maps. I was less clueless about the basics of English, though I didn’t realise at the time that I was assuming that English grammar was the same as t… - John Cleese

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maps. I was less clueless about the basics of English, though I didn’t realise at the time that I was assuming that English grammar was the same as the Latin grammar I had been taught so well. (I remember that the first week I was there, a boy asked me during prep whether ager was second or third declension and I was able to tell him without pausing for thought that ager — a field — was second declension, so it went like annus, but that it dropped the “e,” as opposed to agger — a rampart — which was third declension, and retained the “e.” “My God,” I thought as he walked away, “Captain Lancaster did a good job.” My next thought was, “Lucky the boy didn’t ask me what a rampart was.…”) But given that I was teaching ten-year-olds, Geoffrey Tolson’s advice to “stay a page ahead” seemed perfectly sound. So I had no reason to believe, as I strode purposefully into the classroom to teach Form III their first history