I remember when she was about three, she would sit on the sofa holding the newspaper as wide as her little arms would allow - it was a broadsheet - pretending to read it just like her parents did (not that we pretended, you understand). Her ability to start reading for herself wasn't far behind and she grew up loving books and reading. She came home from Primary School one day a little indignant and upset because she and her teacher had disagreed in class about the spelling of caterpillar - the teacher had misspelled it but had insisted that she was right and my daughter (who spelled it correctly) was wrong. I think a discreet apology was offered next day.
Talking of schools, I must regale you with a few choice tales from the chalkface. I taught English and Drama in a north London comprehensive school for a number of years and as a form teacher I was accustomed to receiving notes from parents about their offspring, explaining their absence from school or requesting their exemption from certain activities. These notes arrived in a variety of guises: some were typed, some were written in florid script, some were scrawled, some came on headed notepaper, some were scented, some were laboriously spelled out in capital letters, many were in sealed envelopes, others were hastily scribbled on whatever was to hand - the back of an old envelope, a square cut out of a cereal packet, a page torn from an exercise book. Some were written by the children themselves (excusable if their parents were illiterate or non-English speaking). Occasionally the notes were very funny. I have a soft spot in my memory banks for these three:
Dear Mr Rowland, Tiffany is not to have a shower after games this week as she is suffering from mildew.
Dear Sir, would you be so kind to allow Oswald to be excused the exam today. He fell downstairs last night and has a slight brain damage.
Your honor. Humblest apologies for my daughter Samina's absence from school last week. She attended her sister's wedding and missed her plane home.
Paper - How It Was Made/The Tools Of The Trade
Moving on. Nowadays, those of us who use paper to write or print on are accustomed to A4 pads or reams (A4 being 210 x 297cm or 8.21 x 11.7in for the Imperialists among you). A4 is the most commonly used size in the civilised world - the exception being the New World (USA, Canada and central America) where they use Letter and Legal sizes.It wasn't always so in the Old World actually. The convergence on A4 standard came in the 19th century. Before that foolscap was widely used (along with folio and quarto); foolscap being slightly wider and considerably longer than A4 (at 200 x 330cm or 8.5 x 13.5in). What you really want to know is: Why was it called foolscap?
The answer appears to be: Because of the watermark (commonly a depiction of a jester's cap with bells) built into the paper and barely visible when dry to prove that it was genuine top quality paper stock and not some cheap substitute. I thought it was a pre-urban myth, but apparently not. The foolscap watermark is recorded as early as the 15th century and was made by pressing a mold onto not-yet-dry paper so as to almost imperceptibly vary the thickness and thus allow more light through.
And so to my own sic note -
Nota Bene
To whom it should be concerning
(and if not, why not, really?):
This recycled paper is full of old news.
You'd think we'd pulped the truth
in mulching up those inky pages,
but as I write of atrocities anew
by post-cataclysmic candlelight
faint headlines reveal themselves
like watermarks within the sheet.
I read of blonde ambition,
over-weening pride, lies and deception,
a people shepherded to a precipice.
All this print was created
in an analog age, predating micro this
and digital that, way before the waging
of cyber-wars, the death of the web
and the runaway greenhouse effect;
and yet its portentous message
is as relevant now as it ever was
for the patterns of the human heart
are timeless until the last stops beating.
I append to this account
my lasting will and testament:
To my son, my shoes - fill them well.
To my daughter, my blues - sing proudly.
Remember how lovely trees were
before they were all felled.
Dream of cool breezes.
Please excuse the brevity and thanks for reading, S ;-) Email ThisBlogThis!Share to TwitterShare to Facebook
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