Sunday February 16th 2025 "Have YOU ever been a teacher? Or have you met one once maybe?"

Yes, Readers, have YOU ever been a teacher? Or have you ever met one? A lot of us have, haven't we! Well, it's time to spread the word to each and every one of them - "Your game is up, my friend!".

Because you see, it's finally happened hasn't it. It's been a truism of the teaching profession, ever since the 1956 film "The King And I", that, in the words of the song, "It's a very ancient saying, but a true and honest thought, that if you become a teacher, by your pupils you'll be taught". 

Well, at 69 years, you can't say that that idea hasn't had a long-to-longish run, to put it mildly!

Poor Jennifer !!!!!! But it's comforting to know that all those highly-paid "jobsworths" in Hampshire's County Education Department are earning their money and actually doing something, which is nice!

Certainly, for me and my medium-to-long-suffering wife Lois and me, we're realising that our granddaughter Josie certainly isn't relying on her teachers at nearby prestigious private boarding school, St Catherine outside Guildford, Surrey, in order to get her the top grades she needs to in her coming A-levels this summer, that's for sure! She'll be banking mostly on her own efforts, which is refreshing in a way.

It's also a bit surprising, however, because St Catherine's is a top school, taking students from all over the world, and it's a school with a lot of weird traditions, like "Patronal Day", which Lois and I haven't a clue about what it means - and weird traditions is normally a by-word for a good school, or certainly ought to be (!) 

Oh dear!

(left) flashback to 2023, as Josie's mother, our daughter Alison,

looks at the school's brochures before enrolling Josie at the school,

and (right) the school's mysterious "Patronal Day", attended by the High Sheriff

of Surrey (extreme left) in his "poncey" chain of office (!)

Be that as it may, Josie isn't relying on her teachers as A-Levels approach. And we can see this at first hand this week, because Josie is spending half-term with us revising for her A-Levels, while her parents, our daughter Alison and husband Ed, and Josie's siblings Rosalind (16) and Isaac (14) are spending the week in Copenhagen, Denmark, the city where the family lived for 7 years between 2012 and 2019.

The downside for Josie is that she's got to spend the week with her two "old codger" grandparents, while the rest of the family have landed at Copenhagen this very afternoon and are already starting to enjoy this "nostalgia trip" of a lifetime.

"dinner with Granny and Poppa", or "the lights and merriment of Copenhagen's

Nyhavn harbour district" - which would YOU choose if YOU were 18 haha!

It's very much a "no-brainer", isn't it!

flashback to February 2013, and mine and Lois's first visit to Copenhagen to see the family.

(left) Josie, then aged 6, with her mother (our daughter Alison), plus siblings Rosalind (4) 

and Isaac (2); and (right) little Rosalind, pictured at the Nyhavn harbour area,

with me and Lois sporting our stylish new winter headgear, bought for the visit

And for Lois and me, as a couple of old "boomers", our own memories of staying with grandparents, way back in the late 1940's and early 1950's, revolve mainly around the long, mainly silent, afternoons and evenings. with the stillness punctured only by a ticking clock. There was only one channel on the "telly", and programmes didn't start till the evening, and to cap it all, the grandparents didn't have a set anyway, needless to say (!).

What a madness it all was!!!!

flashback to the late 1940's: remember what it was like with your parents, 

watching BBC only, evenings only, for the 5 minutes just before bedtime,

 and on a tiny 9 inch screen????    What utter madness !!!!

But I think that it's probably because of the mental and emotional scars that we both bear from those horrendous days, that Lois and I are trying to break the mould for Josie on that one this week, by streaming non-stop YouTube videos of 'happening group' "Right Said Fred" on our TV, the group that we understand  the streetwise kids of today are all "grooving out to", as I believe the current jargon has it (!).

(left) yesterday's sensation, ageing pop star Taylor Swift and (right) Right Says Fred,

the group which famously "sampled" Swift's vintage hit "Look What You Made Me Do"

on their latest smash, "I'm Too Sexy (For My Shirt)". Have I got that right? [No! - Ed]

21:00 After all the excitement of the day, Lois and I try to calm things down a little, and "cool it" on the sofa, with tonight's edition of the BBC's "Countryfile" - and you may say that that's typical "old codger fare" (!), but Lois and I have read that the show has a tiny but maybe growing following among today's kids, especially if they're "sustainability-minded".

Josie, however, isn't tempted by this, although we can see she's somewhat "torn". She announces that she's going to bed early, taking her ipad, phone etc upstairs to her room. A pity we won't have her company, but we recognise she's got to get her hours of sleep (and scrolling!) in, because she'll be making another early start tomorrow morning, working on her studies, so fair enough!

Countryfile is one of mine and Lois's favourite shows. It's a weekly check on the health of the British countryside and on the state of wildlife in the UK, presented by a team of observers and photographers.

Tonight, one very excited BBC wildlife cameraman, Hamza Yassin, after hours of searching the skies over the Isle of Mull for a white-tailed eagle, finally spots what he's looking for. And as the Radio Times "blurb" says (above), 2025 is the 50th anniversary of the reintroduction of white-tailed eagles. This bold experiment, in 1975 the earliest of its kind, was a big deal in wildlife terms, because the 'white-tails' are officially the UK's largest birds of prey, majestically commanding the Scottish skies, with a wing span of nearly 8 feet, or 2.4m.

Hamza says it's a male, but "How on earth do you go about 'sexing' a white-tailed eagle? from about, like, a billion miles away - more, probably!" is what I think I hear you cry!

[not me, I'm like Josie - I've already disappeared upstairs to bed with my ipad too, thanks very much! - Ed] 

Well, seeing as how you're all "gagging" to know the answer (!), here's Hamza again with the nitty-gritty (!).

This is a pair of eagles that Hamza has been watching for 12 years now, however, and he's even given them names, which is nice! But he's still not sure whether it's the male he's been watching today, or the female.

This is the point where Lois and I start to lose Hamza's train of thought, and we're not sure what he's getting at. If YOU know, drop us a postcard, won't you haha!

22:00 Feeling slightly mystified, and wondering if we may have "nodded off" for a moment and missed some of Hamza's "pieces to camera" and hence lost his line of reasoning here, we decide to make our way quietly up to bed, so as not to wake young Josie - zzzzzzzzz!!!