ALL this recent stuff about sleazy bankers has put me in a
quandary. Much as I would like to take the moral high ground (I am
told the air is lovely, and the view excellent), I am aware of
spending most of my time far lower down the ethical slopes. If I am
not exactly in the Slough of Despond, then I am certainly in the
Swamp of Dodginess, a place where, sometimes, I tell the Tesco
checkout boy he's undercharged me, and sometimes give up my seat
for an old lady (although these days, by the time I've worked out
which of us is older, she has usually got off the train).
Morally speaking, then, the only difference between me and Bob
Diamond is that I have less money to be immoral with. This is a
very good thing, because, frankly, I find it remarkable that there
isn't more wrongdoing in banks.
I have only to look at the RBS girl whiffling her way through a
pile of £20 notes, neatly arranging them all with the Queen's head
facing the same way, and then putting them away in a drawer, to
marvel at her moral rectitude. I could not file away all those
lovely notes without at least a pang of regret and a moment's wild
surmise about tucking a couple in my bra - although, because I am
as cowardly as I am innumerate, I know I could never pull it off
(the scam, not the bra).
THE truth is that I have often been grateful for a bit of
ethical elasticity in my bank managers and other financial advisers
- like the lovely man running my undergraduate branch of Lloyds,
who lapped up the waffle I offered him as my reasons for needing a
bigger overdraft, and duly increased my limit far beyond what was
sensible.
We had a rewarding relationship, he and I, until, one day, I
rang to speak to him, and they told me he was in prison for
falsifying customers' accounts. I really liked him.
Then there was my not-quite-straight - but kind - mortgage
adviser, many years ago. He knew that I needed to borrow a great
deal of money, and he wangled it, with a bit of a tweaking here and
some virtuoso pencil-sucking there, and I can't tell you how
thankful I was, and how impressed by his manipulation of (not
disregard for, mind) those annoying little rules that lenders put
in place to prevent you overstretching yourself.
The fact that the loans he organised very nearly bankrupted me
is neither here nor there - he was sweet.
SO I have no right to come over all righteous about bankers. The
people who can are those miraculous folk who are "good" with money:
the kind who run their accounts with bloodhound accuracy, and
consider overdrafts the work of the Devil.
Sadly, I am not like them. In my book, money is for spending,
for buying experiences today which I might be too old or too ill to
enjoy tomorrow.
I don't regret any of our long family holidays, or the many
extra-curricular courses the children have done, even if they
(courses and children) have left me feeling poor. In global terms,
having an education, a roof over my head, and enough to eat makes
me rich.
Besides, the great thing about money is that you can always
work, and get it back again. Provided, of course, you don't let a
multi-millionaire bank executive anywhere near it.
I SEE that children are to be taught formal grammar again, with
all those peculiar sentences that involve children called Michael
and Jane whose sole purpose in life appears to be tripping you up
with your (you're?) apostrophes.
Predictably, Michael Gove's proposals have been pilloried by the
teaching establishment; and, even as a grammar freak, I am not sure
how useful it is to be able to recognise a subordinate clause; but
I am glad about the return of grammar, because, in my experience,
children love it.
More specifically, they love feeling expert about it. Even
primary-age pupils like to be told why "He invited my husband and I
to dinner" is wrong: it makes them feel clever and grown up to be
in on a secret that so many adults clearly do not share.
PART of my job as a teacher of Latin is to help pupils create
grammar files of their own. Far from objecting to having to write
out endless tables of nouns, or to the fact that every word in
Latin has dozens of different endings, the students genuinely seem
to enjoy getting everything down in an orderly format. They like
having all the information laid out clearly so that they can use it
to translate into, or out of, the language.
Sometimes, (whisper it) they express the wish to be taught more
formal grammar in French or German rather than have to guess their
way through set phrases whose component parts are a mystery to
them.
Indeed, on the odd occasion I teach a bit of French the Latin
way - with tables of verbs, etc. - the response is always positive.
At last, the core of the language is being revealed and
explained.
BUT why stop there? Nothing is more off-putting in any subject
than the feeling you are flailing about on the surface of a deep
lake filled with unknowns, which is currently the case with much
modern-language learning. If we increased old-fashioned grammar
learning in these classes - and, yes, I do mean rote learning and
repetition - we might do something to reverse the scandalous
decline in the number who choose to study languages at GCSE and
beyond.
Oenone Williams lives in Salisbury with her five children
and a husband who sings in the cathedral choir.