And

And further more! One great thing about being an adult is knowing stuff and also knowing that adults are just other people. At school teachers are another breed, a kind of special category of adult for better or mainly worse if my memory serves.

Never start a sentence with AND they said. It was wrong to do so – it broke the rules of grammar. In fact you got a red cross. And what child can challenge an angry red mark in their exercise book? It had authority and was blood red.

So I think the general rule was never to start a sentence with a conjunction. But I am an adult now and it is no longer wrong to do so. You don't believe me? OK I shall quote this from somewhere - “A substantial percentage of the sentences in first rate writing begin with conjunctions” So they were wrong; wrong; and thrice wrong!

But teachers have an air of authority, they speak as extraverts - sometimes with gravitas. It's the way they tell it. There are some people who go so far with gross confidence...but with such little real content.

Neither was my history teacher correct. It is true that Catherine the Great of Russia was very fond of the boys but she didn't die whilst “accommodating a horse.” Fake news is not new, it just spreads more rapidly. And by the way...while I'm on a role...in the Middle Ages people didn't think the world was flat – they may have been medieval, but not stupid.

Yes I was a bit slow in realising that grown ups and institutions were really just people – often pretending that they knew what was going on. Even when grown up I still had the feeling of “what was I going to do when I grew up?” I always carried the separateness of not really being part of the grown up world – something I could have a part of . That would be when I started quite recently to grow up. I had perversely managed to drag the growing pains out by about 40 years.

Teachers were also allowed to express themselves in other ways back in the olden days; they threw things in class. I was assaulted with “the slipper” at primary school – it stung but no harm done. Hurled down the corridor by a crazy teacher; I wasn't humiliated by it – it is humiliation that does the violence to the human soul. That came latter. “Sticks and stones may break my bones but words can never hurt me” – that is also not true.