sono tornata .. I returned, I have returned, I am returned.
regressa sum .. I know not quite the same but good enough.....

Italia 1 : Anglia 3


Italy was delicious ragazzi, England is disgusting. Not only was the weather better, and the food eaten as food should be .. simply and slowly and with wine .. but I was also free from the miseries of the excruciating partisanship of the CLC that snaps at my heels here. Sorry. I know that is our sin, being 'excruciatingly partisan', but you can't expect me to let that hypocrisy lie.

I really loved it in Italy. I went there to study about 4 years ago and initially it was tricky. I tend to rely on words and not having had any at the start, I was consequently at a bit of a loss. Luckily, I am pretty good at languages so a few subjunctive-cramming sessions later - si avessi imparato l'Italiano prima avrei trovato la vita piu facile - I was viva-ing the dolce vita pretty bene.

And how lovely now to be able to go somewhere and let a different language roll around on one's tongue (!). And how good for one's English. I have been teaching English GCSE this year and have been horrified at the limited vocabularies my students have to play with. I have been induced to give them word searches for holiday work. No no. Not the stupid eye-sight tests that pose as aids to learning a language. Can you see an 'a' followed by a 'u'.... bingo - audax. There it is. And you learnt it at the same time. Well done.

That was sarcasm.

No. I mean that they, quite literally, have to find ten words that they do not know. It is an easy task. Page one of the dictionary will do the trick. But as I said to them, wordy words not only make you sound clever (which is undoubtedly very useful) but it actually makes you clever. Oh yes. You can have better thoughts if you can articulate them. Of course, I don't mean thoughts only exist in words. Rather, if you have an idea and you want to run with it, it is very hard if you don't have the words to do so. Why else do we write, if not to clarify all the mumblings in our heads, and take ourselves, and hopefully our readers, to a better place at the end. Impossible without the words. We need dialogue to survive, whether with internal or external interlocutors. And I don't need to tell anyone with any brain that one's range of vocabulary and thus eloquence ameliorates immeasurably the more languages one is exposed to. I would hope res ipsa loquitur.

But vocab is just the start. The plethora of perfect tenses we have in English render us extremely felicitous (and yes, we have been doing Type B adjectives recently if you're picking up on a running theme). Then there are the nuances of the passive and active - maybe our paths will be crossed vs. maybe we shall cross our paths. What delicious distinctions and how important to be able to not only manipulate the language ourselves but also to appreciate the choices other writers have made.

Apparently I am a Latinophile. How delightful. I'll let you in on a secret - I am really an Anglophile but would never have got here without a bit of Latin lingo action along the way.

Can I just say...The scoring system at yesterday's staff Christmas lunch was utterly unfair. I, who romped through the hard questions like a very well informed rhinoceros, leaving the tissue paper be-hatted members of the modern language department quaking in their stivali, was pipped at the post by a faulty mark scheme. How can the 9 general knowledge questions have been worth only one point each when every cat, mat and sat was given equal value. I ask you. It was one of those moments that I thought, why do I bother? What's the point of knowing one's Christmas number ones (Slade - pah - I wasn't even alive and I still know it was Queen) from one's Pis and Xis?

Next year I shall be writing the quiz. It will go something like this:

For one point - Create something.

For two points - Put on a pair of blinkers and keep yourself on the straight and narrow.

For three points - Mark out your territory, defend it for all you're worth and don't ever let anyone on board ever even if they are bearing gifts. Maybe recycle this year's Christmas cards to make a brightly coloured chain to hang across your classroom door to prevent any outsiders from entering.


I am to Italy today. If they have entered the 21st century I shall post. If not, see you on Monday.

Grazie e buona notte.

Back in a late-eighties, pre-pubescent classroom, that might have got a titter. (Matthew Leggett, where are you now?) Something about boys asking girls for the use of their sharpeners. I never got it. Nor did I ever get asked. I was the square one who relished G minor over cars and garages. Hmm. I must remember my students peruse this of an evening. Miss Leek, move on.

God knows what antics my mother got up to in her training afternoon with safety development officers. But let us just relish the thought. Go Mummy Leek. Pick up those pencils.

Actually, she is probably quite good at it. Mummy Leek has been a late starter when it comes to sport. Two summers ago, the two of us joined a gym and portly Mummy (come on, even she would admit it) has gone a-leaping and a-bounding ever since. Like a small, sprightly, spiky-haired, gazelle. She recently did a 10-mile run. Go Mummy Leek.

She did do sport at school although only at the back. She did win races although they were her own races i.e. she needn't have bothered as there wasn't a chance in hell she would have been finishing anywhere near anywhere.

We Leeks are small - very sweet but very small. My brother, who has now run the marathon twice, latterly finishing with a time that takes him into the elite category, didn't leave much of a mark on the rugby pitch. I was WA (wing attack plebes) in netball until I didn't grow up. I became, before everyone else's eyes, a midget, without actually doing anything. I now swim a lot, am quite fast, don't compete and have a pretty nice washboard to show for it.

'Aaah,' you all say, you who remember gum shields fondly. (I think they were also for giants as the back of them used to go so far into my throat that I spent most of lacrosse gagging.) 'It was all part of the plan. You may not have appreciated it at the time but it was laying the foundation for your enjoyment of sport in adult life.'

No.

Non. Nein. No.

I have a theory. There is the sort of person who can suspend reality (in the rain, in the mud, trying not to be sick) and believe that chasing a ball into a net is very important and definitely something to get excited about. And there are others who can't. I, for example, just couldn't care less

But this is serious ragazzi. How many hours do people spend hating hockey? I just heard Martina Cole (an interesting and good writer) bemoaning the fact that she didn't make better use of the education system in this country that is (her words) 'one of the best'. But isn't it madness that kids still have to run around in stripy socks trying to avoid getting shouted at for not being more aggressive in defence. Can we really rest on our laurels and imagine we've cracked it? PE is taking up a lot of people's time and has been for a very long time. Indeed, is it any wonder that we have an obesity problem when the best PE departments can cook up are sticks with hooky bits on the end and very hard rubber balls.

Dance (see The Independent, 3rd December) might provide something of a solution. But again, that is devised by somebody who likes dancing and can see its point. I wonder if a cycling scheme might work. If you cycle to school, you don't have to do PE and therefore you can read a good book, or hang out, which is what most 13 year olds spend their time trying to do, even if they are not allowed. Or cycling excursions for those who don't need to win? People could cycle to a local primary school, anywhere, do some work experience and then cycle back again.

Let me know your thoughts. But don't get too excited. Health and safety will undoubtedly get in the way of any fun. If a doctor needs to be told how to pick up a pencil, I don't hold out much hope for bikes on the open road. How does hockey....... I daren't even ask that question. Rah rah rah.

My sister is training to be a doctor. Three years of dead bodies and me holding up my hand at the dinner table telling father (doctor) and mother (doctor) and sister (doctor) and brother (physicist .. same thing in my book) to stop talking about sigmoidoscopies (is that a word?) over minestrone soup.

But, some £10,000 of her money (not really her money but will be when she has to pay it back) and £15,000 of my parents' money and about £20,000 of taxpayers' money (probably more but my maths brain doesn't go above 45,000) have taken her to the dizzy heights of watching a man doing a power point presentation on a video.

What does that sentence mean?

I think it means that, after lots of money and training, my sister had to watch a video of a man doing a power point presentation.

Just in case you haven't got that yet - it means she watched a power point presentation, presented by a man, and then filmed.

It gets better.

The power point presentation cum video (aaah how felicitous) was of a man explaining important health and safety facts like how far a fire extinguisher fires. A fire extinguisher reaches 2 metres (he said) and then the camera panned from his face to the power point screen on the screen where there was a helpful diagram on the screen in a screen. There was a fire-extinguisher with a little arrow coming out of it and, yes, you are very quick well done, there was '2 metres' written in bold type at the end of the arrow. Excellent. Glad that's clear then.

Come back tomorrow for the next exciting instalment when mother (consultant psychiatrist) is told how to pick up a pencil off the floor. How she is expected to differentiate between sanity and insanity is beyond me.

I went to see Watership Down yesterday at the Hammersmith Lyric. It was very good. I think the book must have skipped my generation. I had vague memories of watching and giving up on a very miserable film when I was about 7 but that is all.

'I will probably cry all the way through,' I had said.

'Did you cry Miss Leek?' they said.

'Yes I did,' I said.

But what an allegory for my times, handed to me on a plate with carrot sticks. Big horrid chief rabbit has become so blinded by self-importance that he has stopped worrying about the welfare of the individual and is only interested in The Big Burrow. The framework is in place for survival - albeit a mean one - and may no one question or challenge the General or heaven help them.

The apologies I have had from CLC fanatics have been strange. It is like I am dealing with a bizarre religious cult. They still don't seem to be able to read, they are still blinded by one sentence and they are unable to enter into any sort of debate. I am to meet the grand fromage although am doubtful of any good it might do anyone. I think the whole affair is going to trickle off into a 'see who can shout the loudest' contest. And then we are to go home and stop causing mischief. Just because lots of books have been sold does not make it a good book. Just because it is a good book in some ways does not mean it is good enough. But more on the denial of our education another day....

Grand fromage has requested I display his comment. Yes, actually requested. It will do him no favours to show it all but here is a little taster:

"Teachers will rightly get annoyed if we attack each other in the national press - many of us invest our life's work in supporting the subject. Attacking each other's pedagogy will be read as tantamount to suggesting that we're not doing our jobs properly. You would have got the same response whatever materials you had said that about..."

I can only reply with screaming questions. Read them in a screaming voice.

1.) Who was I personally attacking in the national press? Who who who? Is the CLC a person?

2.) Are you all complete imbeciles?

3.) Do you not understand how articles are made and that therefore I am probably not a devil nor out to get anyone?

4.) Did you not read what I wrote above .. about the gift? The 'what about the rest of the things I said that have been COMPLETELY BYPASSED'?

5.) Can you not see that all this publicity re. Latin courtesy of Harry Mount is a good thing?

6.) Are you all so insecure of what you are doing that you think nine words are going to affect your lives so much (and if you can actually count them up without referring to the original article you are officially a CLC freak)?

7.) What gives anyone the right to phone someone up on a Saturday afternoon and tell them they have ruined his or her career? Doesn't that go beyond normal behaviour?

8.) Does no one want to have a normal discussion about Latin teaching instead of partisanship?

9.) Why do you all have identity issues and see yourselves as CLC warriors instead of private individuals?


Although 10 is a good number, I'll stop. We did a vocab test with 9 words on Monday and it worked quite well. But, I imagine after that the grand fromage will not want to meet me. If he does he is not the General I thought he was. I do live in hope. He did also say some nice things:

"I'm sorry if my phone call offended you...

..If you want to meet up to talk, just let me know. Best to email, though, since I won't check here. If you choose not to, though, good luck all the same to you and your students."

So that is nice.

There is a new running joke in my classroom this week. To be honest, the servi mali servi boni were getting a bit tired.

multa corpera in agris iacent.......

Oh dear. I had tripped on the stem of corpus (no that's not the joke). 'Don't tell that to the Cambridge Latin Course,' Magistra Leek told her elite minions. They laughed.

That was the joke.

If anyone has stumbled across this looking for more exciting things than Latin wars, exit subito.

This is all about Latin wars.

Not education.

A pity.

For those barbarians out there who don't know their ins from their ins (I'll resist but those of you who know, know) there is a war being waged between the CLC and any critics of it. Unfortunately, I was asked to give an opinion last week in relation to Harry Mount's surprisingly popular amo, amas, amat.... And all that.... ActuallyI didn't say anything about the book at all. I haven't read it. It was more about Latin - Latin teaching, what's the point and what's the status quo. Unfortunately because I dared speak against the monster that is the Cambridge Latin Course (monster - not 2: a malformed animal rather 5: an animal of huge size... what did you think I meant?) I have been lampooned as a result.

The demonisation of an individual (read - someone entitled to their own opinion) by the massive CLC and its Bacchic partisans is absurd. I may have said something on the phone, a throw away comment, to a journalist. Journalist inadvertently sets said comment as a flashy jewel in an otherwise helpful gift to Latin teachers nationwide. Some readers manage to see only flashy jewel (is that narrow mindedness or short-sightedness?). Toys out of pram. Amnesia of freedom of speech principles. Hysterical Latin teachers seek out phone number of private individual (is that stalking, or hate-phoning). CLC fanatic misquotes own words at individual whilst at the same time implying they are not fit to teach and then CLC itself phones ... Will, was that really you? Wow. I thank you for your support. And also for bypassing everything else I said which was very good I thought. But then, this is about Latin wars, not education. A pity.

The most saddening thing is that everyone seems to want to know what I use instead. Why is everyone so bloody dependent on textbooks. And ANYONE who replies with some whinge that, 'we didn't all go to Winchester my dear', I went to a state school like the best of us. I do err on the side of the Oxford, mainly because it doesn't waste time with a load of old cobblers but attempts to cram in a lot of 'real' things - stuff about the late Republic, Virgil, Greek myths, Roman lifestyle, archaeology - as much as it possibly can. Yes, yes. I know there's a load of old Pompeii etc in the CLC but surely you can do better than Caecilius. Who the **** is Caecilius. Give me Horace any day. Oooh. Is that elitist?

To be honest, I don't really think any are that great. None are particularly sufficient on the language front. Why does no textbook explicitly and clearly explain the fundamentals? WORD ORDER plebes. The most essential piece of advice I can give my students is to dispense with their English reading habits. Don't happily trip along the line until you get to a full stop, hoping it will all make sense. All the words go into a pot (that's in + accusative for those of you who want to know. I couldn't resist). You work out their function by their endings but, before anything else, always the mantra FIND THE VERB, WHO IS DOING IT, WHEN. Then you are safe.

And as for the elitist slur that I rather enjoy and have since I was at Oxford (it is a constant battle for us who work hard at school and end up somewhere), I quake at your implication. Apparently, by turning my nose up at a set of books that is a bit mickey mouse (not my words), I am being elitist. Hmm. Does that mean that those in inner-city comps are not able to cope with more than dumbed down LATIN? Touché. More on that another day but just to let you know, you know nothing about me, do not know what I do, do not know who I teach and are pretty vile to suggest my opinion is worth little because I spend some of my time teaching at a private school.

But let's all get over it shall we. You who are something of a Polyphemus (sadly those taught under your auspices probably won't know who that is) will survive. Throw a few more rocks and then settle down. We are, after all, on the same side.

Vale.