Passport - She could be tidying up

I was going to write something about going to Auckland. Something like:

"It's a lot nicer than I remember it being."

But then I thought that was a bit long so I'd like to change that to:

"It's nice."

I had an English teacher in Form One that forbade the use of the word nice. Whenever we wanted to say nice we ended up saying things like:

"It was good. Not really good, but, you know, better than average. Pleasant"

And everyone in the class (including the teacher I bet) was thinking - "he means nice".

I went to a primary school that streamed. I was in the mediocre class, between the brainy class and the cabbages. Sometimes I would ace my English tests and beat everyone in the brainy class. This annoyed the teachers because I think they felt people in the mediocre class should be mediocre at everything, and not have hidden talents or personalities or something. It was alright though because I was pretty mediocre at everything else.

I was pretty dim at school really. Things just sort of passed me by. For example, it was only after I had been away from school for about fifteen years that I realised that the funny man in the bat cape who came into our class and told us very odd stories once a week was actually giving us religious instruction. What on earth did I think was going on at the time? It certainly never occured to me to believe that the stories were true.

You might think, based on what I have just said, that my next thread will be about memories of the old school yard. That would be a reasonable thought. Actually, I could cover my reflections on school for you right now:

It was horrible.

There. That wasn't too bad.

Actually my next thread is about the little book to the right. I got it ten years ago and it is about to expire.