If…

I was talking to my son some time ago about a terrible disappointment he had suffered and said that something seemingly unfortunate happens, but if it hadn’t, another most brilliant and wonderful opportunity would not have arisen.

I was thinking about this again last night in the pub; when I was at the end of my first year at secondary school, we were given a choice of German, Spanish, Latin or Domestic Science for our second year. I passionately wanted to learn German, I had Spanish as my second choice, and I did NOT want to do Domestic Science. Somehow a choice was made by the staff that I should do Latin… apparently because I wasn’t good at spelling and Latin spelling is easy. I dispute the judgement made on my spelling! However I was forced to learn Latin  taught by dear old Miss Eddy, who had taught my aunty thirty years before and was old then. I struggled, and to make matters worse, in the first term of learning it I was away from school for nearly two months with glandular fever. Not only did glandular fever wreck my chance of swimming for the national team, it also put me impossibly behind in Latin.

I struggled on for two years, 8%, 11%… those sort of results in the exams even though I worked so hard at it, trying to learn the wretched language every night. We were allowed to drop a subject at the end of the third year… was I allowed to drop Latin? No, I had to drop science… our school made some very odd and arbitrary decisions. Then, hallelujah! Dear Miss Eddy retired, and dynamic Mrs Stanton arrived from New Zealand. She was a great teacher! Suddenly Latin fell into place, and my marks began to creep up until I achieved an amazing 56%!!

Catastrophe! The dreadful old **** (insert your own favourite insult here) of a headmistress refused to enter me for the O-level, the public exam… She would not be shifted from her position, the old ****, even though I asked her, Mrs Stanton asked her, and even my very shy mum went in to school to ask her… so I did not take Latin. The impact of this was that two years later, when I was applying to University to do English, there were only thirteen places I could apply to because in those days you had to have Latin to study English… I applied to those thirteen, no interviews, no offers, no place… but I ended up going to Manchester Polytechnic, which was in its first year. I did a BA in English and History and French, I loved every minute of it, made some life-time best friends, loved the north of England, stayed in the Manchester area… where I eventually met my husband and had my two beautiful children.

So… if I had not been disappointed at having to study Latin, if I had not been dropped from taking the exam, if I had not failed to get into Uni, if I had not gone to Manchester Polytechnic… well my life would have been very different and I would not have the lovely family and friends I have now!