Maybe not ‘outstanding’, but Friday night was pretty good; the first part of a fine weekend away, to celebrate Clare’s birthday (Saturday).
If you’re wondering what exactly is so outstanding here, it’s a school, trumpeting its Ofsted (Office for Standards in Education) rating. Not a modest institution.
During this week at the London Rare Books School I have felt privileged to be taught by Professor Michelle Brown, second from the left here. What an awesome fund of knowledge she has, seemingly knowing absolutely everything that happened to everyone before about 1500 AD. Like being taught physics by Richard Fenynman, and the sort of experience that you just ain’t gonna get through Zoom, sorry.
I am an educator, yes — a teacher if you like — but that doesn’t mean I hang around schools very often, if at all. This morning was an exception, however, and here’s where I spent it; St Helena’s only secondary school, opened in 1988. This is, of course, a model, which resides in the reception area, but it’s as good a way as any to get a feel for the place. The eponymous Prince visited in 1984 and obviously made a big impression on the islanders. Whether, in light of more recent events, they are thinking of changing the name, is not yet recorded.
Despite how it probably appears from this blog, I do spend the usual proportion of my life at work. But it appears relatively rarely on here simply because it’s not usually appropriate to whip the camera out and start taking photos of colleagues, students, whomever I should run into in the course of working life. Here’s an exception. And well done to my student Ainna (not pictured) who passed her part of this event unconditionally.
Being 42 