History As Taught in School Was Horribly Boring!

History at school was all about the Stone Age...mostly about how Stone Age men sloped about carrying dinosaur bones to bonk each other over the head...and don't bother to point out that's all wrong...when you are small, you swallow practically everything you're told. Either the teacher honestly didn't know...or maybe she knew and didn't care. It kept us quiet until Secondary school anyway when history leapt forward to Henry V111...and now it was time to begin learning dates.

It seemed to be all that mattered actually...learning dates by rote so when your name was called you could stand up and recite a long list of totally meaningless numbers. As it was Henry V111 we also had to remember which wife he kept the longest and which ones he had beheaded...we were never told the reasons why...just that he grew fatter and fatter and more and more mean.

I would have liked to know what he ate and if he wore underpants and did he wear his crown all day...

And when the women had babies, how did they breast feed them when their frocks were so tight across their bosoms and did the men really have such huge willies they had to put them into those enormous cod-pieces...

I didn't ask...would have rather stuck pins in my eyes or played an extra game of hockey than ask a male teacher questions like that...

So we all sort of blundered along and decided history was horribly boring while Mr Owens lent against the radiator and read the Daily Mirror...he smoked a pipe so always kept the bottom bit of the window open, sending an icy draught round our feet.

It wasn't until I had the time...time to read exhaustively and spend hours in libraries...time to explore ancient places and really take an interest in whatever the guide was saying and learnt they loved it if you asked questions...it wasn't until then that history began to take it's hold on me.

Didn't much matter what it was...from discovering those who sailed on the Mayflower and the ships who came after her deliberately infected the Native Americans with smallpox...and dug up their graves to steal the corn buried there...to the fascinating fact that prostitutes in the 1500/1600's shaved their pubic hair off to prevent lice and replaced that hair with a sort of pubic wig called a Murkin.

Books and the internet...talking to people...listening to the neighbours...and checking and rechecking the facts.

After a while I began to be slightly more selective and now I tend to concentrate on what is generally coined the Middle Ages...

Some of the articles I write on here pertain only to the west of Ireland...I remember someone on a social net- working site being very cross because I once wrote about the electricity being connected here in the '60's...he said it was the 1940's...but he'd lived in Wicklow you see...on the other side of the country. Things are done differently here in the west...

I did feel hesitant you know, about writing on here...but I'd be pretty useless at advice and I can never remember a joke...then it dawned on me that maybe you'd quite like to read something which is unconnected to illness and disability.

So I write about what I know, whether that is the Faeire or putting down bacon on cabbage...or putting horseshoes on doors upside down so that witches can't use them as boats...it's my way of contributing to the vast amount of help and the kindnesses you all show...

By the way...should you quite fancy the idea of wearing a Murkin...even if you aren't infested with pubic lice...they are apparently all the fashion among some. Google them and you'll see...but not for those easily offended!