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

My attention was focussed on the sweets inside the balloons..

Aha, now that's incentive!

A very good one too. Everyone stayed for the full three hours that day.

Yeah I bet.

Expensive though. My philosophy teachers bribe us with sweets. Either that or we're so spectacular a class they just like giving us sweets .

They only let us shoot ballons at the end.

They used to do that with R.E. in the sixth form, but it still didn't work.

Works on us. We're too busy chewing for a bit to make any noise.

For us the teacher stopped turning up, and we weren't going to start bribing her with sweets...

Ah well. I enjoy philosophy, so I tend to turn up and so does the teacher.

But is yours an actual A-level or just something extra that the school decided it was a god idea for you to do?

Oh, yes it is an actual A- level. Yours?

Just the school's idea, we got a certificate and there was an exam, but it wasn't an A-level. It was an RC school you see (my dad taught at the other one ).

Oh, mine is Christian, probably Anglican I'm not sure I never pay attention to it anyway.

Ours was part funded by the Diosis of Westminster, so it was required that we had some R.E. at all levels through the school. I got joint top marks in that exam we had to take. I made the whole thing up.

Ours is just a Christian school. We have R.S. up until year 10, then we can choose to take it further as a GCSE or A- level subject. A few people took it for GCSE, but noone for A- level.

That doesn't surprise me.

We had to take it for GCSE, I'd rather have taken art but I can't complain as I knew when I joined the school about taking R.E.

One of those little provisos that you think "no big deal" when you join and grow to loathe?

It seemed the best of three options (the other two being go to the same school as where my dad taught or go to a school only just within walking distance). It was a good school, just a bit much at times. (When I was in year 11 there was a church built on campus, and we'd often have to be quiet at break times because there was a funeral going on. Plus assemblies that start 'You are a tree, you are a happy tree' are a little worrying.)

New age stuff. Enjoy it but be careful you don't start believing it.

It was actually the story of the fig tree from the trees point of view.

Oh, that's quite interesting, then.

I was worried it was going to be "you are a tree growing in the heart of Jesus" style of thing. Mentioning nonspecific energy. And so on.