Sunday 11 November 2012

Armistice

Gosh, that was a busy week. Can catch breath now.

While I was looking out at the garden during the two minutes silence, a montage was playing in mind and I realised how much of my knowledge and feeling about WW1 is due to art, not education. Formal education, I mean. I did History at O-level and by Christ it was dull. Not only that, it finished with the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand. So I might remember Arkwright's Spinning Jenny and the repeal of the Corn Laws, but nothing much else.  And it was taught by an absolutely terrifying person, tweed-clad and heavily-moustached. She had a slight speech thing and couldn't manage "r". There was a story that she once reprimanded an unfortunate (reprimand was her favourite teaching method) by saying "Really, Rosemary, you write reams and reams of rubbish" and the entire class had to endure the rest of the lesson with blood trickling from their lips in their efforts not to laugh. (Apart from the wretched Rosemary, who was in a pool on the floor) It was also solemnly reported that she had no home of her own and slept in one of the attics, with only the ghost of Lady Cornwallis for company. (Lady Cornwallis being a previous incumbent of the building, not an old flame...) I remember a particularly hysterical conversation where we speculated about how she spent her time - "And..and...I bet she only ever listens to the NEWS on the radio.." and I worked out how she could station-hop to arrange this newsfest.
Although the passage of time has brought me more understanding of the human condition, I remain let down by both her teaching methods and the curriculum.


Luckily there is art - mostly poems, books, films for me. Oh and songs. So when I stand on Armistice Day I hear the poetry of Owen, Sassoon, Graves; the songs of Novello and Weston and Lee.  I see the books of Vera Brittain, the splendid BBC dramatisation of Testament of Youth and the final scenes from Blackadder Goes Forth

and I remember

12 comments:

  1. Replies
    1. ...the link above is clickable.

      I never knew Novello wrote Keep the Home Fires Burning. Something out of his usual vein isn't it?

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  2. He didn't write the words - he wrote the music.

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  3. Hmm.. the Arts vs school lessons - I know which I'd take. It was very moving doing the two-minute silence in the middle of the NEC - everything absolutely stopped still.

    Thank you for your congratulations over at W&P... not the least exciting thing about it is that they will send me big boxes of goodies to create with!!
    Alison xx

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  4. Salonistas - an etymological moment. I have only just realised (and I'm sure you'll all cast your eyes heavenwards at my intellectual laggardliness) that armistice derives similarly to solstice: the Latin suffix sistere "to come to a stop, make stand still". Well well.

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    1. ooh my eyes are popping with excitement at your word-awareness - how very clever of you!

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  5. Oh how clever Nell. I love links like that....one of the advantages of acquiring new languages in one's older years is that one can link across them in a way that kids can't even if they are supposed to be able to learn them faster than the elderly.

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    1. PS I wonder who decreed when one should use elder/ly and when older?

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    2. I'm not sure anyone has decreed suchly, have they? "She is older than he is", never "she is elder than he is" but "she is the elder" I think - is "she is the older" ok on its own or would one run on to "she is the older of the two"? Elder/elderly nouns...

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  6. On the subject of words - upon whose cushions we often find ourselves perched in this delicious salon, sipping on a hot chocolate, nibbling on a Madeleine - might I warmly press upon you David Bellos's marvellous and readable book about translation "Is That A Fish In Your Ear?". Lots of fascinating snippets and many intriguing thoughts and questions about language and about the thing we call "translation". For instance, in Russian there is a word for "light blue" and a word for "dark blue" but no word that simply means "blue".

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    1. I will haste to the book Nell, though, given the very close resemblance between Russian and Czech (and many other Slavonic languages, I take leave to doubt that last statement....the Czechs have modry=blue, tmavomodry=dark blue and svetlomodry=light blue.

      I'm prepared to lay a few kopeks on Russian having something similar :-)

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