Ladies and gentlemen, I can only apologise for my absence. I have no real excuse. Work has not been manic, my social life has not been hectic, I have not been ill. Just lazy.
So I shall try to make it up to you with a Plog so splendiferous it will set your very eyes on fire. In a good way.
Many, many moons ago when I was at school, Latin was a compulsory subject. Ploggers, I went to the sort of school that had a Flower Monitress (responsible for ensuring the classroom had fresh flowers), where you had to stand up when the teacher came in the room, and where it was pretty much expected that you would be bullied by staff and pupils alike if you didn't get all "A" grades at GCSE. If you chose not to go to university, there was a mandatory 60-minute interview with our headmistress (a formidable lady) where I am told you were browbeaten into completing your UCAS form "just in case" whilst being shown photos of unemployed women with fourteen children, with your face Photoshopped into it. That last bit might be an exaggeration.
Needless to say, my parents chose the school for me because it reminded them of their own school days. In the fifties. 'Nuff said.
Anyway, Latin was a compulsory subject in the Lower Fourth (or 2nd year, or year 8, whatever you want to call it). If you did badly enough at it, they let you drop it by the Upper Fourth (or 3rd year, or year 9 or whatever). Our Lower Fourth Latin teacher was a lady nearing her retirement, whom - if memory serves - we nicknamed Pussyfoot for her habit of creeping up on us whilst we were (feloniously) eating our lunch in the classroom (rather than walking the five minutes to the dinner hall) and telling us off. Yes, we were bad through and through.
Astonishingly, I did not do badly enough at Latin to be allowed to drop it the following year, despite - to this day - never having got my head around the difference between declensions and conjugations - or indeed, why we had to study it. Pussyfoot having retired, we were given a new teacher, brand new to the school, to drill Latin into our stupid little heads.
Her name was... well, I won't tell you, but I'll give her a pseudonym. Let's call her Miss Roberts. Now, I will not deny that 14 year-old girls can be a bit cruel. An extract from my diary on an "own clothes" day reads, "Teachers are so sad. Mrs McDonald was wearing spray-on jeans and Miss Andrews was wearing baggy leggings - they always get it so wrong!" This from the girl who seemed to spend most of her teenage years in a checked shirt from the local factory shop, and an ethnic skirt with bells sewn into it.
So yes, girls can be cruel. But straight away it became apparent that Miss Roberts looked much less like a Latin teacher... and much more like an air hostess. Including the brightly-coloured suit, with a very short skirt, a matching neck tie, high heels and more make up than the Oxford Street John Lewis Clinique counter normally sells in a week.
At parents' evening, most parents had a system - the mums would speak to half the teachers, the dads to the other half - covering everything they needed to in half the time. Both of my parents will swear that the queue of dads to see Miss Roberts was not entirely gender balanced.
Little wits that we were, it wasn't long before we thought up the endlessly amusing catch-phrase, based on the premise of Miss Roberts being a frustrated air hostess: "Tea? Coffee? Latin lesson?" I had still learned no Latin and regularly used to get Katy Who Smells of Wee to do my rough work for me*.
Anyway, the next year I dropped Latin, Miss Roberts left a couple of years later ("to teach boys; I prefer boys" - a great statement to make in an all-girls' high school) and the world went on.
Until last week. When I received a friend suggestion on Facebook to add Miss Roberts. Out of curiosity, I clicked through to her page. She only had two other friends. I checked out the info on her profile. She now appears to be a travel agent.
So what I'm saying is - cruel as 14 year-old girls can be - we saw it coming.
* This backfired in May 1994 when I was chosen to read out my translation of Quintus' latest dull adventures in culina with Scintilla. I looked down at my rough work (in Katy's handwriting) and confidently asserted to the class, "Quintus was jay-walking down the high street, wearing pants made of jelly."
