Thursday 16 February 2017

Slob ruined my handwriting



The title of this piece, if it means anything at all, will be meaningful only to those who were mid 20th century pupils at Nottingham High School. I was one such; another was Kenneth Clarke. In the Winter 2016 issue of the “Old Nottinghamian” magazine, a short item about the Rushcliffe MP’s autobiography appears, as follows:


Perhaps he should have spent less time revising for his EU-levels. 

As for Slob, the teacher known to generations of boys by that focused, descriptively perfect name, his History ‘O’-level lessons were so boring that I wrote down everything he said, verbatim, without engaging conscious brain activity, scribbling away at speed, filling five fat exercise books during the year. At the end of it, what I had was illegible, and my ability to write neatly was ruined irreversibly. Fortunately, that was all that Slob ruined for me, and these days I can happily enjoy a good history book.

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