Tag: learning

Sunday Salon: Celebrating 10 years

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The Sunday Salon

Not 10 years of the blog; I’m not that with it! No, this week Tim and I celebrated 10 years together with a holiday in Cambridge. I’d not been before, though I felt like I knew it well from books, films and TV, but it was a real treat to go and soak up the centuries of learning. So much great architecture, culture, science and art. Far too much for a week in fact! At least, it is when you take frequent breaks for pleasant walks, reading books and eating delicious food.

The classic view of the River Cam, complete with punts and bridges, and I think that’s the back of King’s College.
The classic view

Plenty of narrow cobbled streets and a little less plenty of sunshine.
A glimpse of blue sky

Some seriously impressive architecture and interior décor at these colleges, for instance this hall at Queens’ College.
Restored to magnificence

Plus lots of bookshops, lots of green spaces and bikes everywhere (though not that many actually being ridden while we were there; not sure if that’s because it’s outside of term time or because my expectations were skewed by living in the Cycling City that is Bristol). I took approximately a bajillion photos, a lot of which were on film, so my Flickr photo set will grow, if you’re interested.

Memorised

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One thing I envy my parents’ and grandparents’ generations is that they were taught, in fact required, to memorise poetry. For me, in the 1980s and 90s, we barely touched poetry at school.

There was one supply teacher who did the scissors poem from Please Mrs Butler by Allan Ahlberg (a collection I still love) and I have a vague memory of there being a “big cat poetry” element to my GCSE English course…and that’s it. Aside from on posters on the classroom walls (which, incidentally, is where I discovered this love of mine) and being encouraged to write our own, poetry was strangely absent.

I am lucky that my family spotted my interest and bought me plenty of poetry books to read at home, but I feel that I somehow lack something by not being able to reel off a dozen of my favourite poems by heart. I know bits of poems – from Night Mail by W H Auden (incidentally, I recently discovered you can buy that film from the BFI), The Second Coming by W B Yeats and the aforementioned Please Mrs Butler – and I think I was once able to recite Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll and Leisure by W H Davies (which I was reminded of yesterday by this amazing piece in the Washington Post), but now in both cases I get lost.

Of course, I could remediate this; it’s hardly too late. I have all the books. And I should perhaps be grateful that I instead came out of school with computer skills and some knowledge of books written outside the UK (I discovered the Yeats poem mentioned above when I studied Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart at A level). I think I need to go read some poetry now.