The Dreamer.

I am the one on the right; winging as usual aged three and three quarters and my brother, on the left, is about 18 months. This was taken in Dublin - maybe the time I was sent there for my own good and that wonderful woman is our mother.

I wrote on here recently, about the birds in the garden and how the magpies teased a cat and the pigeons. I looked out again today and there was another magpie with a large piece of something, that it couldn't quite carry, so it pushed it towards a pigeon and the pigeon picked it up and walked away with it blaming the shaking of the morsel on the curse some Greek God that had cursed it with the lean forward it had to do with every step.

I don't know what the pigeon had done, in his creation, for his creator to give it that affliction. A bit like the monkey with a tail stuck to its posterior – what did it do to get like that?

When the pigeon started to chomp on whatever food it was, the magpie could see that it was a bit smaller and swooped over and flew away with it as the little babies still need feeding and protecting even though it is July.

Looking at this reminded me of the time I took the eleven plus at school. It was called that because it was a way of separating children into those that went to grammar school and those that went to a secondary modern.

The idea was the grammar school pupils would be expected to have a better education than the secondary modern ones and get jobs in offices or apprenticeships and the secondary moderns ones would have to get jobs in shops, factories or building sites.
In any case the secondary modern pupils would probably misbehave and disturb the classes.

There has always been an argument that it was a bit young for a life changing examination and 11+ (which is how it is notated – I put it that way because I know what's coming up) forgetting that you could always take the exam again as 12+, 13+ and even 14+.

Also there were entry exams for Art School, Technical School and Commercial School.

There was plenty of opportunity but not for me.
I didn't like school much and every time I went I felt out of place. For one thing I suffered with Conjunctivitis and lost a lot of time from school because of it. What was the point of going to school if I couldn't see.
We would go back to Ireland a lot of the times and one time the doctor told my mother to take us back to Dublin for the air. I was quite ill that time and later it was felt that I had had an attack of tuberculosis.

This came out after a Heaf test ** when it was decided that because of a shadow on one of my lungs, I didn't need the vaccine as I had fought it off without the need for it. 
This might have been inherited as TB or consumption was rife in Dublin with bodies dropping like flies in the streets at the start of the 20th century.

The time came for my 11+ examination and I spent the whole time looking through the window. The teacher who was supervising this told my mother that I did two things: one was look out the window and the other was write my name at the top of the paper and nothing else.

Well I'm here to tell you, as I know you have been thinking about this, that the window was quite high and you would need to be six feet six to see through it and I don't think they allow names at the top of exam papers.

But when I went to secondary school we were put into an annex and I could see through the window quite easily. I had a wonderful view of a brick wall and the tarmac of the playground.

I think this gave me practice for the rest of my life as I have always day dreamed and fantasised. I always loved the movies and when I was at the junior school – where I took the exam – I would pretend that all the kids at school were actors and we were waiting to be called to go and be in the film. 
I did not use the word act or anything else I would go off and be in the film. 
I would ask to go to the lavatory and as I walked across the playground I would be in another world – the world I am still in right now.

** The Heaf test, a diagnostic skin test, was long performed to determine whether or not children had been exposed to tuberculosis infection. The test was named after F. R. G. Heaf.