Ivan (Spadger) Sparrow - 1957 to '60
He was my Form Master in 4B & 5B. Well rounded chap without be plump – reasonably easy going – very fair minded and would allow a bit of behavioural latitude as he made sure you knew his limit of tolerance. At the time I had little interest in English whether Lit or Lang, however, in my mature years I have gained an appreciation of both. One year, for some reason, he had this idea we might all like to experience the writings of Shakespeare (a grave mistake on his part), of which I can only remember that Falstaff seemed a good all-round sort of bloke. I was never into grammatical analysis of a sentence – why would anyone other than a teacher want to do it, unless of course, they didn’t have a crossword, or someone to play “hangman” or “minesweepers” with. looking back I can see that some of it sank in and thus now has relevance in my later life, for example – I still hold fond memories of a school girlfriend named "Précis" (perhaps my mind is playing tricks) – I still don’t like Participles unless they are steamed – I think there are far too many Adverbs on the Telly – I have Noun a lot of nice people during my life, and being a Great Grandparent, I must have Conjugated something or other sometime, - I often get very Tense as in the Past and will probably do so in the Future, but especially at Present when my children tell me what I “should” do when I have been doing such successfully over many years. I admit, I never really understood what a "Proper Sentence" really was, until long after I left school and got married. My understanding to this day is that a Paragraph is either some kind or mathematical curve, or something which is very handy to have strapped to your back if you jump out of a plane. During Winter I always put glass Cliché’s over my seedlings to protect them from frost, and a Complex Preposition was what I used to call “a chat up line”. So, if “Taffy” Turner was really as good a teacher, as I thought he was, how come he didn’t pick-up on my disleckseer wen i were at skool ?