Right from when I was a kid .... 12-ish I suppose .... I loved those Latin names. I don't know why .... I somehow thought that they were pretty essential as they were often the second thing the books mentioned. I say "books" .. I only had the Observer's book back then .... and there they were in all their glory ..... Falco tinnunculus, Upupa epops, Sitta europea, Larus minutus ... I still know them all...well, nearly all. This was mighty odd though. At school, Latin was the worst thing in my life, well, apart from Rugby. No kidding. For a start, both of the Latin teachers were seriously mad/dangerous. My main one had a row of canes in his cupboard, and they all had names.... James, Martin, Sidney .... it's true ! And when anyone did anything he didn't like .. it didn't take much.... he would be dragged out to the front, usually by his hair, marched to the cupboard, told to open the door and pick one of the canes ... whereupon he would be soundly thrashed with it. That person was often me. My Latin dictionary (we had to buy our own) was full of underlined bits .... all those bird names .... Perdix, Passer, curvirostra, Strix .... and one day in morning break this Latin teacher was on yard duty, and I went up to up him, full of 12-year-old enthusiasm, and asked him about one of the names and showed him where I had underlined it .... it was "haematopus" ..... this was his big chance to be human and kind etc .... but all he said was .... " you should not be writing in your Latin dictionary" ..... and that was it. So much for education. so much for encouraging interest and learning. Plus ... it was my bloody dictionary and I would write whatever I liked in it. But the big event was to come much later, half way through the 4th year. We had to learn rego - regis -regit etc for homework... and the first person he picked in class the next morning was me. Needless to say, I had forgotten it. Well, that was the end of my school Latin ... he dragged me out of the room ( by my hair... that's another story) and told me that I would no longer be allowed in his Latin class. I spent 1½ years worth of Latin lessons either sitting outside the room or wandering the corridors. Latin-wise, I had become a non-person.Very Kafka-esque, that was, even though I didn't know it at the time. However, I was to get my own back. In later life I learned to read Latin using all 5 volumes of the Cambridge Latin course, and I've read Winnie ille Pu and Domus Anguli Puensis in Latin, and Regulus ( The Little Prince), and the first two Harry Potter books ... and lots of "real" Latin too. So there. Hah!!, I still love those Latin names .. Puffinus puffinus ( not the Puffin of course), Boa constrictor, Homo erectus, Ips typographus, Platyarthrus hoffmannseggii , Ciniflo similis....... I've still got that Latin dictionary .... and the bits I underlined .... if I manage to find it, it will be at the top of this.. if not, it won't be. [ So far I haven't found it ][Bah!] And now, it's raining outside ..... mid-bloody-April!! And cold. And windy !! So ... here's an appropriate Death Cab for Cutie song .... " A lack of colour"
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AuthorThat's the author up there ... I was young and sprightly then. Archives
October 2022
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