Life and Times Part xiii

Part xiii, thirteen as always brings bad luck. This was no different for me. I took the entrance exams to the "senior" school (ages 12-18). Surprisingly i faired quite well and was put into the B stream (A-E). Now some would find this a cause for celebration. However, i had already surmised what this meant: i had to study 2 extra subjects, take 2 exams a year early, study Latin and study olde English. When it came to Tom's turn i advised him of the situation and he quite sensibly entered the C stream which meant he faced none of these traumas.

Latin: amo, amas amat, amamus, amatis, amant. This means: i love, you love, he/she love, we love, you (plural) love, they love. I'm sure this would come in extremely useful if i'd bumped into an extemely sexy young Roman, but by my simple calculations they'd all died along time ago, thus rendering this subject utterly pointless unless planning to study law or medicine. Both of which clearly required far too much work and were never on my agenda. My pragmatism immediately reduced my coursework from 11 to 10 subjects and i went on to achieve the lowest Latin result in the schools history, an achievement i'm quite proud of.

English literature. Whilst Thomas was enjoying the delights of "Lord of the Flies" and other celebrated novels i was set to study Chaucer. Now, whilst this was a slight improvement on Latin it was still very closely resembling a dead language, this literary titan had also been dead a fair few centuries and clearly didn't know how to spell. I would quote you a passage but seeing as i barely understood a word i wouldn't fancy your chances. I'm sure this set back my interest in reading at least 3 years. It wasn't until University that i discovered their were books written in English that actually provoked stimuation rather than confusion.

At school i always did the minimum, a source of constant irritation to most teachers one of whom summed it up nicely "James contributed a non-particpatory prescence and a major essay of suprising superficiality" this roughly translates to - he slept at the back and wrote a terrible essay. I wasn't bothered because my football had been progressing nicely. I'd made the squad of the 1st eleven (best team of that year group) and played on the right wing! Unfortunately this rise only lasted for a month then the coach realised i was rather slow ( a problem if trying to run past people and cross) and moved me to right back. This proved ill advised as other wingers found it rather easy to run past me. This was the end of my school football career, i was soon back to playing with those equally ungifted, maybe i would have to find another career - professional footballer was quite clearly out.