Don't know much about history ....

or English for all that matter!

I came across some of my high school reports at the weekend and what giggleage they provided.

I've always said it's better to laugh at yourself before anyone else does it for you. With that in mind, I've just handed them out to colleagues. One of them asked if it was parchment they were written on. These whippersnappers we have working here really hit where it hurts - right in the birth certificate.

Hurtling right back to 1981, my parents were told by my geography teacher that I had coped well with the course and had a good understanding of the basics of map reading. Try telling that to my husband who almost divorced me on our recent trip to Australia.

We picked up the hire car, he jumped in the driver's seat, took the wheel and gave me the map. How we got from A to B on the first leg of our journey, God only knows but it had absolutely nothing to do with my so-called 'map reading basics.' When we should have been going straight on, I was demanding we go left. When we should have being going up hill, I was taking us down dale.

It was only when we came close to throttling eachother over the gearstick that all became clear. Upon closer inspection of our printed piece of highways and freeways of Melbourne east, we discovered the roads we were on hadn't even been crafted into any such piece of printed literature. The map we were using had been, how shall I say ..... "acquired" by my father-in-law who was also Down Under at the same time as us. He had picked it up from a local scrapyard which begs the question..... why was it in the scrapyard in the first place???? ARRGGHH!

Going back to the school reports, one other colleague gave a chuckle at the times I had been called a "quiet and pleasant member of the class". Okay, pleasant I most definitely am but I don't think many will agree with the quiet element. And comments from my English teacher in 1982 suggested I develop a more mature style of writing and that I should read things more accurately.

I wonder if our editor-in-chief knows how rubbish I am?!