Smokestack Lightening

 

             

A Catholic Grammar School - on the wall in a Classroom is a Poster about History the design is

in the form of a list -the Romans at the top - then as it went down to the present day -a list of all the 

Kings of England with little descriptive notes next to each- a larger section of the design devoted to the 

'Catholic Martyrs' and the 'English Civil War' and on boring days when the weather was bad outdoors

We sat in this room under the supervision of a Teacher who wore a Jacket with patches sewn onto the elbows and practised cursive writing with leaky fountain Pens until a bell rang and everyone shuffled out to Their respective lessons . The Poster was very colourful and all the Kings had Crowns- inside of these  were Their dates-William the Conquerer 1066 and so on. It was a long list but somewhere in the middle was a blanked out section that said 'THE DARK AGES' and it was just a blank space and I wondered what that meant? why Dark? were there no Kings? was there no Sun ? but there was nothing

no explanation no History it was just a blank Space. So We learned how to conjugate Latin and learned about the funny little hat on the 'E' of the verb "Être" in French but We never learned about 

the 'Dark Ages' which were of course the breakup of the Roman Empire and the consequences

for History and happily in our ignorance We scratched away with our fountain Pens learning nothing.