Leading students from...

....St Mary's Twickenham, on a Catholic History Walk around Westminster. A pleasant and friendly group - I explained that, if it rained, we'd get wet, and no point in worrying too much about it, and there were  general grins and goodwill.  Anyone who has been through a British education over the past few years has been taught very little history, and they enjoy learning: eager faces, much scrabbling for notebooks and jotting-things-down at various points. They were reverent in Westminster Cathedral, especially  before the Blessed sacrament,  kept pace as worked our way down Ambrosden Aenue and Great Peter Street talking through the events of the through the 19th, 16th, and  11th centuries, and joined in a good discussion about words and meanings as we explored the origins of Horseferry Road and thought about that word fer, which gives us transfer,  prefer, refer...

Most of today's school pupils are allowed to learn very little poetry: when I quoted Wordsworth  On Westminster Bridge it didn't register so they couldn't respond with any opinion  when I asked whether he was any good as a poet (daffodils?).

It was a two-hour walk.Over a well-deserved cup of tea near Westminster Bridge we continued the discussion about words. I asked about the ubiquitous "like" which patters its way into every senetence, every phrase, with incessant repetition. One girl ventured an explanation which I think is useful "It's really about paraphrasing" she said  "You can't always repeat a conversation verbatim, so you say 'she was like'  instead of  'she said' because you don't want to claim you're being completely accurate." I think this is a fair point, and at least explains how the thing began. We must hope that , like, it will, like, eventually, like. move on....

I found these young people cheering. Some are going to World Youth Day. Two or three  plan to be RE teachers. Pottering home in the rain I felt a faint sense of comfort.