Re: College Tales...
:-)
Some years later then, I managed a "B" at O level, as did my friend Rhys. I think there were two other passes out of two classes of around 30. Not because the teacher was an RE bod, but because he was (fairly) Newly Qualified, had no-one else in the school to advise him and had a lot of children in the class who didn't really understand what Computer Studies was all about - in the 1980s it was one of those subjects that ambitious parents encouraged their children to do.
Rhys and I went on to do A level which I abjectly failed with an E. Rhys did better than that. I can't remember how much better but he went on to do CS or a related subject at university anyway while I did electronics, better matching my result in Physics.
The teacher spent a lot of time playing guitar, trying to write a MIDI sequencer for his QL (with the ROM board hanging out the back), extolling the virtues of his Atari ST and forgetting the date of our mock A-level, barging into the room ten minutes after the official start time brandishing one question for us, coming back 20 minutes later with another two. Rhys and I spent a lot of time as unofficial classroom assistants for his GCSE classes and lugging a BBC Micro up to the medical room - being the closest room with a phone extension - in order to log in to TTNS, which seemed to be full of abusive private school kids.
M.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
