TERM 2 The birth of the 1980s - Blake’s 7, Blondie and battles in space

Great Space Battles Three mighty empires take their first steps into outer space

Copy Writing

& Exercises

Wednesday March 12th, 1980

< Moses and the Pharaoh

To be continued…

At the back of English 2, if you turn the book upside down and read it back to front, you come across a few pages of written exercises. I wasn’t going to upload these - generally I don’t think I will in future books - but a couple of them caught my eye, and they might be interesting if you’re into the more meat-and- potatoes side of what we got up to at school back then. Eventually, we would have dedicated books for English Exercises, but I’m assuming at this point we didn’t. Rockall, The Lonely Rock Wednesday March 12th 1980 This one tells me the date I started writing in the book - almost a full week before Ceremonies (which is on the first page if you read the book the right way round), and the day after writing War of the Worlds in English 1 (telling me I must have written Supersilver the same day). It’s a piece of copy writing, which means we had to copy out a piece of someone else’s writing. Something we already did rather a lot of, but here the emphasis is on correct spelling and punctuation. I think the rules must have been that we write it out twice with no mistakes, and that if we thought we’d made a mistake, we should start again. This obviously happened twice, as you can see from the abandoned passages in brackets. I wonder if I actually noticed that I’d fallen into the trap of writing ‘Rockfall’ instead of ‘Rockall’ the first time round? If I did, I conveniently ignored it. And that orange tick at the end, if it is a tick, means the teacher ignored the missing comma that should have been after ‘ocean’. Down The Stream The Swans All Glide Wednesday April 16th 1980 I’d recognise this anywhere as Spike Milligan. I was a huge fan of Silly Verse for Kids - my Dad had a copy which he passed on to me and it inspired the first poem I ever wrote, age 5 - so it’s almost possible I decided to write this out myself. But the punctuation tells me this was definitely picked by an educational expert as a great way of introducing kids to the idea of colons and semi-colons. Not that I’m too great at punctuation as an adult, but nor is Spike if you want to be pedantic. Night Monday April 21st 1980 First stanza of a poem from Songs of Innocence by William Blake. Looks like I took great care over this one, but not as much care as Blake did. Reynard’s Last Run Wednesday June 11th 1980 Extract from a poem by John Masefield. Incredible writing. But I’m more concerned with the fact that, at the end of it, I wrote “By Me and Mr Nobody”. I can’t be sure, but I think this might have been the spark that set me off writing about a character called Mr Nobody in Topic 3. Untitled Exercise Unknown date, 1980 The last exercise in this book. Looks like I’ve been given ten words and asked to come up with ten sentences, each featuring one of those words. What’s interesting is, apart from the last one, they look like they’re supposed to be true statements. And if that’s the case, then: • I went to see a dentist later that day, which might mean I wrote it in September 1980, around the same time as Scaredy Cat Goes to the Dentist’s (though to be honest, the subtleties of the handwriting make it look more like June or July) • I wrote a poem for something called the Junior Gazette. I’ve no memory of this at all, but it’s possible we did make some kind of magazine at some point. It would have been a one off if so • I wore glasses. I do remember getting my first eye tests around this time and I definitely got my first pair while I was at Fairburn, though I didn’t really start wearing them full time till I was much older, and to be honest I’d forgotten I started wearing them so young. I don’t have any photos of me in glasses from back then, but it might make sense of why I’m wearing them in this picture

Captain Carnivore Gary Shepherd is hunted down by a deadly flying meteor

Super Jesus A special pin-up of your favourite Nazarene webslinger

Optical Illusion Time Amazing visual tricks that will boggle your mind!

Grobschnitt’s Page Meet Grobschnitt, the dome-headed Harbinger of Mischief

Apeth (from Ota Sbees) Ritern ov thu perpal geriller

Exploring the Underworld Eight boys go exploring in a dangerous cave

TERM 3 1980 continues with the embassy siege and The Empire Strikes Back