Il mondo è molto piccolo

[gillo]

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

Comments

[judiang]

*is suddenly ceased with singing It's A Small World*

Hee, that's amazing.

[gillo]

Why do you think I wrote teh heading in Italian?

It's astonishing. She lives in Banbury, which would normally be a bit far to travel for an evening class, but her daughter's at Warwick University, where the class is held, so she combines a visit to her daughter with the lesson. How unlikely is that? We even had the same (virtually ossified) Anglo-Saxon tutor, generally rumoured to have been old enough to have been a close personal friend of Beowulf!

[quinara]

What I can't believe is that you essentially should have known each other, but didn't! What's that about, hmm???

[gillo]

Most of my closest friends were in other colleges and other departments. I lived out in my final year and my PGCE year, so we were only in college together for one year. She did say I looked vaguely familiar. But we both left Durham in 1977, which is a while ago...

[quinara]

I suppose I have college Classics parties to thank for knowing people from the same course/college very well... It just seems very bizarre!

And HAPPY BIRTHDAY, by the way!

[gillo]

Teaching at Durham is based entirely within departments - collges are just where you live and how you identify yourself (and yes, there's a hell of a difference between, say, Hatfield, Castle or Trevs) - my in-college friends were mostly linguists, and my out-of-college friends were made mostly through societies, especially the SF-Soc, though I was very friendly with a few in the department. Living out in my final year cut me off a bit, but almost all my college friends were on their year abroad anyway.

Thank you for the birthday wishes. I am happily well-fed and slightly tipsy now!

[teragramm]

Wow! What a small world. How nice and a little freaky at the same time.

[gillo]

Absolutely. We must have passed each other hundreds of times, even spoken on occasion, if only to ask for the salt at breakfast!

[hesadevil]

How wonderful that you've discovered the 'connection'. You have even more in common than you thought.

[gillo]

Yes - we certainly had lots to chat about when we'd done the exercises, which are all a touch easy as yet.

[timeofchange]

My friend's musically gifted son applied to Durham and also to Newcastle. He wants Newcastle desperately because of the music program, but will be thrilled with either one. I believe he should have a letter in the next few weeks. Small world, huh?

[gillo]

Durham's more prestigious, though its music department is small. It's a very beautiful place, while Newcastle is a vibrant city suffering the recession badly. They all have virtually incomprehensible accents up there, which I really love.