Outside the Wall
I’m not sure when or where I first learnt the word ‘archipelago’, but it was probably in Geography at school. And those wonderful to say syllables would have tumbled from the lips of one of my teachers in a way that made me know that there were no archipelagos in Somerset, and that the chances of me ever seeing one were slim. Geography was an introduction to a world more exotic than the one I knew of, and one more distant than any I ever expected to explore. I only really remember three geography teachers. Mr Goldsmith, who was just a wee bit too young and fashionable for the rest of the staff at the former Grammar School. A female teacher whose name escapes me, but I suspected was really a PE teacher masquerading as a geographer; her tendency to wear track suits to class and her unfailing habit of reading her notes to us from an old black A4 clip file, reinforced my opinion that she was an imposter. And finally there was Mr. George Rodgers, wh...