Monday, July 26, 2010

On French Verbs


I was never a great student of French. The 4th Form had a French teacher who came in once a week. She was overbearing and relentless from our point of view. A common practice was to demonstrate mastery of a lesson by writing on the black board. Felicity Knight preceded me on one occasion to break down a French verb. She got it right and received praise for her efforts. The teacher then called me to the blackboard to perform the same task. I must confess a total blank. I noticed as I picked up the chalk that Felicity had covered for me because she did not erase her efforts completely thus enabling me to also complete the task successfully. The teacher was amazed because I was awful at French. She was so happy she awarded Hanover house 5 blue points.

I mentioned before that the school had 4 forms and 4 houses crossing all the forms. I was assigned to Hanover. Teachers awarded blue points for rewards and red points for sub standard performance. I collected a number of red points in French usually one at a time. Fortunately my other subjects were much better resulting in sufficient blue points to counter balance French.

I don’t think a class enjoys anything more that getting over on a teacher they don’t particularly like.

Sunday, July 11, 2010

A visit by the 4th Form to the S.S Oriana


In the Spring of 1962 the 4th Form got a field trip to the S.S. Oriana when it docked in Naples. The school did not have buses so we were transported via a tour bus. Thses buses were well appointed -- practically royal when compared to the yellow American school buses I remember. Upon arrival we were given a tour of the engines, formal areas and the bridge. As I recall, everything was gleeming clean and all the brass highly shined. There was such a lot of brass! At this time the ship was just two year old and a beautiful example of the golden age of ocean crossing passenger ships.
When the tour was over the class was escorted to the Princess Lounge for tea. It was a grand tea!
S.S .Oriana was the last of the Orient Steam Navigation Company's ocean liners. It was launched on 3 November 1959 by Princess Alexandra. She was in service until 1984 with a lot of time in Asian ports. In 1986 she became a floating hotel at a tourist attraction in Japan and later in China. Unfortunately, a severe storm in 2004 severely damaged her and she was sold to the breakers in 2005 and destroyed.