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Tag Archive 'Mental Archaeology'

The bad news…

Posted in Childhood, Health, Malc, Rich on Sep 6th, 2010

Well, wishes and prayers didn’t work; I couldn’t even see Mummy’s face properly when she woke me up so the morning started with tears, self-pity and breakfast, of course. Once my older sisters had left for school we got ready for the journey to Petworth. We could have waited until Thursday when the doctor held [...]

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A bad day made a little better…

Posted in Best Friend, Childhood, Malc, Rich, School on Sep 4th, 2010

Rich’s loyalty, support and protection helped to make the worst day of my young life almost tolerable. I was seven years old, had moved to the second block of the class and had already secured my place at the back right hand desk. Nobody was going to take that away from me, ever! One morning [...]

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Rich, Malc and mischief…

Posted in Best Friend, Childhood, Malc, Rich, School on Sep 2nd, 2010

Rich and I devised a naughty trick to play on Mrs Chalfont, the Infants Teacher. When she got cross with us for whispering to each other she called my name then Rich’s. I stood up but Rich didn’t and when she got even angrier I said innocently “But, Miss Malcolm Richard is my name.” That [...]

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A tale of two boys begins…

Posted in Best Friend, Childhood, Malc, Rich on Aug 30th, 2010

One of the defining tales of my childhood goes back a little further into the mists of time. If I’ve told this story already I apologise for repeating myself but these are very good memories that I never want to lose. We moved to Lurgashall in 1956 when I was three and my Mother was [...]

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Don’t eat ‘pretty’ berries…

Posted in Childhood, Gallantry, Sisters on Aug 28th, 2010

The “virtually indestructible” story reminded me of another incident from the dawn of time. If a certain person who reads this blog sees this she may well arrange to have me killed but it’s a cute story. It could have easily been a tragic story but fate, or whatever controls these things, intervened and there [...]

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Virtually indestructible?

Posted in Childhood, Toys on Aug 27th, 2010

Into the depths of history for this tale which happened when I was four. When the alcoholic disaster that was my biological father abandoned us my Mother was left completely in the lurch. To help make ends meet she cleaned house for a wealthy family who lived in what was essentially a small mansion at [...]

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Inappropriate behaviour?

Posted in Music, School, Teachers on Aug 24th, 2010

I was amused to read on the BBC website that there is concern in Wales over the fact that women teachers outnumber men by a ratio of three to one. I’m actually astonished, in these paranoid times that any man who values reputation and liberty would even contemplate a career in teaching. To illustrate my [...]

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Sometimes I brought it on myself…

Posted in Memories, Mental Archaeology, School on Aug 21st, 2010

There were times at Grammar school when I really did seem to go out of my way to court unpopularity; usually with a flagrant display of elitism. In lower Sixth Form those of us studying French Literature for A Level were invited to the University of Sussex at Brighton for a day of study along [...]

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There were other good things…

Posted in Books, Reading, Science Fiction on Aug 19th, 2010

One of the most significant events of my first week at Grammar school was discovering the library. It may be hard for some people to appreciate how difficult it was for a child with a very advanced reading age to obtain challenging reading material in 1960s rural West Sussex. My primary school had a very [...]

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There were some good times…

Posted in Achievement, Public Speaking, School on Aug 15th, 2010

You may have got the vague impression that I didn’t like my school very much and you would be right. Whether I’d have been any less bullied and unhappy at any of the other Grammar Schools that offered me a place is moot. Wherever I went I’d still have ginger hair, a “funny” Scottish surname [...]

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