MONO MONDAY - EXPLORE

It's not often I catch the Penhill bus but I needed to get to the other side of the town as I am helping some friends out by looking after their three young daughters while they finish their shopping and spend some time together - so after posting a couple of last-minute parcels, I then had to do some exploring to find the right bus stop.  Quite appropriate that I was on a bus called "Lord of the I(s)les"!!

I had taken a random photograph of the bus and passengers about to alight to fit in with the Mono Monday challenge but that changed when I got off the bus and realised that I could see the driveway down to where I used to go to school, so I decided to explore.  

I couldn't get right on to the site because there were some large gates that were locked, so I stopped and spoke to a young man who was working there.

When I attended Headlands almost sixty years ago, it was one of only two Grammar schools in the town, and there was great rivalry between us. It seems strange to see houses now built on the school site and the young man  and I chatted about the difference between schools today and schools as they were sixty years ago.  Interestingly, he said that he felt there was no respect for teachers in schools today but he was sure the teachers were much stricter in my day and I said I totally agreed with him.

When I asked him what school he had attended, he told me he went to Nova Hreod.  I mentioned that my granddaughter had also attended that school and was amazed, when I told him her name is Charlotte, to hear that they had been in the same tutor group. What a coincidence and a very pleasant encounter!

So here is the result of my exploration into the past and my Blip for the Mono Monday challenge is a photograph of Joe - he is much more interesting than a bus, but I have put that photograph in as an extra.  I wonder if Charlotte will remember him?

Adults follow paths.
Children explore.
Adults are content to walk the same way,
hundreds of times, or thousands;
perhaps it never occurs to adults
to step off the paths,
to creep beneath rhododendrons,
to find the spaces between fences.
Neil Gaiman
The Ocean at the End of the Lane