Bread and circuses

After a busy period at work when I haven't found time to blog, I'm experiencing the delights of bread and circuses.

The bread is literally bread. I've finally explored one of the Polish shops near work and discovered a range of central European breads: heavy rye bread, bread with sunflower seeds and so on, reflecting the cuisine of various countries - not just Poland but also Latvia and Lithuania. They seem to me better than the supermarket "specialty" brands - and cheaper too.

I went to a circus as well - the Moscow State Circus which was touring near me on the day of the Royal Wedding. It was a good counter-balance to that other circus. It had a story too. If I grasped the moral correctly, it was something about taking money from the rich and spending it sensibly so that everyone could enjoy the arts. Just now that seems a pretty good idea.

All round me there's anxiety. Friends find their jobs at risk. (I seem to be safe - at least till next year, and that's ages in the present economic climate.) Health and social care are in the news. The Financial Times has picked up a story about health authorities and hospitals at risk. In many cases the risk has been caused or worsened by the involvement of private companies, who were quick to enter into Private Finance Initiative agreements that safeguarded profits at the expense of the ill, the injured and the dying. Meanwhile the big companies that make money out of caring for frail elderly people and those with disabilities have in their turn been brought close to collapse by private equity companies. From the point of view of profiteers, it seemed a neat arrangement: sell the homes to other companies, agree an ever-rising rent, trust the market - and get out quickly when the economy falters.

Obviously I should have arranged a better pension for myself, according to the right-wingers. That's the same right-wingers who object that my public-sector pension will be too generous (if I ever get there) and who tell me I should find ever more to spend on my children, my parents and every cause and charity near to my heart. But if I do my best, it's never quite enough. According to them, I should also spend more on insurance and save more - but in the present economic climate insurance companies can go bust. Even banks, which may be bailed out, seem a bit of a gamble. They depend on the markets, which depend on an ever-increasing chain of gambles and exploitation.

So besides bread, I comfort myself with circuses. I may have visited only one actual circus in the past month, but I've been making up for it by enjoying other activities which give me pleasure. They remind me that life is more than a dragged-out existence. Life isn't just about duty - we need pleasure too. For some people that means getting out into a new place, whether it's roaming the countryside or strolling through towns. Others enjoy dancing or sport - and my regular experience of wielding an epée makes me understand that these can be sources of intense pleasure. For other people it's watching sport going to gigs that's important. My circuses involve engagement with the arts.

I headed to London to see my parents, travelling as lightly as I could so that I could sandwich my visit with artistic pleasures. I was a groundling for a matinée of All's Well That Ends Well at the Globe - a difficult play that's rarely performed. It's not just its unfamiliarity that makes it one of my favourites. There's a pair of determined, assertive young women - even though the times mean that the best either can hope is an attractive, wealthy husband to lord it over them.

I've seen All's Well twice before - and in both productions the focus was on the central relationship between Helena and Bertram. The comedy was played either as abstruse courtly wit, at a distance from the audience, or a cue for over-emphasis with lots of "isn't this funny?" expressions in the hope that the audience would laugh. The revelation of this production was that, for the groundlings at least, the comedy worked and was genuinely funny. It comes, I think, from the shape of the theatre which encourages the actors to establish a relationship with the audience. Comic lines were played with the clarity of the successful stand-up - and were irresistible. I engaged with the play as a whole - how could I do otherwise with my forearms leaning on the front of the stage? - and, when the final scene of reconciliation came, my eyes filled with unexpected tears.

I stayed overnight with my parents, still in their own flat so less immediately threatened by the private profits of the market. We had supper and a quiet evening. In the morning I left with them when they headed out to the shops but my aim was a further exploration of London.

I was unsure of my destination but eventually decided on the Guildhall Museum, which I hadn't visited before, followed by the London Museum, which I hadn't seen for many years. Walking between and around the two, I found myself in a many-layered city, where modern structures of glass and metal loomed high above small Wren churches. There are traces of an even older city. I glimpsed the old London Wall through a museum window and saw what's left of the Roman amphitheatre in the Guildhall Museum basement.

That's the kind of structure Juvenal meant when he talked about bread and circuses: a place where shows of all kinds were put on, including gladiatorial combat and public execution. Being in some ways a typical Roman of his class, I don't suppose he minded the gladiators or the executions. But he was concerned that the citizens of Rome, once the source of democratic power, had been diverted from their proper concerns for the state to making demands for bread and circuses.

I agree with Juvenal that people should recognize and exert their democratic power. But I think he's wrong to dismiss bread and circuses. We all need food to live - not just food for the body but something that nourishes the imagination and tells us that life is worthwhile. It's also the circuses, whether we find them in physical activity, travel, music or the arts, that open us to a wider imaginative understanding of the world. They nourish curiosity and sympathy. They offer laughter, tears and reconciliation.

Yes, Juvenal - I want democratic involvement and responsibility. But I'll take the bread and circuses as well.

"The pity of war"

Shakespeare's Othello is a soldier. He had killed his opponents in face-to-face combat and ordered others to kill. This is what gives him value in Venice. He is defined as a Moor and, while it's not clear quite what Shakespeare meant by this in terms of race, it makes one thing plain: away from his military role, Othello is an outsider. His family comes from elsewhere. He has one memento of his mother: a handkerchief embroidered with strawberries – and he has given this to Desdemona, the woman he loves and his new wife. Apart from that, he is as absorbed as he can be by his military role – until his meeting with Desdemona, the army has taken the place of family affections and loyalties. Of course he trusts his comrades in arms but he is their general. He is unprepared for their jealousy or scheming.

Often in Shakespeare's plays I find a single repeated word that seems to provide a guide to one of the themes of the play. In Othello, that word is pity. Speaking of his growing love for Desdemona as he recognized her love for him, Othello declares that he perceived her growing love when she heard the tale of his life and found it “wondrous pitiful.” He continues: “She loved me for the dangers I had passed/ And I loved her that she did pity them.”

Pity returns with renewed force when Othello is finally, wrongly convinced of Desdemona's infidelity. He cries out to the soldier who has deceived him, “But yet, the pity of it, Iago! O Iago, the pity of it ...” At the end of the play, Othello, seeing Desdemona asleep in the bed where he will strangle her, is almost overcome by pity. But instead he does what he believes his honour requires – he strangles her. Then, realising too late that he was deceived, he kills himself.

I wonder if Wilfred Owen had that famous cry of Othello in mind when he coined his famous phrase “the pity of war.” He used it twice: in his poem “Strange Meeting” and in the roughly-drafted preface he sketched out for a collection of poems. He listed the topics that his poems would avoid – they include, heroes, glory and honour. Instead he states baldly: “My subject is War, and the pity of War.”

Wilfred Owen's attitude to war was inconsistent. At times he enjoyed battle – he wrote of one conflict “I lost my earthly faculties and fought like an angel.” He collected at least one souvenir from a dead German: a blood-spattered handkerchief which he sent as a present to his young brother. Yet he also wrote “I am a conscientious objector with a very seared conscience.”

Owen's attitude was typical of many soldiers in the First World War and later conflicts. Sometimes they were frightened, sometimes they suffered, sometimes they killed and sometimes they exulted in the sufferings of others. The same men who performed heroic actions could abuse prisoners, enjoy slaughter and then endure acute pain stoically. Soldiers, like Othello, need pity. So do the civilians and the friends and families of soldiers.

I'm uncomfortable about war memorials which urge us to honour “our glorious dead.” War isn't about glory. It's about people who are trained to kill carrying out orders. Sometimes they are killed. Plenty of civilians – including children – are killed and maimed by soldiers every year. The soldiers who survive have to live with what they did and what was done to them.

First World War soldiers often found a strange dissonance between the experience of trench warfare and the myth of heroism, honour and glory to which they returned on leave. We seem to be creating similar myths. “I don't care how you wear your poppy, so long as you wear your poppy with pride,” the British Legion's representative declared on TV. Soldiers – all soldiers – are routinely referred to as “heroes.” It's seen as bad taste to mention episodes of warfare that aren't heroic. Whatever horrors are committed by other countries' soldiers, we're supposed to believe that British soldiers never, ever behave like that.

It's strange. There's little support for this centuries' wars but the public tends to support the army and cheers the homecoming soldiers as heroes. Every so often we're asked to feel sorry for the soldiers and how they suffer – and I do pity them.

But soldiers are more than suffering heroes. They have inner lives and consciences. They are also trained killers and, although it's not often mentioned, many of them kill people. The people they kill are not always soldiers.

I've no wish to condemn the soldiers. I don't wish to be in their position – and, if I were, I expect that, for all my pacifism, I would end by acting in much the same way but with less efficiency. Soldiers deserve something more honest than a myth of heroism and glory.

Another brave soldier-poet, Keith Douglas, who fought in the Battle of El Alamein, looked coolly at himself as a killer and at the corpses of those he killed. In his poem “Vergissmeinicht” (Forget-me-not) he returns to the scene of a tank battle three weeks afterwards and finds the dead body of a soldier he killed. The emotions of the British soldiers are not pleasant; they see the abused and decaying body “almost with content.” But the discovery of a picture of the dead man's girlfriend reminds the poet that the dead man was not only a killer. The poem ends:

For here the lover and killer are mingled
who had one body and one heart.
And death who had the soldier singled
has done the lover mortal hurt.

The pity of war indeed. The pity of it.

Groundling afternoon

I knew my place. I learned to love theatre from the gods. I can still conjure up the smell of those side entrances to theatres and the plain, uncarpeted stairways that seemed to go on for ever. My early theatrical experiences included a panoramic view of the more-expensively seated audience, comfortable on red plush. But my favourite performers seemed to reach over the permed and lacquered hair of the wealthy to speak directly to the longing, needy hearts of the poor on their benches. I was convinced that shows were aimed directly at the inhabitants of the gods. The rich clapped politely but we yearned, cried, gasped and almost swooned in rapture. How could the actors not love us?

Later I began to criticise and analyse. But I still cherished the moments of awe and hope before the play began, as members of the audience shuffled into their seats, waiting for the lights to dim. The audience – at least, its richer members – was part of the spectacle and the actors shouted or whispered their words over the heads of the rich.

Of course, I knew that things had once been different. It was, I think, the Victorians who placed a distance between the actors and the poorer members of the audience. It's hard to generalise - I don't know enough about the difference between patent houses (the few theatres permitted by law to perform the plays of Shakespeare) and minor theatres (the home of musical theatre and burlesque), let alone the details of such wonderfully-named popular theatres as the blood-tubs and the penny gaffs. I suspect it was the posh theatres that pushed the poor up the bleak side stairs to the gods and turned the rich theatre-goers into part of the spectacle. There have probably always been small theatres charging a single price for all tickets. It took me a while to discover the joys of what were, in my youth, called “studio theatres.” I've been to many and enjoyed their intimacy.

But, having finally visited the reconstructed Globe, I realise that I'd never really imagined what it would have been like to attend an Elizabethan or Jacobean theatre – or to be part of what Alexander Pope calls, with contempt, “the many-headed monster of the pit.” Of course, I had to be a groundling - I didn't feel I'd belong in any other part of the theatre. So, clutching my £5 ticket, I joined the groundlings' queue – a friend had advised me to arrive early to be sure of a good space.

I'd always planned to see Shakespeare at the Globe – it seemed an obvious decision. But it had taken me so many years to organise a ticket and an afternoon that I ended up booking for a new play with an early Tudor setting – Howard Brenton's Anne Boleyn. I was a little embarrassed about this until a fellow groundling pointed out the sense of my decision – the original Globe had, after all, been a place where new plays had been performed.

My fellow groundlings were a welcoming crowd. I've always found a great deal of comradeship among people who queue for cheap seats at plays, operas and concerts. I was lucky to be among regulars, who assured me that watching as a groundling was the best experience the theatre had to offer. They also compared experiences of bad weather. The worst had been a hailstorm during a performance of Macbeth – groundlings are hardy folk and few left. The play also achieved more humour than is customary as the playgoers roared their approval at the repeated greeting “All hail.”

As advised, I found myself a space near the stage – something to lean on should I need it and a good opportunity to be close to the action – and the actors' feet. This could have been disconcerting but the play was written for the Globe and the actors knew how to use the theatre. Before the show started, some of them knelt down to engage the groundlings in conversation. Then, as the play started, in broad daylight (as in Shakespeare's time), the actors ensured that the audience was involved, sometimes pausing to share a joke or addressing us directly. While I didn't suspend my critical faculties (and it would be hard to do so from such a position) I also knew that I was part of the experience – even part of the performance.

At the same time, the play was literally over my head. While the audience seated in the stalls of a modern theatre occupy a position of power, much like the interviewer who sits watching the performance of a succession of nervous candidates, the groundlings stand at the feet of the actors and below the level of the audience in the galleries behind them. While I followed the plot with interest, particularly enjoying the discussion of Tyndale's theology and the problems of Bible translation from the Greek, I had a sneaking suspicion that I was not supposed to follow this from where I was standing – that the theatre building itself assumed my ignorance and inferiority.

Looking back, I'm surprised that I didn't mind this. But I slipped more happily into the role of poor, ignorant theatre-goer than I would have expected. I didn't feel half the discomfort I still experience when, by chance or luck, I find myself in the posh seats surrounded by people who seem to take wealth and privilege. I belong with the groundlings.

And I really liked the play.

When the statue moves

There are a few moments in film, opera and drama that always move me to tears. In Casablanca it's the bit where the Nazis are singing round the piano and Victor Laszlo tells the band to play the "Marseillaise". As the customers in Rick's Bar stand to sing and drown out the Nazis, I feel the familiar lump in my throat.

Resistance moves me. So does reconciliation - often the moment when parent and child are reunited. When, at the end of The Railway Children, Roberta finally cries out "Oh! My Daddy, my Daddy!" once again I'm moved to tears. The same happens with the less well-known reunion between father and daughter in Shakespeare's Pericles when the father summons up the sea metaphors to express his joy at seeing his sea-born daughter Marina:

"Give me a gash, put me to present pain;
Lest this great sea of joys rushing upon me
O'erbear the shores of my mortality,
And drown me with their sweetness."

There's another kind of reconciliation that affects me at the end of Mozart's Marriage of Figaro when the Count asks the Countess for forgiveness and she, in the most heartbreakingly sweet music of the opera agrees. In the reality of the 18th century, she doesn't have much choice. Beaumarchais' third Figaro play, La Mere Coupable, takes a more cynical view of the characters while Mozart's own music in the final chorus seems to anticipate the greater cynicism of Cosi fan Tutte.

But the betrayal the Countess forgives is nothing to the forgiveness shown by Hermione at the end of Shakespeare's A Winter's Tale. Hermione cannot regain all that her husband's cruelty took from her. She has lost her small son for ever and has spent sixteen years in isolation, uncertain whether the baby stolen from her has survived. Her husband's guilt and suffering may be clear but he's still far from perfect as his reaction to Perdita and Florizel's romance makes plain. Yet when he stands before what he believes to be the statue of his dead wife, the audience usually holds its breath, willing the miracle that will bring forgiveness and reconciliation. And so, after long stillness, music sounds, the statue moves and the living woman reunited with husband and daughter.

This ideal of forgiveness despite deep wrong runs through many of Shakespeare's plays. In Measure for Measure, the would-be nun Isabella believes her brother has been executed on the orders of Angelo and still, at the pleading of Angelo's new wife, kneels to beg for mercy on his behalf. At least in Measure for Measure, the audience knows that Isabella's brother is still alive - but there is very little to be said in Angelo's favour. The most Isabella can say on his behalf is that he used the law to kill her brother and that he failed in his intention to rape her. When I find myself in tears at this point, it is not because I feel much sympathy for Angelo, or even his new wife who is never quite convincing as a character.

What moves me to tears is the generosity of those who forgive, despite their pain. It's an impossible, even risky act. In Hermione's case, it seems to be brought about by love but Isabella acts on the appeal from a woman who has helped her, sustained by the belief that mercy is better than the fierce justice that kills.

Forgiveness seems a long way from the public mood at present. I went to a school that required me to attend church regularly so I absorbed the words of the General Confession from the Prayer Book: "We have erred and strayed from thy ways, like lost sheep, We have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts, We have offended against thy holy laws, We have left undone those things which we ought to have done, And we have done those things which we ought not to have done, And there is no health in us: But thou, O Lord, have mercy upon us, miserable offenders; Spare thou them, O God, which confess their fault, Restore thou them that are penitent ...." This may seem like too much abasement but at least it united members of the congregation in the understanding that they required forgiveness as much as anyone else.

I wouldn't claim that Christians have a good record in offering forgiveness - history shows that many Christians in power have been smug, punitive, violent, racist and vicious. But that sense of the value of forgiveness, which comes from passages in the Gospels rather than the actions of so-called Christians, may have been lost for good. The rhetoric of justice - which is even harder to achieve - seems to have replaced any sense of the beauty of mercy and reconciliation. For me, forgiveness deals with the reality of fallible human people who don't seem able to avoid hurting one another but who are still capable of great love.

Future generations may still be moved by the singing of the "Marseillaise" in Casablanca. Resistance to wrong will still be necessary. Roberta's cry as she realises her father is free will still be potent because his release from prison is a matter of justice and his restoration to his family a vindication of their faith and love.

But what about the works where flawed and unworthy human beings are nonetheless loved and forgiven. Will future audiences have any sense of why those passages from Mozart and Shakespeare move me to tears?

Six hours in the Commune

We know the shape of a film or news broadcast - and we have a sense of how long each takes. Feature films are expected to fit a comforting story arc. Even if the events are distressing, the shape contains it neatly and, as they come towards their end, we have, at least, the reassurance of completeness and inevitability.

Every so often a story breaks that pattern and the effect can be shattering. I first noticed this in a play that began like a folk tale: Once upon a time there was a king who had three daughters. And he said to his daughters, "I want to know which of you loves me most." The story span on with cruelty, madness and violence but finally the wicked acknowledged their guilt and were punished. I could relax into the comfort as resolution. "The gods are just," one of the characters remarked, and later, "The wheel is come full circle." And then King Lear entered with the dead body of Cordelia in his arms. That was beyond the comfort of tragedy. "Is this the promised end?" "Or image of that horror?" It doesn't matter who is speaking - the voices pick up the horror of the audience, denied the expected reassurance. Very few dramatists take risks like this - and no other Shakespeare play does.

News stories have a pattern too. Some years ago, I heard a lecture by a speaker who pointed out that the news we watch on television has its own pattern. He told us that the pace and rhythm of news broadcast dictated what we were told. Stories that didn't fit the familiar pattern were discarded. And complete news broadcasts also had to fit a familiar shape so that the news, however disturbing, would also comfort and reassure. He pointed to the pattern that began with the "big story" and ended with an amusing item, followed by the weather. He looked at the structure of broadcasts, the summary at beginning and end, the use of single newscasters or newscasters working in pairs. He said that the news was so carefully shaped to the familiar structure that we couldn't detect the difference between truth and falsehood.

It seemed a pretty radical idea and I wasn't sure about it. However there were two factors which made me take him seriously. Firstly, he suggested we could carry out a small task to demonstrate the truth of his assertions. He talked about the speed of edits in the visuals from news stories. He said that no sequence lasted longer than six seconds without a cut - and suggested we go home and time them. He said that with such short sequences we couldn't easily ask important questions such as: Where is the camera? Who is filming this and why? Is this live film or stock footage? I timed sequences in the news that evening. He was right. Then I recorded a news broadcast. I watched and analysed it sequence by sequence. I started asking the questions the speaker had suggested. Since then, I've never felt the same confidence in TV news.

There was a second reason to take the speaker seriously. Many years before, I'd seen two films he had directed for the BBC. They were brilliant. The first was called Culloden and the second was The War Game. Peter Watkins talked a little about it. The film was made in black and white in 1965 with a mostly amateur cast but wasn't shown on BBC until 1985. Its subject - the possible effect of a nuclear attack on the town of Rochester in Kent - was judged too damaging to public confidence and, after consultations with the Home Office, the BBC announced that the film would not be shown. Eventually there was a screening at the National Film Theatre as well as a U.S. release. This meant that The War Game was eligible for the Academy Awards. It won the 1966 Oscar for best documentary feature. Peter Watkins said that, before representatives of the BBC could get up to collect the Oscar - which goes to the producer, not the director - he got up, made a speech and picked up the Oscar. I saw The War Game at a CND-sponsored screening ten years later. It still hadn't been on general release and there was a possibility that screenings were illegal. It was one of the most powerful and thought-provoking films I had ever seen. After he had made it, Peter Watkins never worked in England again.

Last weekend, I went to see Peter Watkins' most recent film, made in 1999 about the Paris Commune of 1871. I've wanted to see it ever since I first heard of it but this is the first screening I've ever seen advertised. I'd heard it was long but it was only when I bought my ticket that I discovered it lasted 5 hours 45 minutes. There would be an interval, I was told. I made a salad in a box and brought strawberries with me - perhaps not the most sustaining food.

La Commune is a huge film in every way. It has a cast of 220, mostly amateur actors. And it breaks many rules of film-making.

To begin with, the film declares itself a film. Two actors show the audience round the set, built in an empty warehouse. We're introduced to one of the central, fictional themes: in this recreation of 1871, television exists. The Versailles government influences the broadcast media so, in its early days, the Communards set up their own TV station. We watch the Versailles broadcasts as they misrepresent events. We watche people in the Commune watching TV - some prefer the broadcasts from Versaiiles. Then we see that the Commune broadcasters, without being asked, alter events to fit the usual rhythm of news broadcasts - they need to keep an audience. They wonder whether to ignore stories that make the commune look bad.

The events of the Commune aren't the backdrop to a love story or a small domestic drama as it would be in Hollywood. We follow a few individual stories in the 11th arrondissement but the focus is on complex political events and the effects they have on many different people - and, briefly, on society as a whole. Intertitles outline historical events and every so often a black screen gives the audience time to pause and reflect. The actors, who prepared for the film by researching the Commune and their roles, seem to improvise - or live - their roles.

I was tired before I reached the cinema and, towards the end of the first part, my concentration started to flag. But I returned (with peppermint tea) for part 2.

In the second half of the film, debates about the commune grew heated. The actors moved from conditions at the time to their relevance to 1999. There were discussions about women's rights, global economics, the need for action. I was riveted. Here were people considering their own time more clearly because they saw it through the lens of history - and, having researched what happened, they were impassioned about the events of history.

It's not an easy film or a tidy film. It offers more questions than answers. It's about the Commune and the media and the process of film-making. It's about history and what people think when they research the past and consider the present. It's history as hope and muddle and disastrous cruelty.

If you get a chance, see it. Go for the long version. You'll probably find it tiring. You may find it irritating. It's not a comforting film. It risks being condemned for its length, the facts it conveys, and its occasional repetitions. However, it looks marvellous - like early photographs come to life. The actors don't seem like amateurs; they inhabit their role. La Commune challenges the audience and cosy assumptions about what a film is. And there's no safe reassurance at the end.

What schools do

A student friend was recalling her school days - not very long ago. "Don't write what you think," she was advised. "You don't pass A-levels that way. Write what you're told."

And that's how it works. She took the advice, kept quiet about her own ideas and wrote the unoriginal essays that would gain the highest marks.

Luckily the story has a happy ending. My friend is now studying Philosophy and Theology at university, filled with excitement at her studies and writing what she thinks. It sounds as though she's on track for a First. Meanwhile compliant students, who never considered thinking for themselves, are floundering and wondering where it all went wrong.

My school exams were something of a farce. For O-levels I relied a mixture of rote-learning, guesswork and, for the subject that interested me, extra reading and thought on the day. English Literature was almost a disaster. I launched into an essay on Shakespeare's King John which required a comparison of Cardinal Pandulph and Robert Faulconbridge. I'd nearly finished when the awful realisation struck me: I was writing about the wrong Faulconbridge. There was only one thing to do. I scribbled out the entire essay and wrote a hasty comparison of Elinor and Constance instead. The teacher, who didn't like me, was delighted that I didn't get an A and told me I shouldn't be studying English.

I have odd memories of other exams, including my last Geography paper. I had never passed a Geography exam in my life but I wrote rapidly, trying to recall my notes. Then, when I found myself with more time, I began to invent. I hope the examiner enjoyed my vivid account of logging on the forested mountainsides of Denmark. (I borrowed the facts from Norway. After all, I reasoned, it's all Scandanavia.)

My last essay was my piece de resistance. I was asked to compare the ways in which transport was adapted to environment in four contrasting parts of the world. This was my sort of question. I decided I would fail gloriously and chose the Amazon jungle, the Sahara Desert, the North Pole and Britain. I outlined the problems Father Christmas would face if he tried to travel by sleigh in the Amazon jungle. Tarzan wouldn't find it easy to swing through the trees in the Sahara Desert, I said. He'd have to wait a long time for a bus too. "On the other hand," I remarked, "I once had to wait more than an hour for a 73 bus in the Upper Richmond Road." And so it went on.

I wrote a note to the examiner at the end, congratulating him on reaching the end of my paper and commiserating with his misery at marking it. I added that "Kilmarnock carpets are made in the Killybegs". I'd learnt the fact and it seemed a shame to waste it. And then I included my favourite Latin quotation from Aeneid I: "Forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit" (Perhaps one day it will be a pleasure to remember even this.)

That was the only Geography exam I ever passed. Sometimes thought and imagination (and nerve) win out over rote learning. These days I don't think I'd have been entered for the exam. I certainly wouldn't have seemed a good bet for A-levels.

Today, exams are accompanied by celebrations and rituals, many borrowed from the United States. There's a school leavers' assembly - I'm not sure what happens there. And for many children, there's the school prom. It's an expensive, dressy event - an evening meal and dance. Not all pupils can afford to attend. Suits and posh frocks are expected - wedding shops have branched out to offer "prom dresses". Some pupils arrive in stretch limousines. It's extravagant and socially divisive.

At least this year's prom is relatively cheap: £25 for each 15- or 16-year-old. But the venue is in the outskirts of a neighbouring city, twelve miles away. The prom finishes later than the last bus and train. Obviously the school assumes that all parents have cars, or can afford 25-minutes in a taxi.