Dreadfully Dull Dreary Days

Well, isn't that a mouthful?

Alliteration is most likely a minor annoyance of young teenage lives. Admittedly, it never was the highlight of my college years. In hindsight however, I smile at the days where I attended college. Surprisingly, snickering at the back of the room as Holly and I mocked poems we had not yet learnt to appreciate, is not the reason I think fondly of 'the alliteration days'. My English Literature teacher, Vicki did. I always thought her career choice was very apt, she looked practically created for literature. Like she'd lifted herself from the pages of a novel to enter the Earthly world and spread the literary love.

I always considered the woman to be unusually tall and worryingly thin. Vicki looked utterly breakable, shy and awkward like a little church mouse. That was, until inappropriately romantic sighs would escape her thin lips with genuine passion for the poets of the Romantic era. Not yet mature enough or willing to admit we felt the same love, the class would often erupt into fits of hilarity. Vicki was quick to redden in the face and unable to hide behind her pixie cropped hair, she scribbled into her eco friendly recycled notepads with gusto.

Spurred on by apathetic teens, I too rolled my eyes at how Vicki seemed to be living a decade behind everyone else. I'd never seen her tap away at a computer, but simply hold her notebook to her bony chest. Secretly, I was in love. She portrayed everything I thought would make a beautifully talented writer. Or at the very least a lead character in a book that boasted love, passion and literature. She had her head in the clouds, encouraged by a passion that no amount of teasing could kill. I still imagine her now, living in a quaint but cosy one bedroom flat, surrounded by dusty yellowing books that spill out onto the floors in messy piles. Her tiny kitchenette is filled with intense aromas as she cooks brilliantly for herself before immersing herself in tales written by Oscar Wilde.

I wish I was Vicki.
And if I could see her again, I'd like to tell her that I too, sigh romantically over the great Romantics.
I'd like to dedicate a little rhyme and a little alliteration to her from one of her loved poets.
I hope you enjoy it as much as I hope Vicki would =)

"I come from haunts of coot and hern,
I make a sudden sally
And sparkle out among the fern,
To bicker down a valley.

By thirty hills I hurry down
Or slip between the ridges,
By twenty thorps, a little town,
And half a hundred bridges.

Till last by Philip's farm I flow
To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on for ever.

I chatter over stony ways,
In little sharps and trebles,
I bubble into eddying bays,
I babble on the pebbles.

With many a curve my banks I fret
By many a field and fallow
And many a fairy foreland set
With willow-weed and mallow.

I chatter, chatter, as I flow
To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go
But I go on for ever"

From 'The Brook' by Alfred Lord Tennyson.

Do you have any fond memories of teachers that you wish to share?
Or about school in general for that matter!
Let me know =)

Laura-Jayne