Look Around You

When I was a child television for educational purposes was also very much in its infancy. At primary school, one day a week our class would all gather round the flickering black and white set and learn about the tomato crop of Gozo and the head-hunters of Borneo.

It was quite a pleasant half-hour, just watching a bit of telly - - but then our teacher, who took Education very seriously, would spoil our fun by giving us a test on it immediately afterwards, which is probably why I remember quite a bit about Surinam and those tree houses where the people used to live, and maybe still do for all I know.

Anyway, here's a rather glorious spoof of all those school telly programmes, which will give anyone who ever watched any of them an instant pang of nostalgia. School dinner-halls and the smell of cabbage! School changing-rooms and the smell of a hundred ancient PE kits! School classrooms and the smell of - well - school. I didn't have a bad time at school at all - just quite a lot of boring time, some excellent teaching, some terrible teaching and some very good friends - and yet the memory of a thousand dull maths lessons still makes me shudder.

I've just had a lovely birthday meal in a restaurant. Very many thanks to all who took part, and also to those, in the blogosphere and elsewhere, who sent birthday wishes, texts, cards, presents and even a delightfully-presented IOU!

One of the few benefits of being old is the escape from school. So enjoy this programme, and then be glad you don't have to watch things like this ever again.