Foreign Perspectives

Campbell is a massive school with a number of quite large buildings, a fair number of smaller ones plus assorted sports fields dotted around an enclosed estate of around 100 acres. Or, in short, it’s a massive place for an 11 or 12 to get used to.

As a consequence of that, they have a whole day of familiarisation for the new starts the day before the rest of the school starts back. In theory, that gets them to know where all their classes are but in practice they all seem to have forgotten by the next day. That combined with the school ethos of always doing your best, has led to some tears with some of the kids who find that they haven’t a clue where to go first thing in the morning as they get quite worked up about being late. It’s fine after that because in the first year, the class is just that as all of those in each of the classes go round in a group for the whole year so if one kid knows where to go, they’re fine. Older kids would realise that the teachers will be very forgiving in the first few weeks and they’re not surprised about a few stragglers who’ve gotten lost, but at 11 or 12 it is, of course, a different matter. Courtesy of the two week timetable, it’ll be next Wednesday before they’ve been to all the classes at least once.

Homeworks have, so far, been very easy going affairs ranging from hunting out medieval images for history through to writing out a short critique of a book for English. There’s very much a concentration on English and maths in the timetable with both subjects on nearly every day whilst the other subjects seem generally more like two or three times over the course of the two week timetable (mind you, that’s just my impression as I’ve not got his timetable in front of me).

There is a choice of several after school activities every weekday though they don’t seem to have started yet. That’s understandable as I don’t think the first year people could cope with any more at the moment. Possibles for our little guy include the languages club, fencing, reading club, young enterprise club and perhaps drama. Basically they’ve a mix of sporty things and academic things. On Saturday mornings, there are rugby and hockey with swimming on Saturday and Sunday though he’s ruled out anything that involves getting up early at the weekend.

Other firsts seem to be in the process of being overcome, with the ties getting a touch neater as the week has progressed and the shoes will have been tied a little faster too. Writing with a pen most of the time is something that our little guy has adjusted to really fast – his writing was so neat the other day that I thought someone else had done it. We’ve still not quite a full set of gear for him though I think the main thing remaining is the white sports socks with the mouth guard being measured up for yesterday.

We’ve not quite got properly into our two school routine yet though that’s mainly down to the heap of road works that are ongoing at the moment along seemingly every road. Surprisingly, James being a touch late means that John is a touch late too – we’d expected that John would always be early so long as James was more or less on time. Picking him up is more of a rush than we’d expected too as it can take almost 30 minutes to get between the two schools rather than the 15 or so that we’d expected. Mind you, that doesn’t matter a whole lot as the traffic jam in Campbell is something else sometimes (so far, Friday has been by far the worst day taking 40 minutes to clear last week!).

One major change for us is that his class is tiny so it’s a lot easier to have a chat with his teacher than it has ever been. It’s a big change for him too as there’s no more hiding at the back of the class and I imagine that the level of participation is a good deal higher which can only be for the good.

Overall, it still seems like it was the right choice for him.

The humble barcode scanner was always the poor relation of computer input devices historically.

It was there simply to read numbers and any processing was done behind the scenes by proper computers. Mostly it was used in industrial contexts though most people came across it in the supermarket where, of course, it is indispensible.

However, the usefulness of a simple printed code that can be read by an equally simple device has led to the widening of its use through the barcodes “printed” on computer screens that allow you to load software directly onto your Android phone.

These new barcode readers are mainly software that interprets the photograph taken by the camera in the phone so they’re considerably more sophisticated than the humble scanners that were formerly used in supermarkets.

There’s an awful lot of information out there which should be online but isn’t yet so my family history research is often dictated by the timing of information appearing online.

For instance, whilst contemplating an extended trip to the General Records Office some years ago, I found out that there were plans afoot to make their information available over the internet. That time has now arrived and their online search has speeded up considerably what was proving to be a very time consuming and unfruitful search involving trips to various local registry offices.

Why it was unfruitful is because I’d taken the information written in an 1850s era family bible to be correct. Certainly one thing that I knew to be correct was the place of marriage of the guy whose family bible it was. After all, he’d written that and obviously he would have known where he was married. Turns out that he was wrong and whilst the family bible says (in his handwriting) that he was married in Ballymoney, he was actually married in the Ballymena registry office.

Getting back to him was a breeze with the new service. I had the rough date of marriage of my grandparents and a matter of minutes later I was looking at a copy of their marriage certificate. Going back to his parents’ marriage certificates was another few minutes as was the next generation (the guy who owned the family bible). I can’t go back any further as registration only stated in 1845 but I have a definite location to check with the church records now.

My grandmother’s side is a little more complicated as her dad came from Scotland. It’s still a bit confusing as the family is in Belfast on the 1911 census, but not on the 1901 census yet she was born in Belfast in 1897. Tracking down her parents marriage took 20 minutes or so as I only had the rough date of birth of her dad and you can only search the records in five year slots but I’ve got that now. That in itself changes things somewhat as he was in Belfast much earlier than I’d thought. It gets more difficult from this point as his birth was somewhere in Scotland and his name isn’t overly rare so I will need to think about how to identify him now without knowing the names of any of his family.

The way that some marketing terms arise is quite peculiar, isn’t it.

For instance, Cyber Monday, the Monday following the Thanksgiving holiday, came from a marketing campaign that shop.org ran five years ago which was picked up by many of the other online retailers. Nowadays, it’s become a day (or, in some countries, a week) of major discounting for online retailers. Crazy as it may seem to do a week of major discounting, I’m sure that consumers don’t complain about it as an early Christmas shopping day.

I do not believe the cynics who claim that there is no romance around anymore. Don’t agree? Just take a trip to the cities of Paris, Venice or Rome and you will see that romance is well and truly still alive. Maybe it is the times we live in and the non-stop rush of everyday living that drags us down and makes us forget not just what, but WHO, is the most important thing in our life. I hold the opinion that the Europeans hold the key to this, and if you don’t believe me then pay a visit to Paris, or one of those other cities mentioned above. Everywhere you go you will see couples together; holding hands, kissing or just being together and talking between themselves. Oblivious to everything and everyone else around them…what more proof do you need?.

We all have our romantic ‘ideal’ and whether or not we ever get to experience it in reality it is still nice to have it in our hearts…just in case the opportunity ever arises. But when you think about it, romance can happen anywhere or anytime as long as you are with the right person, just like in the romance novels. You don’t always need the Eiffel Tower, or the Trevi Fountain or to be gliding along on a Venecian gondola being serenaded by some sweet voice. True romance is found where ever you are at your happiest together. You can be just walking on a beach, sitting in a park or enjoying a nice meal and you will know when that ‘moment’ strikes. Because you will both feel it at the same time.

The thing that is so nice about ‘romance’ is that it is the ‘glue’ in a relationship; use plenty of it and it keeps you stuck together. Just like in a Mills & Boon novel, where the happy ending you have always dreamed about is yours for the taking, and can never be taken from you.