Tomorrow is the start of "Latin 1" and other than some playing with tranlation programmes, before today I haven't really done anything for this. I have bought a few books though - Latin for Dummies, which I have decided to not take with me tomorrow, and Peter Jones's Learn Latin, that went with the Daily Telegraph series from years ago.
So today I have started on the latter and, in a couple of hours manage to read chapters 1 and 2 and do all the exercises. So now I know something about the five conjugative forms of Latin verbs.
Despite having studied Latin for two years at school, I feel I perhaps learnt more from this morning than I managed to do at school. We had a traditional Latin teacher at school - the sort who would ask you to do something and then lift you up by the ears if you made a mistake. Strange talk of "datives" and "accusatives" whatever they are. Exactly like the Roman soldier in The Life of Brian who corrects Brian's attempts to write "Romans go home". Mr Chapman never took any of our weekly tests in for marking himself so myself and Jonathan Oliver simply agreed to say we got 6 or 7 out of 10 when he took in the marks. Either than or we wrote the vocabulary down on the facing page and just copied it from that for the test.
I was made to do Latin rather than the classical studies course that I would have preferred, because I had shown some promise at French in my first year. Sadly that was the peak of my language achievements at school. I came third bottom and bottom in the class for my two years of Latin. In the year two reading exam I was the only person asked to stop before reaching the end of the passage as I had already lost too many marks and my score was now nil. I remember it features Icarus and the line "Icarae dicit" (does that mean "Icarus", he said) or something like it. That I remember this after 30 years is a sign of the trauma I went through. On the other hand, our Latin group was split across the three school forms and so Latin classes were the first time I had lessons with Rachel Sharman and Alison Griffiths, two girls I much admired while at school. Not sure that makes up for the hell that was Latin though.
And sadly, by the time I reached 17 or so, and it was time to consider applying to Oxbridge, the Latin experience requirement had been dropped, so the main argument that had been put forward for me doing Latin turned out to not apply. Perhaps that's one reason why I went to LSE instead
Moreover, as a result of doing a second year of Latin, I was unable to do art O'level and instead had to wait till I was in the sixth form to do art again. I was extremely bitter about this at the time I remember. Still Latin wasn't as bad as German where I was beaten in the end of year exams by someone who arrived at our school at Easter and so only did 6 weeks of German before the exam.
And I failed French O'level a few years later.
So off to Oxford late afternoon - just time to buy Jones and Sidwell's Independent Study Guide to Reading Latin, then off to Rewley House. There are about a dozen people signed up for the biography course. Our first session is quite general. We do an exercise in little groups where we describe ourselves, ask some questions of the others and then have to give a short speech to the class about one of the others in our group. I talk about a woman called Nicky who until recently used to work at the Radcliffe Science Library. During break, I discovery that she has a PhD in early reformation poetry and is well up on people like Erasmus. She also knows the work of Lisa Jardine (and husband Nick).
Another woman on the course - Katie - reminds me of someone and I can't think who. She is a Buddhist and is thinking of writing a biography of a Tibetan Lama. Maybe she was at the retreat I went on? We travelled down in the list together and I mention that I'm sure I recognise her and she says the same about me. Later it occurs to me that she actually reminds me of Belinda, the bass player of My Bloody Valentine - so maybe we haven't met previously
An interesting first session. Not yet sure how much I will really get out of it, but a good start.
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Recent pix of Bilinda on the MBV tour last year
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More how I remember her back in the 1980s
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