Snow Association Panic

It snowed here in London last night. Getting ready for work, mrs hhn was saying how quiet she had felt it was during the night, which got me into my snow association panic:

Between the ages of seven and twelve, I was at a boarding school in Scotland. Since the school was mostly populated by nice but fairly interbred sons of Scottish farmers, I was judged to be the clever one. As a result, when it came to moving onto the next school, I was put up to do the scholarship exam for this next school, which involved a lot of extra-curricular work on Eng, Hist, Lat and Fr.

My English teacher was a red-faced English drop out of a middle aged man. (More Graham Green than Green ever got round to writing about) Later - much later - I realised that he must have been a huge drinker. But at the time, he was just known as Mr &^% who you should never cross, because he had a terrible temper and was prone to hitting you. Me and Ruary McPhee and Renwick Hamilton once got caught by him mucking around after lights out. He hit us so hard with a gym shoe on the arse, that we went beyond crying straight to hysterical laughing, which got Mr &^% even more annoyed. But he'd done his worst, so just shouted at us until we stopped laughing.

Anyway, because of the scholarship thing, I had to have extra English lessons with Mr &^% twice a week, in his own private rooms since it was after normal school hours. (Incidentally, if you are anticipating me and Mr &^% getting it on together, I'd stop reading this now. Ruary McPhee was the first - and last - boy I have ever seen masturbating, but that's a whole other story. ) We were doing creative writing or something about description one evening. Starting quite reasonably, Mr &^% asked me what it was like when it snowed. I was saying stuff like "wet" and "white" and "cold". And he got more and more incensed with me because these were not the answers he was looking for. And I was getting more and more tense thinking he was going to belt me because I couldn't get the answer right. Eventually, he bellowed at me: "Quiet. It's QUIET you bloody idiot". Ever since that evening, whenever it snows I think about the quiet, and not being able to get the right answer for that terrible, bullying teacher. Thanks for the memory teacher dude.

In unrelated news, I have just been reading a long and beautifully written email from our friends who moved to Kenya a couple of weeks ago. I am tempted to post it up on hhn, but am already in copyright discussions with The Waunch re my advertising revenue, so won't risk it. In contrast to the email, I am also reading a terrible book written by a female film-maker about her times in Africa. ("It was hot". "The food was terrible". "He was very handsome but I realised it was not right for me to date a black man". "I suddenly realised that I was the only woman in the room, and all my clothes had fallen off". Yeah, alright love. Get back behind the camera.)

Right, that's my therapy done for the day. Have a QUIET day out there in the snow.