1 EAGLETON NOTES: Thankful Thursday

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Thursday 27 October 2011

Thankful Thursday

My Thankful Thursday post will only just make it on Thursday.  I set up the post when I got up this morning but had other things to do first.  For the rest of the day I've been living in Wednesday.  It wasn't until I texted a friend a short while ago to wish her a safe journey home from France tomorrow and received a reply saying she was already home that I realised.  I am beginning seriously to wonder.....

The original building of Quarry Bank Grammar School.    
I've recently been contributing the occasional post to a Facebook page on my old Prep School, Ryebank.  On the whole I can't recall it being a particularly bad place to be although I never liked school at any stage.  It prepared me well enough to get though the 11Plus (the Grammar School entrance exam) with a high enough pass to get to Quarry Bank, my first choice of Grammar School.  At 630 pupils it was quite small and, together with the Liverpool Institute, was the most sought-after Grammar School in Liverpool.  Quarry Bank was John Lennon's school and The Institute was Paul McCartney's.  Like all pupils at Quarry at the time I had my John Lennon memories.  I wish that I'd kept his maths book that I inherited a couple of years after he'd left!

So today I am thankful for the fact that I survived unscathed from a school system which I can say without any doubt provided the unhappiest days of my life. 

10 comments:

  1. You've made me think about Thankful Thursdays again. It's been while for me, but there is still stuff to be thankful about. Time to pull my socks and up and face the music called life again. Sigh..what a year it has been, but thank goodness we are still kicking and breathing aye GB!?!?! Take care x

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  2. Had a look at your photos. Did you always keep a camera at hand even back then? ;)

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  3. Having been through a school system in a different country from yours and an estimated 20-30 years later, my school experience was very different from yours.
    But I know that my husband considered school to be among the unhappiest times of his life, too; even at around 40, he had recurrent nightmares of exams and other school-related things.

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  4. I always feel sympathy for those who found their school years awful. When I look back on those years I remember very little about school itself, just the fun we had outside school hours. But then I only went to school to eat my lunch and play sport.

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  5. I didn't much enjoy school in general either Graham. Occasionally I did enjoy learning. But it is the school band and playing music that give me my happy memories.

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  6. My Mother went to the sister school to Quarry Bank many years previously and she loved her schooldays. But then she loved academe and playing sport - the former quality at least having been inherited by my brother CJ.

    Yes, Jaz, it's been quite a year and we are still kicking and breathing. Thank you for being the inspiration for making me, for one, realise how much we have for which to be thankful.

    I'm glad that you were happy at school, Meike. It wasn't exams that I didn't like it was the whole experience - except being in the bee-keeping society. I loved bees.

    I love your attitude, Pauline. I wish that I'd had that attitude then.

    For someone who is as well-qualified and accomplished as you are, Yvonne, I am surprised to hear what you say.

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  7. I'm sorry Monica. As I posted I realised I'd not responded to your comment. Yes. I did keep my camera handy at least some of the time and I do have photos somewhere of the school but this one is borrowed.

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  8. I'm glad that I travelled around so much that no school managed to get its claws into me. I'd be REALLY pissed off if I'd chucked away John Lennon's maths book though!

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  9. Our school system was/is a little different, but out of my nine years in comprehensive school I was rather unhappy for the middle six. First two years were okay. Then they merged our class with another one and it all got rather messy and too much for one teacher to handle. In 9th grade the old classes were broken up and students sorted according to what we were intending to do "in the next life". Things got better. New friends and some fun memories from that year. Grammar school after that even better.

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  10. PS Why do I always forget to tick that little box for follow-up...

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