saying ‘goodbye’ to Christmas

Walking up a city street on the evening of 6th January, there had been a large white elk peering down from the top of a wall that ran beside the street.  Perhaps it was intended to be a reindeer; it … Continue reading

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Safe from gas

Apparently, Uncle Pat had begun his working life with the local gasworks and had then gained a job as a fitter with the Gas Board, converting homes to natural gas. It was a project that seemed to take a long … Continue reading

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