First world war battlefield trip, Northern France

In the spring of 1985 school boys trying to take in the awe and majesty of the Menin gate and the uinimaginable horror of the Western Front. Visits to the trenches and the war graves in the vast cemetries: Ypres; Passchendaele; the Somme; miles and miles of trench snaking way through the countryside- scenes of mud, shell, barbed wire and bodies now overlain with grassy banks and flowers. The flat country of Northern France and Belgium as the scene of the slaughter.


Subsequent years have brought an apprecication of the art that tried to describe such horror - poetry, songs, the brilliant O What a Lovely War, the books of Sebastian Faulks, the moving TV series on the monuments to the dead all over Britain, presented by Ian Hislop.

Summer thoughts of past adventures

In a memorable edition of the Radio 4 personal essay series 'A Point of View', the writer and critic Clive James recounted his battles to give up smoking and how he eventually learned to 'smoke the memory'. Whenever he feels like a cigarette or small cigar he recalls the sensations, the feelings and associated pleasures of the actual act of lighting up, inhaling and exhaling. This helps him both to remember the pleasure and not to recreate it in actuality.

It feels a little like that as we do not contemplate venturing abroad this Summer. Instead of preparing to head off to foreign clime I shall try and recall past trips - to 'travel the memory'. What does the poet say about "summoning up things past, what do I recall?". The first venture starts in the mid-1980s and a school trip to the First World War battlefields of Northern France and Belgium, the latest a wedding anniversary trip to Paris. The travelogue will follow a haphazard, but one hopes interesting path. These are the wanderings of the Oldest Trainee...

Summoned by Pips

The poet John Betjeman wrote a celebrated book of memoirs in verse, Summoned by Bells, taking as his theme his various experiences of being called to school-room or lecture hall by the ringing of bells - not to mention to church services. Over the last three weeks your correspondent has been at various secondary schools across London, in an exam invigilating capacity, and the sound marking the school day can only be described as 'pips': short bursts of noise as if from klaxon or loud hailer but put out across a tannoy system that reaches everyone on what is referred to as 'campus'. The word campus is used to describe schools as well as undergraduate colleges and the word 'student' seems to have replaced 'pupil'. With an environment, in some places, more akin to further education establishment than high school, the overall effect is one of democratisation of the school experience, albeit an illusory one.

Another innovation, and sign of the times, is that there are now members of staff dedicated to running the exams system. Such is the variety and number of exams these days that the Exams Officer is often occupied with the job full-time. Some schools recruit specialist administrators and some are drawn from the retired teachers ranks, often depending on the size of the school and its catchment area, which may determine the number of pupils with English as a second language. Administering exams in one language is challenging enough but with Asian, African and European languages as mother tongues of students increasingly the norm, particularly in London, the pressures on time and staff attention is that much greater.

From entering high school aged 11, the average pupil faces a seemingly ever-growing list of examinations. There are SATs; GCSEs; AS-Levels and A-levels with the usual provision for mocks and those taking exams early. The exam boards range in difficulty and what is called 'stretch' and schools choose different boards for different subjects - Edexcel for Maths and the WJEC (Welsh Joint Education Council) for RE as an example. A modern variation on the theme of eliminating disruption in the examination hall is the problem posed by that ubiquitous communication instrument of modern times - the mobile phone. The rules laid down by most of the public exam boards is as clear as it is uncompromising - if a mobile rings during the course of an exam the owner can be disqualified from the paper forthwith. Most schools have a system of mobile hand-in beforehand and hand-out afterwards. They are sometimes 'tagged and bagged' in envelopes. One pupil's mobile phone went off during a GCSE art exam causing upset and consternation - the phone had switched itself on so as to activate the alarm whilst it lay in its brown envelope. A case of functionality not having its uses!

The endless debate of the state of education generally and examination standards particularly rumbles on and is as regular as Summer downpours. From personal observation in the last few weeks of this year's season, the papers seem to be as they always were in subjects as English, History and Maths and a little more modular in languages. What does not change is the anxiety, worry and general tense atmosphere in exam halls up and down the land and the accompanying reactions of pupils undertaking them ranging from pyschosmatic illness, through to tears and high-jinks horseplay. Midsummer madness in all its manifestations accompanies examinations, for pupils, parents, teachers and invigilators alike.

Reflections on a London journey

The standing joke about travelling in my home country of Wales is that few people realise that we have a Welsh sub-continent, which takes up most of the middle of the country and consists mainly of two counties - Powys and Montgomeryshire - where rolling countryside gives way to small towns and country miles wind their way through hedgerow and field. All this bisected by the Welsh version of the M25, the A470 which runs north-south and is the major arterial route. Thousands of words have been expended on the inadequacies of this road in the form of reports, discsussions, debates, political manifestos. Plans come and go, elections are fought and lost, the talk goes on and still very little happens in the way of change to this enormous piece of tarmac which is literally at the centre of motor travelling life in Wales, apart from the highways in and out and surrounding Wales - the M4 and M5.

Travelling in and around London is a very different experience. Since I have been living in Kent I have cause to undertake journeys into the capital more and more. Yesterday was a case of car, tube and bus out to the East of London via the delights of a the Jubilee line and the DLR (docklands light railway) to Stratford (not the Warwickshire town and birthplace of Shakespeare although it would have been an interesting diversion) and thence to Leyton on the Central Line (did not feel that central at the time as the underground became the overground). The destination was as yet some way off and required a bus from tube station to somewhere near the road I had to walk down to arrive at the street which harboured the school I was visiting at its end. The school building was a revelation, all new architecural design and opened at the turn of this century by the then-Secretary of State for Education, Estelle Morris. Set in a borough of London that has been the recipient of government largesse and increased state funding for services such as education, the Lammas School at least has a modern building to serve the needs of a catchment area which reflects our modern wider community life: a high number of pupils with English as a second language; a sizeable provision of free school meals; special needs coverage (of all kinds).

The infrastructure of education is linked with public policy in a very direct way. In towns, cities and villages all over the UK there are school buildings which are still standing and in use from the 19th century, when the era of state involvement in the provision of public education began with the various Education Acts of the 1870s. Indeed, I had encountered a typical example of swhen I stopped for directions at a primary school bearing all the hallmarks of a 19th century school build: red bricks; iron railings and the separate exits and entrances for boys and girls. A very twenty-first century group of school children, filled with the faces and languages of a dozen countries, played in the yard built by the burghers of Leyton and Walthamstow who had been mindful of their public duty to encourage 'useful lives' among the citizenry when Victoria was Queen Empress of India and Britain had an Empire (run from Whitehall and managed by a few hundred servants of the Crown). If those same men of affairs took a walk past the school they financed they would find that the Empire had come home to the mother country in all its variety, colour and diversity. I crossed the road and travelled over a hundred years in a few hundred yards, to a shining new building proclaiming the same endeavour in pursuit of the virtues of public education of a century ago. A long way to travel in so short a time. The challenges may be different but the ideals of education for all are the same.

The Lost Baggage Saga or skiing out of Terminal 5 in borrowed salopettes

This correspondent has been away from his blogging duties due to a combination of illness, Terminal 5 Heathrow, lost baggage and ski trip adventures.

The timing was spectacular. Having been excited about the prospect of flying out of the newly opened (by HM Queen no less) and recently operational, many billions-costing, Richard Rogers-designed Terminal 5, Heathrow's newest glory, our party found ourselves in the midst of one of the biggest public project false starts since the Millennium Dome met the Millennium wobbly bridge over the Thames. We being the intrepid school ski party. What should have been Day 3 of the new super-charged Terminal 5 (or T5 as the cognoscenti started calling it - the name got shorter as the baggage trail got bigger) showing the world its wonders turned into the third day of a Very British Airport Breakdown. The much-heralded superfast bag-handling system, capable of processing up to 12,000 bags per hour, had started malfunctioning and sending luggage various to variously different destinations, apart from where the passengers were headed. Flights were cancelled, passengers waiting hours on the concourse for flights delayed - the Chief Executive of BA apologising but not resigning - turning disaster into technical difficulties and a mea culpa into a marketing strategy.

Advised to keep checking the electronic board for news of our flight we had the green light it would be operating via the neon glow of the website, and the Party Leader (also doubling up as travel agent and this correspondent's wife) duly gave the order to implement Phase One of the Ski Party Reach Destination Plan - the airport run. This consisted of 2 school minibuses, about half the party and some of the luggage, driven by Party Leader No 1 Daughter and ex-HM of said school. Upon arrival checked in to an emptier-than-average departure hall (stunningly rendered by the Rogers outfit) due to cancellations, to be greeted by tales of woe from the long-suffering check-in desk staff: management not supporting front-line staff who took the brunt of passenger angst and aggravation. Disgruntlement was taken to an art form that day.

Along the concourse flagged by shops, designer outlets and eateries of one sort or another lay a noticeable lack of seating for those not inclined to shop or eat. After the misdirecting of the departure gate we eventually found ourselves sitting on a plane that was yet to depart for some time. Apparently, there was missing paperwork that had found its way off the flightdeck and had to be re-located. A very embarrassed pilot explained the delay and we eventually took off into the blue yonder. The usual talk on board the plane of family, history, education, careers. The mother sitting in the next seat was a photographer-turned fruit farmer. The party had a late arrival in Munich, and the luggage carousel told the story - 14 bags missing from the 42-member group roster, including all of the party leader's luaggage and her partner's (the author all present and correct). After more delays to fill out forms, collection of BA-issue emergency toiletry bags, food purchasing and general consternation at the lateness of the hour exacerbated by fatigue, the bus left Munich Airport bound for Austria, Salzburg and St Johann im Pongau. Our doughty travel rep, retired teacher who had recently been involved in a horrific car accident and wore a neck-brace, met us with the bus and the journey continued. We eventually arrived at the Hotel Sonnhof, Alpendorf, St Johann im Pongau to be welcomed with the typically Austrian soup dish, gulashsup.

That night the party leader and her assistant (the present author) were left pondering. The thing about losing luggage on a ski trip is that one has packed to ski and the whole raison d'etre, clothing-wise, seems a bit lost if the whole kit and caboodle (gloves, hats, ski suit etc) is having a holiday of its own. This was as nothing, though, to the worry of the missing parents the following day......

On David Lean - a film giant

This year marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of David Lean. This giant of the film world was responsible for some of the twentieth century's iconic movies. From working on Noel Coward's In Which We Serve and launching the screen acting career of Alec Guinness in the film version of the Dickens classic Great Expectations, Lean was at the forefront of a dazzling mileu of British talent that adorned the cinema in the post Second World War years. Not an easy man to work with he nontheless helped develop the careers of several distinguished actors, Peter O'Toole and Omar Shariff among them.

He was responsible for some true masterpieces, such as Lawrence of Arabia with the opening desert scene, Dr Zhivago and The Bridge on the River Kwai, with a mesemerising peformance by Alec Guinness as Colonel Nicholson. As for the cream of the acting talent, Lean worked with them all, from Richard Attenborough to Jack Hawkins and Julie Christie to John Mills and many, many more. A perfectionist who drove himself and others to the point of distraction, at times a tyrant, he was not an actor's director or a particularly caring man. He was, though, a great artist and a list of even some of his films is a roll-call of cimematic delights. Read and marvel: Great Expectations; Oliver Twist; Brief Encounter; The Bridge on the River Kwai; Hobson's Choice; Lawrence of Arabia; Dr Zhivago; Ryan's Daughter; Passage to India . Shall we see his like again?

The triumph of Sunday night television

The BBC would have pulled off a televisual coup if it develops the brilliant series shown on Easter Sunday night, The No 1 Ladies Detective Agency. Based on the book series by Alexander Mcall Smith and adapted by Richard Curtis (of Blackadder and Four Weddings& a Funeral and Vicar of Dibley fame) and the late and hugely missed Anthony Minghella, it is set in Botswana and tells the story of the abundant Precious Ramotswe of the eponymous title. Wonderfully photographed and brilliantly written, it is a 'feel good factor' series if ever there was one, with combining warm African wit with profound messages, all shot on location with fabulous colours. Last night's episode was dedicated to Anthony Minghella (the English Patient, The Talented Mr Ripley and Cold Mountain to name just a few) who died suddenly last week at the achingly young age of 54. The world has lost two of its brightest in the firmament in the space of a week - Anthony Minghella and Paul Scofield. RIP artistic souls both.