Trips, Visits and Events
The Première London Trip
by Paddy Salmon
How do you count fifty-two 17 year olds in the middle of hordes of people? Have you ever woken up in the middle of the night and pondered this deeply philosophical question? Well, here is the answer. You make two of them form a bridge with their arms (they are the counters) and you compel them all to pass “underneath the bridge”. You’d be surprised how well this “primary school solution” works. They look a bit surprised to begin with but they do as you say and the numbers usually tally. That is the main thing.
We set off this year for a classic “London Trip” with 52 pupils from Première and five teachers including myself (and we returned with 52). Despite some cries of “Oh, London, we’ve been there; it’s so close...etc”, I have always justified the choice of London by saying that we do things and go places that no “ordinary” tourists think of. And London, I’m afraid, is London. Even pupils who think they know London quite well discover a lot they never dreamed of. This year was no exception.
One of the particularities of this trip was that we arrived at Waterloo and left from the brand new and stunningly beautiful terminus of St Pancras Station. In its time it was the largest covered building in the world and it is now one of the most striking “modern” buildings in London, thanks to the late Sir John Betjeman, the poet and enthusiast of Victorian architecture, who was instrumental in saving it. We were awe-struck.
The Mrs. Dalloway Walk
Another particularity was that we arrived on Sunday 11th November amidst all the Armistice commemorations. We started by doing the “Mrs Dalloway Walk”, which I had planned to accompany our studies of the novel by Virginia Woolf (which we are doing for the OIB this year), taking us through the heart of Westminster and the armistice parades. In the novel, Peter Walsh notices a parade in Whitehall after visiting Clarissa Dalloway at her home near Dean’s Walk, hard by Westminster Abbey - well, we noticed about seven! Luckily all of Whitehall and the Mall was closed to traffic, so we could appreciate the glories of St James’ Park, which was looking bright and autumnal. At the point where Clarissa meets Hugh Whitbread, we dived down into the bowels of Whitehall to visit the Churchill Cabinet War Rooms Museum, before continuing the walk via Buckingham Palace, Piccadilly, Bond Street and back to the West End.
London museums and theatres
A third particularity is that we enjoyed particularly good weather on our long walks around the capital; for the most part, it was mild and sunny. By day we divided into groups to visit Freud’s House, Keats’ House, Camden Lock, for a Backstage Tour of the National Theatre, The Imperial War Museum, the South Kensington museums and the Criminal Courts of the Old Bailey. Everybody participated in a workshop at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre and visited the Tate Modern afterwards. At night we attended “Momix” a beautifully colourful, surprising and sensual mixture of dance, acrobatics, mime and illusion; a thriller, “The Woman in Black”, where even our boys all screamed at the climactic moment where the ghost is revealed; and a spoof Hitchcock, “The Thirty-Nine Steps”, where 4 actors very wittily and slickly took on about a hundred characters as they threaded their way through the classic John Buchan tale, which was definitely played for laughs. There was even time for an ice cream and dancing in Leicester Square.
Friendly lodgings
We stayed as always at Miss Flannery’s “Blue Daws Hotel”, a homely hotel in elegant Sussex Gardens near Hyde Park and Paddington - it may not have any stars but I have been taking trips there for 20 years now and Miss Flannery seems like part of the family. “I just love young people,” she told us yet again “ at least you know they’re alive! I could never run an old people’s home!” And it’s true - she is very relaxed about teenagers, especially excited teenagers, and she has always been very helpful and tolerant, something you learn to appreciate when you have a very full schedule and a crowd of pupils to shepherd. She also runs by far the cheapest hotel in London, which is an added bonus. It is more like a very good youth hostel, but in the modern world there are very few like Miss Flannery, who never takes a holiday, refuses all computers and fax machines, offers good service and is not just out to make money. She sits in a tiny cubicle writing longhand in a big ledger! Dickens would have loved her too; long may she prosper!
And the group of pupils were delightful! We have always let them go off unsupervised for their meals in small groups and, if they show themselves responsible, we allow them time on the last day to explore London in groups. These students were very sociable, good-humoured and reliable - they were a pleasure to be with and we all got to know each other better. There were very few hiccups and on the last day they all seemed to have accomplished a great deal in their free time, enjoying knowing how to navigate around the capital and showing us that they could be trusted.
One of the requisites of the Trip was that the pupils leave their MP3s and other music at home. This meant that they were noticing more about them and interacting with each other and with London more than if they had been locked up with their headphones in their musical universes. There was a photography competition with several categories of which one is compulsory: “A London Face” - they had to interview a London resident and present a close-up photo with a short summary of the interview. This meant that at some point they HAD to engage with at least one Londoner. Other categories included “A London Landscape”, “A London Detail” and “A London Surprise”. The exhibition will be held in the Lycée CDI when all the entries have been gathered, and there will be prizes for the winners.
Many thanks to Monika and Anne for helping me to organise the trip, which was such a success, and many thanks too to the indefatigable teachers: Pat Short, Maryama Antoine, Ruairi McCann and Vicki, my wife. They walked, counted, consoled, chatted and looked after the pupils very professionally and sensitively. We all returned tired (11:30pm and classes the next day!), but exhilarated. As the great Dr Johnson said back in the eighteenth century, “When a man is tired of London, he is tired of Life”!
Dernière modification le 07-02-09 par
