I went to three Grammar Schools and a Comprehensive instead. Even the basic terminology is different when you cross the Atlantic. ( Cut for much detail about my teenage years. And that meme. )

Over the weekend there have been Anniversaries (plural). I haven't posted about them before, but thought I would now.

( Under the cut for rambling and memories from Way Back When. )

Ruth Etchells was Vice-Principal of Trevelyan College when I arrived there in 1973, and my department tutor in my first year as well. She was an unceasing delight in both capacities, as a teacher and tutor and as a woman.

I was thus very sad to see her obituary in the Grauniad today. She was a delightful, warm, funny woman with a rigorous approach ( Read more... )

You work like stink for it and suddenly it's over. Mind you, these days inbetween the festivities are good - no need to go to extra-special effort, lots of new toys to play with (I can haz a Kindle!) and family around ( Read more... )

We spent the Bank Holiday weekend (wet, chilly, windy. It was August Bank Holiday; what did you expect?) with my mother in Wales. We took her out for a meal to celebrate her birthday on Friday, and my brother and his family came over for Saturday. On Sunday we went to Cheshire Oaks - an outlet village of depressingly large scale. Mum enjoys ( Read more... )

Y, who had the room next door to me in my first year at Durham, visited for a few days this week. It was really good to spend time with her. We made a duty visit to Robert Dudley's tomb, but spent way more time talking books, Buffy and other important matters. Tired now, but in a good way.

As I said before, I go to Italian classes. Last week I was chatting to my partner about the ease or otherwise of working out vocabulary and grammar and the help I felt I had from my other Romance languages and the language history I learned along with the Anglo-Saxon from university days. Sue, for such is her name, commented on the Anglo-Saxon and ( Read more... )

An idea nicked from woman_of_ - a sort of potted history of how I became a fangirl.

( Cut for ramblings about long-dead TV shows. )

This is a meme, gakked from fenchurche . It's about one's senior year in high school. I thought it was worth playing along, simply because my last year at school was probably fairly normal for England and very different from the US.

Fill this out about your SENIOR year of high school!
The longer ago it was, the more fun the answers will be!!

( Answers below the cut. )