So, the runaways have been found, I see. Twitter is chirping positively nineteen to the dozen with tweets of joy expressing how relieved all her family and friends are at the prospect of having young Megan Stammers back home again. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad she's apparently safe and well and hasn't suffered the same fate as countless other teenage runaways: in that respect at least she's been lucky.
The reports however are that the pair were spotted strolling hand-in-hand like any young lovers down a main shopping street in the middle of Bordeaux in broad daylight and the police were tipped off. Megan was said to be "in floods of tears" when the police separated them. Which suggests to me that she may perhaps not in fact have actually wanted to come back and be reunited joyfully with her family - or at least not just yet. Either way, the scenario certainly doesn't bear the hallmark of a kidnap victim, and whatever the legal nicities of it, an "abduction" is not the word I'd use to use to describe it.
Jeremy Forrest the maths teacher is under arrest and if I were he, I'd get myself a good lawyer sharpish: he's going to need one. His job and marriage I imagine are down the tube, and despite the UK judiciary's propensity for pretty perverse sentencing, he's got to be looking at jail time as being on the cards.
And what's Megan going to make of that, I wonder? She's had an awful lot of her private life dissected in public this week (if anything on Twitter or Facebook can legitimately be described as "private", that is). Will she blame her parents and/or the police for the abrupt end to her little escapade and the loss of the guy she loved (or thought she did)? How will she look back on it in years to come? What will she make of all the things that have been written about her? Will she one day end up on the Jeremy Kyle show *shudders*?
We shall probably never know. Out of the harsh glare of media publicity, some semblance of a normal schoolgirl's life should start to return. But I doubt somehow that either of them are ever going to be able to just carry on as if none of it had ever happened.
Friday, 28 September 2012
Thursday, 27 September 2012
... and crushes on 'Miss'
"Childhood is a time of innocence" used to be the old saying. Much or most of what I remember doing as a child was innocent enough, and although I don't particularly recollect having a schoolboy crush on any of my Junior school 'Miss-es' (or anyone else either) it certainly wouldn't have been looked upon as unusual - almost a rite of passage, you might say. Going to an all-boys secondary school with (until I was in my O-level year) all-male teachers effectively then ruled out crushes anyway. In fact we never knew anything much of what our teachers did in their private lives - even those whose own sons were at the school: it was regarded as bad etiquette to tittle-tattle or indulge in slanderous gossip. And in the days when "social networking" was decades into the future, when phones were things on the end of a wire fixed to the wall, and when "grooming" meant nothing more sinister than making yourself look presentable with the aid of a brush and comb, it was all pretty harmless anyway. The doodles on the cover of your exercise book and the names on the inside of your satchel or pencil-case weren't plastered all over Facebook and Twitter for all the world to see.
So I can't help feeling a little sorry for Megan Stammers and Jeremy Forrest, the story of whose 'crush' and subsequent 'elopement' to France has been plastered all over the papers this week. I make no judgement on the rights and wrongs of this, save to say that basically tradition has it that the guy always cops the blame, because whichever way you slice it, he's old enough and supposedly mature enough to know better. There is some probing and much apparent obfuscation over how much the school, the police and the parents knew beforehand about what had been going on, and what they were doing about it - the net result of which is probably going to make it more awkward for the star-struck lovers to return, if that in fact is what they eventually intended to do.
So far, almost a week after they were spotted on a cross-channel ferry to Calais, the couple seem to have disappeared without trace, although they could now be practically anywhere in Europe. I've seen it reported that the usage of CCTV and ANPR on the continent isn't anywhere near as extensive as it is the 'nosey' UK, and the fact is (a) they're not armed bank robbers being pursued by a manhunt and (b) no-one really knows where to start looking. In a way the romantic in me hopes it all works out for them, but the harsh reality of life is that it's far more probable to all end in tears. Compared to all the missing teenage runaways who disappear every day of the week without anyone much even bothering to start looking for them, 15-year old schoolgirl Megan has at least had a bit of a head start at being found.
So I can't help feeling a little sorry for Megan Stammers and Jeremy Forrest, the story of whose 'crush' and subsequent 'elopement' to France has been plastered all over the papers this week. I make no judgement on the rights and wrongs of this, save to say that basically tradition has it that the guy always cops the blame, because whichever way you slice it, he's old enough and supposedly mature enough to know better. There is some probing and much apparent obfuscation over how much the school, the police and the parents knew beforehand about what had been going on, and what they were doing about it - the net result of which is probably going to make it more awkward for the star-struck lovers to return, if that in fact is what they eventually intended to do.
So far, almost a week after they were spotted on a cross-channel ferry to Calais, the couple seem to have disappeared without trace, although they could now be practically anywhere in Europe. I've seen it reported that the usage of CCTV and ANPR on the continent isn't anywhere near as extensive as it is the 'nosey' UK, and the fact is (a) they're not armed bank robbers being pursued by a manhunt and (b) no-one really knows where to start looking. In a way the romantic in me hopes it all works out for them, but the harsh reality of life is that it's far more probable to all end in tears. Compared to all the missing teenage runaways who disappear every day of the week without anyone much even bothering to start looking for them, 15-year old schoolgirl Megan has at least had a bit of a head start at being found.
Monday, 3 September 2012
The onward march of progress
After a hiatus of almost three years, during which my old school lay empty and deserted, the rebuilding work is evidently progressing in earnest. Today I came across a further set of photos, apparently taken over the weekend. Although the science block has now been demolished, and everything else is covered in scaffolding, I spotted this photo of my old form room!
Although now stripped of furniture and fittings, Room 12 of Leamington College for Boys is just as unmistakeable as it was nearly fifty years ago. Our desks were in rows across the room parallel to the beams of sunlight shining through the bay window, facing the blackboard on the wall at the right of this photo. The photographer was standing in the doorway, and I sat on the far side in the front row, probably just this side of where that ceiling beam is. I was 15, in Form 5A and taking my O levels.
Looking at it now - I'm glad once again of the opportunity to do this bit of reminiscing. It's something I never expected to see again, and I'm thrilled to have found it - and to have discovered it was all just as I'd remembered it. It's been quite sad for me seeing the old school steadily crumble and disappear: I have very happy memories of those seven years, and I guess that's why probably why I remember the detail as well as I do - though I never imagined at the time that I'd be sitting here, five decades later, writing all about it!
Although now stripped of furniture and fittings, Room 12 of Leamington College for Boys is just as unmistakeable as it was nearly fifty years ago. Our desks were in rows across the room parallel to the beams of sunlight shining through the bay window, facing the blackboard on the wall at the right of this photo. The photographer was standing in the doorway, and I sat on the far side in the front row, probably just this side of where that ceiling beam is. I was 15, in Form 5A and taking my O levels.
Looking at it now - I'm glad once again of the opportunity to do this bit of reminiscing. It's something I never expected to see again, and I'm thrilled to have found it - and to have discovered it was all just as I'd remembered it. It's been quite sad for me seeing the old school steadily crumble and disappear: I have very happy memories of those seven years, and I guess that's why probably why I remember the detail as well as I do - though I never imagined at the time that I'd be sitting here, five decades later, writing all about it!
Friday, 24 August 2012
Publish and be damned
It had to happen, of course: the only question is what took them so long. But today, the Sun (who else!) have broken ranks in time-honoured style to become the first British national daily to publish the now-notorious photos of a naked Prince Harry romping in a Las Vegas hotel room.
Were it almost anyone else, it wouldn't even be news. I've never been to Las Vegas (and have no desire to do so in the future) but I've no doubt people do that in hotel rooms there every day of the week, and probably every hour of the day. The fact of a possible heir to the throne doing it isn't in itself particularly shocking: he's 27, single and passably eligible. To allow himself, albeit unwittingly, to be photographed doing it and the results plastered all over the internet is at best an error of judgement and may perhaps encourage him to choose his girlfriends a little more circumspectly in future.
The Palace have reportedly done their best "We are not amused" act from which we're given to understand that any British newspaper publishing the photos would do so at their peril. Publish and be damned, then! Long gone are the days when journalists could be clapped in the Tower for displeasing the monarch, and the plain fact is that since the photos are effectively in the public domain, albeit having been put there (presumably) without the subject's consent, any "invasion of privacy" issue is already a done deed. We're not told what the royal bodyguards were doing while all this was going on - perhaps having a strip party of their own? But their role is primarily to stop undesirables getting anywhere near, not to act as 24/7 party poopers.
The "public interest" argument for publication is a little less cut-and-dried. My guess is that most people who want to see the photo have by now already seen it - and it doesn't really raise any important questions of uncovering hidden secrets that the public have a right to know. The Prince comes of course from a long line of rakes, whose exploits through the ages make this little indiscretion pale into insignificance. But then of course his grandmother, who epitomises responsible majesty and utmost respectability, would probably prefer us not to be reminded of that - or at least not so publicly.
Were it almost anyone else, it wouldn't even be news. I've never been to Las Vegas (and have no desire to do so in the future) but I've no doubt people do that in hotel rooms there every day of the week, and probably every hour of the day. The fact of a possible heir to the throne doing it isn't in itself particularly shocking: he's 27, single and passably eligible. To allow himself, albeit unwittingly, to be photographed doing it and the results plastered all over the internet is at best an error of judgement and may perhaps encourage him to choose his girlfriends a little more circumspectly in future.
The Palace have reportedly done their best "We are not amused" act from which we're given to understand that any British newspaper publishing the photos would do so at their peril. Publish and be damned, then! Long gone are the days when journalists could be clapped in the Tower for displeasing the monarch, and the plain fact is that since the photos are effectively in the public domain, albeit having been put there (presumably) without the subject's consent, any "invasion of privacy" issue is already a done deed. We're not told what the royal bodyguards were doing while all this was going on - perhaps having a strip party of their own? But their role is primarily to stop undesirables getting anywhere near, not to act as 24/7 party poopers.
The "public interest" argument for publication is a little less cut-and-dried. My guess is that most people who want to see the photo have by now already seen it - and it doesn't really raise any important questions of uncovering hidden secrets that the public have a right to know. The Prince comes of course from a long line of rakes, whose exploits through the ages make this little indiscretion pale into insignificance. But then of course his grandmother, who epitomises responsible majesty and utmost respectability, would probably prefer us not to be reminded of that - or at least not so publicly.
Saturday, 14 July 2012
Déjà vu
They say that some of the nicest discoveries are those made unexpectedly. When in late 2009, I found out what had happened to my old school, the following spring I contacted the developers to whom it had been sold, with a view to taking some photos of the deserted interior as a sort of souvenir of my schooldays there. Although initially quite receptive to my request, the upshot was that, sadly, they weren't keen on giving me the run of the place, nor conducting a supervised tour, and I therefore resigned myself to just a mental memory of what it had all been like.
Yesterday afternoon, however, I came across three sets of photos - more or less succeeding where I'd failed, or more accurately boldly going where I'd feared to tread. It made my day! A virtual tour of Leamington College for Boys, reliving my days as a schoolboy: the stage in the now-deserted hall where I'd looked up every morning at the Head taking assembly; the empty bookcases in the library which I'd helped to run as a sixth-former, the very characteristically 50s-style stairs in the science block, the basins in the boys' toilets where I'd washed my hands at the age of 12 (I'm sure they're the same ones!); the old rusty cast-iron radiators that got treated to odd lick of paint occasionally during our holidays; the long dark wooden benches in the laboratories which were almost new when we sat at them; the gas taps where I'd attached the rubber hose of my bunsen burner in the Chemistry lab and the little sink where I'd washed out flasks and test-tubes when I was taking O level Chemistry - even the dreaded clothes rack in the changing rooms (eek!). It was just as I'd remembered it all from fifty years previously.
At the same time, I was a little saddened by the desolation of it all. The buildings have been empty for something like three years now, but that doesn't entirely account for what looked like decades of neglect that appeared in places on some of the photos. In the thirty years after we'd all left and the sixth-form students took our places, the place had obviously been rewired, as I don't recollect there having been strip lights anywhere. I'd gathered that alterations had been done to reflect the change of use, but I didn't see much evidence of any apart from an odd noticeboard or two. Whatever had been done by way of maintenance could hardly be described as "pushing the boat out". Soon, though, it'll all be gone: the conversion work is apparently going ahead in earnest now. So I'm grateful to the photographers for their efforts and for providing me with such striking final souvenirs of seven years of my life.
Yesterday afternoon, however, I came across three sets of photos - more or less succeeding where I'd failed, or more accurately boldly going where I'd feared to tread. It made my day! A virtual tour of Leamington College for Boys, reliving my days as a schoolboy: the stage in the now-deserted hall where I'd looked up every morning at the Head taking assembly; the empty bookcases in the library which I'd helped to run as a sixth-former, the very characteristically 50s-style stairs in the science block, the basins in the boys' toilets where I'd washed my hands at the age of 12 (I'm sure they're the same ones!); the old rusty cast-iron radiators that got treated to odd lick of paint occasionally during our holidays; the long dark wooden benches in the laboratories which were almost new when we sat at them; the gas taps where I'd attached the rubber hose of my bunsen burner in the Chemistry lab and the little sink where I'd washed out flasks and test-tubes when I was taking O level Chemistry - even the dreaded clothes rack in the changing rooms (eek!). It was just as I'd remembered it all from fifty years previously.
At the same time, I was a little saddened by the desolation of it all. The buildings have been empty for something like three years now, but that doesn't entirely account for what looked like decades of neglect that appeared in places on some of the photos. In the thirty years after we'd all left and the sixth-form students took our places, the place had obviously been rewired, as I don't recollect there having been strip lights anywhere. I'd gathered that alterations had been done to reflect the change of use, but I didn't see much evidence of any apart from an odd noticeboard or two. Whatever had been done by way of maintenance could hardly be described as "pushing the boat out". Soon, though, it'll all be gone: the conversion work is apparently going ahead in earnest now. So I'm grateful to the photographers for their efforts and for providing me with such striking final souvenirs of seven years of my life.
Friday, 22 June 2012
A rose by any other name
I was fascinated to spot a "leaked" article in the news yesterday, reporting that the Education Secretary apparently plans to scrap GCSEs and bring back O-levels!
Thirty years after the demise of the O-level, it's at least being recognized and acknowledged that the standard of GCSEs is nowhere near comparable and the pernicious creeping influence of grade inflation is rendering them almost useless as a true indicator of any real ability in the subject. Predictably, the plans have drawn howls of protest from the teaching unions and also from the Lib Dems, who I suspect are mainly just miffed because they weren't consulted about it first. It's perhaps rather bad timing for the thousands of kids sitting their GCSEs at the moment, who are understandably not going to be best pleased about the idea of their exams being 'too easy'. We're told there's also to be a new-style CSE exam for the "less able" pupils, so everyone should - at least in theory - have the chance of coming away with a qualification of some description, and if the end result of all this is a system that actually matches the pupil's real ability it's got to be an improvement on the present rather shambolic state of affairs.
I rather hope the actual terms O-level and CSE are re-introduced, although early indications are the acronyms themselves might not be. But millions of people know what they stood for, would be pleased to see the return of the standard of education that prevailed when they were last used, and are going to be disappointed if it all turns out to amount to nothing.
Thirty years after the demise of the O-level, it's at least being recognized and acknowledged that the standard of GCSEs is nowhere near comparable and the pernicious creeping influence of grade inflation is rendering them almost useless as a true indicator of any real ability in the subject. Predictably, the plans have drawn howls of protest from the teaching unions and also from the Lib Dems, who I suspect are mainly just miffed because they weren't consulted about it first. It's perhaps rather bad timing for the thousands of kids sitting their GCSEs at the moment, who are understandably not going to be best pleased about the idea of their exams being 'too easy'. We're told there's also to be a new-style CSE exam for the "less able" pupils, so everyone should - at least in theory - have the chance of coming away with a qualification of some description, and if the end result of all this is a system that actually matches the pupil's real ability it's got to be an improvement on the present rather shambolic state of affairs.
I rather hope the actual terms O-level and CSE are re-introduced, although early indications are the acronyms themselves might not be. But millions of people know what they stood for, would be pleased to see the return of the standard of education that prevailed when they were last used, and are going to be disappointed if it all turns out to amount to nothing.
Friday, 15 June 2012
Seconds no more?
I hadn't actually been following it regularly, but on the couple of occasions I'd seen it mentioned somewhere and taken a look, I was quite impressed with the NeverSeconds- the nine-year old Scottish schoolgirl's daily account of what her school dinners consisted of. I can't actually remember what I had for school dinners at her age, but I will admit my recollections of school dinners at secondary school are not particularly favourable ones, and I can't help feeling today's kids get a better deal overall than we did - aided and abetted by Jamie Oliver's intervention, no doubt. Nevertheless, some of "Veg's" meals looked pretty dire, and at £2 apiece not outstanding value for money - although at least she had a choice, which is more than we ever got.
However, it was very enterprising of her, I thought, and at the same time quite supportive of the school, since the photos were apparently all taken with their consent if not encouragement. Sadly, the school catering service which is run by the local council, came in for some hefty criticism from an article in a national daily paper, and the aforesaid council chose to metaphorically shoot the messenger in true council jobsworth style by banning the taking of any more photos: the reason given being that the catering staff were upset and "feared for their jobs". As far as I can make out, the photos simply recorded what "Veg" chose to eat that day from what was available: there's no suggestion that the photos or comments were doctored or chosen to present an unfavourable or unfairly biased representation, and indeed some of the fare looked (and was reported to have tasted) quite good. Not only that, she raised a staggering amount for charity via the blog.
Anyway, the ban apparently generated so much criticism and bad publicity for the council in such a short space of time, that I see they've now done the decent thing (and probably the only sensible thing under the circumstances) and promptly rescinded it. Common sense prevails!
Oh, and we never got seconds of school dinners either - except when the food was so unsurpassingly awful that there was loads of it left over.
However, it was very enterprising of her, I thought, and at the same time quite supportive of the school, since the photos were apparently all taken with their consent if not encouragement. Sadly, the school catering service which is run by the local council, came in for some hefty criticism from an article in a national daily paper, and the aforesaid council chose to metaphorically shoot the messenger in true council jobsworth style by banning the taking of any more photos: the reason given being that the catering staff were upset and "feared for their jobs". As far as I can make out, the photos simply recorded what "Veg" chose to eat that day from what was available: there's no suggestion that the photos or comments were doctored or chosen to present an unfavourable or unfairly biased representation, and indeed some of the fare looked (and was reported to have tasted) quite good. Not only that, she raised a staggering amount for charity via the blog.
Anyway, the ban apparently generated so much criticism and bad publicity for the council in such a short space of time, that I see they've now done the decent thing (and probably the only sensible thing under the circumstances) and promptly rescinded it. Common sense prevails!
Oh, and we never got seconds of school dinners either - except when the food was so unsurpassingly awful that there was loads of it left over.
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