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School’s Out
The schools in the area where I live broke up for summer today. All across the nation, children are celebrating the end (or, in some unlucky cases, the imminent end) of another school year. I was at...
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Wounded Knee
My son decided to attack himself with a razor tonight. Fortunately, it was only because he was trying to shave, like Daddy. Two year olds don’t tend to act with suicidal intent. He’s fine – a little...
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Going to Scotland
Two days after the wedding that I wrote about yesterday, we moved to Scotland. I have mentioned before that Dad was only 19 when I was born. Which is quite young to be starting a family and especially...
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School Dinners, Part One
I don’t think that you can say much about your past life without at least mentioning in passing the evil of school dinners. Or, at least, the percieved evil, because being the glutton that I am, I...
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The Legend of the Purple Hand
Writing about school dinners in Scotland reminded me, for the first time in ages, of another story from that brief part of my childhood that was spent in Scotland. My school had a curious geography....
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Halloween
Slightly late, you may think (although it is still Halloween in Tahiti), but when I was growing up, October 31st just didn’t have the same cultural significance that it does today. The current...
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How Wrong Can You Be?
Scotland in the 1970s wasn’t exactly the height of racial integration, and this was certainly mirrored at my school. In those days it laboured under the moniker of ‘The Dundee Demonstration School’,...
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The Sad Story of Simon
Every school has a Simon. The sort of kid who doesn’t quite fit in, who seems to be in a permanent daze and whose conversation appears to be completely at a tangent to whatever anyone else is talking...
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4 March 1982
Thur Mar IV Orienteering a.m. Still windy. Left camp at 3.14. Arrived MAGS at 4.30. Went to the library in the evening. And so the camp ended, with no mention whatsoever of how we filled most of the...
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Pinch, Punch, First of the Month
I can’t remember when I was first introduced to this curious little ritual. It must have been when I was about six and actually knew what day, date and month it was, but I don’t remember when someone...
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