My little Gnudren,

Let me take you back 1966. Young Gnu is sitting in a classroom on 2nd floor of a school for rather privileged youngsters, 5 minutes or so walk from the Bank of England in fair London Town. Don’t ask me how this happened, as he lived with his 2 brothers and parents in a 2 room basement also shared by mice, with the bottom part of the connecting corridor acting as a kitchen. The loo was upstairs on the ground floor and shared with the 2 residents who lived there and his family took a bath once a week in a relatives flat down the road.

Sitting in the French lesson the enthusiastic French teacher communicated by only speaking French and when addressed we were expected to reply in French.  Most lessons started with him throwing back our marked homework books with sundry burblings in French as he did so. Considering there were 27 of us in the class he did this with remarkable accuracy from the front of the classroom. Of the 3 large windows down the side of the classroom one was open to a degree that would have given any health and safe officer today a heart attack or seizure. The desk by the open window was occupied by a pupil going by the name of, well let’s call him, Moragas, since I have not asked his permission to tell this story. Our beloved French teacher would often become vexed and frustrated with him, because he always committed the cardinal sin or replying, when addressed, in English. Another fact about this pupil was that he suffered from chronic flatulence – hence the open window. Most lessons started with Moragas being instructed to go downstairs to the small playground and run round it three times. Usually he took longer than the permitted 4 minutes and was summoned back upstairs by our beloved French teacher leaning out of the window and shouting at him to return.

One sunny day, according to his usual  practice, Monsieur French Teacher was throwing back our homework books and expecting us to skilfully catch them as he burbled on in French completely incomprehensible to most of us. However, when Moragas’ homework book was projected across the class, his limbs seem to have suddenly taken a seizure and his homework book went sailing out of the second floor window down to the exercise yard below. This made our beloved Monsieur Teacher wrath in the extreme. So much so that he broke his own cardinal rule and shouted in English, “Moragas! You stupid boy!” Before he had a chance to say anymore, Moragas replied in an impeccable French accent, “Comment, comment Monsieur?! The speechless French teacher duly awarded Moragas a detention. I think much to everyone’s surprise Moragas got an A at ‘O’ Level French (GCSE equivalent  in the dark ages). Alas, despite his good behaviour, Gnu failed ‘O’ French for reasons that became apparent about 40 years later – Dyslexia. At least one teacher had some sympathy in those dark days. On Gnu’s report he wrote: “He tries, but it may be that he has genuine problems.”