h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

*watching Aliens distractedly*

Have I mentioned that I love my job lately?

The villages round here hang on to their schools, thanks to all the redevelopment that is getting squeezed in, after a period in the 80s of falling numbers when many were closed and convered into 'houses with character'. With excellent access to Nodnol and top salaries, new housing goes like hot cakes.

After junior school they are bus(s?)ed into senior school, we live along the road from one of the best in the area, also one of the biggest. It is behind the residential houses, so apart from the traffic at school start and end times, we hardly know it is there. Even the kids walking to and from school are relatively quiet and well behaved.

Where I live, they charge for the school bus, no matter where you live. It's actually rather silly, since they have a sliding scale, but if you make the amount they want for a bus pass to be free, you couldn't afford to live here. I don't mind the money so much as I mind the fact that my daughter doesn't actually get music or art very often, yet they keep asking me for money.

Oh, did I mention that the principal of her school drives a very expensive car, and the superintendent an even fancier one?

I think school's would be a lot better off if the money actually went to the teachers, not the administration. Pretty heretical. Someone get the faggots and start the torches. I should be burned.

[Ben]

I beg your pardon?

Hey all, friend of mine recomended this thread. No real time to read it all now have to get back to work, just wanted an easy way back in

Excuse me I was referring in post #865 to post #860. Simulpost thingy!

Local authority pays for our bus, but then we pay high local
taxes in "rates" to the local authority. So all in all, perhaps, the same.

[Ben] again. Before going off to Do Things.

Hi Tamberlaine.
The village where I live now still has it's school and a pub .
Where I was born and brought up (all of six or so miles from where I am now) are currently going through an excersize in reduction of primary (5 to 11 years old) school numbers. The one I (and all my sisters went to - as well as now my nephew) has been slated for closure. Shame it's right in the middle of a residential area, has always had good community relations and so on means nothing to the council. My brother in law (one of the govenors) and sister have been working hard to fight the wrong assumptions made by the council.

Hi Tamberline - welcome to the salon *waves*

They had me on the school governors but then one day I told one of the visiting educational advisors she was both patronizing and mannerless in the meeting. So I was voted off in the next election by one political veto. But I'd laid the groundwork for the other governors, so really, I was glad to go.

They never sent a letter of "thank you" or an explanation until I complained and promted. I believe that was adopted too. So, all in all, I contributed something.

My God BBC Radio 4 has had a big hickup at 11:00
Most Unusual

Welcome, Tamberlaine. Have some

[ttox]

Welcome Tamberlaine

Last summer, I went back to the town where I grew up and decided to drive by my old school. The school was located in the middle of a subdivision. I wound through the streets, following the route I walked every day, and got to the street where my school was and found...houses. There was no sign that a school had ever been there. At some point in the last 30 years it had been torn down and houses built on the site. It came as a bit of a shock - a "what's wrong with this picture" sort of feeling.

[Hyp]

[DD]

I hate taking weekends off hootoo.

You just hate the blog, DD.

One of the schools where I did my elementary years is now a museum, I discovered when my aunt and uncle took me for a tour of old parts after my father's funeral. It was built in 1906 and had beautiful, highly varnished wooden floors, a total firetrap.

A house where I had lived for about 4 years had been situated on a cul-de-sac abutting woods and fields. When we drove by I didn't recognise it because part of the front lawn was gone to make way for a road; the woods and fields were gone, replaced by houses.

Welcome, Tamburlaine!

>> "a "what's wrong with this picture" sort of feeling."

I was born on the side of a hill, on the side of a bloody great escarpment actually, with views (as I said in one of my poems) 30 miles to the North and 40 to the West.

The view from the house was buried deep in my soul - as you would expect, in all kinds of weathers at all times of year.

There was a river with a row of poplar trees and a railway line about 5 miles away, and one day, I found myself driving along the road next to the poplar trees. A very very strange situation. Like being in the landscape behind the Mona Lisa, and looking out at the woman's back and the painter beyond the frame.

Ben