School Holidays

All the schools have now broken up for the summer and the weather seems to have taken a turn for the better, at least temporarily. Thinking back to my own schooldays, like a good many other people, you seem to remember that the summer holidays were just one long parade of sunshine, although experience since tells it otherwise. The summer holidays were when we went on the School and Sunday School trips to Teignmouth and Torquay and then went off on exotic breaks to the likes of Minehead. When I was fourteen however, I did get to go on the school holiday to Lugano in the south of Switzerland where, as might be expected, I went down with a very unpleasent stomach bug. The highlight of that trip was a day in Milan and a visit to Da Vinci's 'Last Supper'. I only wish I had been in a better state to apprieciate the masterpiece.

Today, of course things are a little more advanced when it comes to school trips abroad. One of my younger neices who attends a school in Hertfordshire, is currently in China and her sister will next year be heading for Brazil. Presumably, in a few years time trips of this type will indeed have become as unremarkable as were our trips to Teignmouth and Torquay in the 50s and 60s. What changes half a century can bring.