Remember secondary school?

Share Roaming around the internet the other day, I decided to look up my old school, something I hadn't done in a long time. What did I find? It hadn't changed! I guess these places never do, at least to the external visitor who can't actually tread on the presmises at a moment's notice.

Just seeing the school logo was enough to bring it all back! I spent 7 years at Manchester Grammar School, a large independent school in the heart of Manchester, and I have to say the experience overall was a successful one - but not always 100% happy, that's for sure. Who can actually say their schooldays were the best days of their lives?

I remember my English teacher, recently retired Mr. Myers, once telling us off in class one day. He was saying how lucky we were (and we were) to go to a good school, and that the university time we craved to begin, only a few short months away, would be the happiest days of our lives - so why didn't we all shut up and do some work? I remember the moment because he said how we could be someone on the street in Manchester without the support of the school, and here we were wasting our time! Then we went back to reading Hamlet.

Anyway, the enblem is now part of me - the owl waving in a merry, slightly self-knowing way. On my school blazer (worn for the first 5 years) the owl had a scroll in its mouth - with the word DOM written on it, a very bad pun supposed to indicate that the school was founded by Hugh Oldham (owl-dom, see) in 1515. But I prefer the owl's expression, and nowadays I like to think of him as waving me goodbye, onward, because in some ways Mr. Myers was right, university is a release from school!