Spelling Bee

Rainbow today over Bayble Bay, Isle of Lewis

I can spell 'rainbow'. In fact I can spell lots of words pretty well. I should be able to too. Words were my stock in trade. However, I have always had some bêtes noir. Diphthong, diarrhoea and, oddly, muesli spring immediately to mind. I also went for much of my life convinced that 'across' was spelt 'accross'.

At primary school spelling bees were a common way of testing and improving our spelling ability. They were also supposed to be enjoyable and, to be frank, I did enjoy them. So did Joan Rigby. Joan was the brightest person in the school by far (teachers included I rather think). On one occasion she and I were captaining two spelling bee teams. The teams were level pegging until she and I had to face each other. I cannot recall what I was asked to spell but I spelt it correctly. Really at my wits end, and definitely in awe of Joan, I asked her to spell 'bee' as in 'spelling bee'. Much to everyone's astonishment she either couldn't or she miss-spelt it and my team won.

I don't expect YP to have any such problems but I'd love to know what bêtes noir the rest of my readers have: if any.

The Future's Not Ours To See

As so often happens this posting is inspired by a posting by someone else. In this case L'Archiduchesse again in her posting Confessions in which appears the following intriguing paragraph:

"If somewhat presumptuously, I took the liberty to wonder what would have happened had I not, in a moment I both deeply regret and cherish beyond measure, made a choice last August twenty-fourth and penned a missive that ought not to have been yet had a thousand reasons to be so."

I remembered that when I was at Prep School (US translation: Junior School?) the Headmistress (in the days before Head Teachers) wrote the following in my autograph book:

We cannot foresee what is going to happen.
How then can we plan what we're going to do
Most of us would, I think, act very differently if only tomorrow's screen we could peer through.
But life's vision is short
And we can't see its answer.
And things come our way
Which we're eager to take.
And so we snatch hungrily at its brief pleasures,
And worthwhile and lasting things sadly forsake.

J Twomey Ryebank 1954

I have no idea whether that was original or a quotation and have never bothered to find out. To me it has, for the last 55 years, been a concept ingrained in my consciousness.

I have more recently found it quite strange that I have held this up as the essence of wisdom whilst ever since I was 5 I have thought that Miss Twomey was logically challenged after she stressed in one lesson that pride was one of the seven deadly sins and then in the next told us that we should have pride in our work. When I queried this (which, as a five year old, seemed to me to be completely incomprehensible) I was told off for being insolent (or whatever it was I was supposed to have been).

In the meantime all I can say to L'Archiduchesse is 'You'll just never know!' and if you have achieved happiness, however brief, before 21 you are doing well above average.

(I wonder how many challenges that will provoke).