Saturday July 6th 2024 "Never use the Internet to settle scores with ex-classmates!"

Bringing up kids today is no picnic, is it. And my medium-to-long-suffering wife Lois and I often look back at the 1980's, the decade when we were bringing up 2 daughters, and we remark, "Thank goodness there was no internet in those crazy far-off days!"

It's no secret that schoolmates don't always get on with each other, but whenever students go on to become local journalists, they get handed, almost on a plate, all too easy a "platform" on which to settle old scores with former classmates - have you noticed [Source: Onion News - West Worcestershire (Internet) Edition] ?

By the way, I've deliberately "cut" this story after the first 5 lines, because I don't like to encourage this growing trend in local journalism, which I think is of the worst possible type, and I hereby call on all local news editors to stop this kind of rubbish from sullying the internet any more. 

It's not worthy of you, local editors!

And the internet must be a total nightmare for the teachers too. Remember that story the other day in the local Onion News about that poor Wilkinson guy, the new history teacher at Hanley Castle High School, who got the worst possible start to his job there [Source: Onion News again] - remember?

Yes back in the 1980's all that internet malarkey was a disaster still waiting to happen, and Lois and I were able to bring out our 2 girls in an atmosphere of total calm and rationality, which was nice!

flashback to October 1984: Lois and me, and our 2 daughters

Alison (9) and Sarah (7) touring the Blue Ridge Mountains

of Virginia during our 3-year residence in the US (1982-5)

Happy days!

However, in my old Grammar School newsletter, emailed to me this morning, I discover that even somebody as unassuming as my good self, who indeed left school to go to college almost exactly 60 years ago, back in 1964 - yes, even somebody as unassuming as me has left a small trace of my schooldays on the internet. Shock horror!

I often say of myself that I'm a bit like the Goths - not the ones you see today hanging about in shopping centres, the so-called Mallo-goths - but the real Goths, the Visigoths, the Ostrogoths etc, the pre-medieval Germanic tribes, who roamed across Europe around the 4th century AD. 

Remember that somebody once said of these Gothic tribes that for centuries they "walked across the stage of history without making a mark on it".

example: the travels of the Visigoths (Western Goths) in the 

4th and 5th centuries AD, who left northern Europe to roam 

the Mediterranean area, much like young holidaymakers today, 

but without stopping to get a tan, seemingly, so still probably having 

a rather "pasty" look about them - can somebody tell us, please ?

Well, I've always thought that I walked across the stage of history without making a mark on it, but I discover this morning that there is a small reference to my schooldays on the internet, in a tiny local news story from the Western Daily Press, about the school's 1964 Prize Giving Ceremony. 

It was reported in the paper that a speech was given, at the ceremony, by General Sir John Hackett, in the presence of the Chairman of the Board of School Governors and the High Sheriff of Bristol, William Coldrick, plus all the school's students and teachers, needless to say.

Hackett was a distinguished British Army officer and painter, born in Perth, Australia in 1910, an area Lois and I got to know well, while our daughter Sarah was living there with her family from 2015 to 2023. One of Hackett's aunts was Grace Bussell, famous locally for rescuing shipwreck victims during her teenage years, as Lois and I discovered during our 2 visits to Australia, in 2016 and 2018.

"But let's get back to that Prize Giving in 1964. Just what was your part in all that little newspaper story in that 1964 article from the prestigious Western Daily Press, Colin?", I hear you cry. [Not me! - Ed]

Well, seeing as you ask, just look at this "doozy" of a detail from the list of the school's prize-winners that year. It's easy to miss if you're just glancing through, so I include it in full here, with some redactions obviously to protect the innocent. Yes, I must have been awarded the Latin Prose prize and I also shared the Greek Verse prize with my pal Martin, whom I recently "reconnected with" on social media giant Facebook, which is a bit of a coincidence, to put it mildly.

flashback to my blog in May 2024: I break the news

of my reconnection with former schoolmate Martin

thanks to Facebook

[That's enough nostalgia! - Ed]

Apart from that excitement of finding my name on the Internet, today is a fairly quiet day for me. Lois goes into town with our daughter Sarah and the twins, who are staying with us again this weekend. They visit the County Library and the Town Food Festival, while I stay here in the house to work on my Intermediate Danish (as you do (!) ). I've got vocabulary lists to compile for our next group meeting, coming up on Thursday.

our 10-year-old twin granddaughters Lily and Jessica

insist on buying their favourite lollipops

on their way into town for the library and food festival

When they get back home mid-afternoon, I find that they are particularly effusive about the Ukrainian dumplings and Suki Pantal's demonstration of Indian flavours that they heard about while sampling the Food Festival.

I have to agree on the dumplings at least - what's not to like in a dumpling or two, no matter where they come from haha! When Lois, Sarah and the twins come back from town, I'm already in bed having my afternoon nap, but soon after getting back, Lois joins me, which  is nice.

I have to get out of bed, however, when the doorbell rings, and go downstairs in my dressing-gown to let them all into the house, because both Lois and Sarah forgot to take house-keys with them. It's one of Lois's many endearing qualities I think, her occasional absent-mindedness, and I see that Sarah has inherited it. [Not that YOU'RE ever absent-minded, are you Colin! - Ed]

our daughter Sarah watching TV with the twins this afternoon

Sarah's had a rough week at work, at the accountancy agency she works for in Evesham - she's been dealing with some difficult clients, who compound their annoyance factor by not being really big money-spinners for the firm. It's always the little guys who cause the most problems, waste the most time, and earn the least money for the agency, she says. Oh dear!

And the twins are not as bouncy as usual, either, Lois and I have noticed. They're feeling a bit out of things at their school near Alcester. Next week is the school's "Bike-ability" week, which their closest schoolfriends will be taking full part in. 

The twins, however, haven't acquired bikes yet since returning from Australia last year, so they'll be just have to watch proceedings from the side-lines. Also it's the first performance of the school play coming up on Monday, and Lily, who's playing one of the pirates, is feeling particularly nervous about it - Lois and I are hoping to be in the audience for that, so hopefully seeing our faces in the crowd will help Lily conquer her nerves so fingers crossed.

the twins this afternoon, setting up one of  their fantasy games 

in our back garden - only they, and nobody else, know(s) 

what it's all about, needless to say!

And that's the way you do it - spending a nice July 6th with lots of pleasant interaction and without too much going wrong, which is nice!

22:00 Everybody goes to bed - zzzzzzzzz!!!!!