up with skool

The oddest gig of my professional life to date: I spent most of the day in the windowless basement of the Hilton Mews hotel in Mayfair helping to choose the books which will be introduced into the National Curriculum at some stage as examples of literary non-fiction. I talked too much, but some of it was sense. The other people — Andrew O’Hagan. Ian Jack, and Alan Taylor, a third Scots writer whom I had only heard of, never read, were hugely distinguished.

When I got out, I was standing on the steps of the Royal Academy, waiting for the Aztecs, when the phone rang. My dear sweet wonderful daughter had just won the school’s prize in a creative writing contest, which is really pretty wonderful, when I think that it was open to everyone, including the sixth form, and she is only twelve.

The Aztecs are every bit as gruesome as everyone says. But even the flint sacrificial knives cannot diminish my fatherly pride. I scuttled home quick as might be to congratulate her in person.

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One Response to up with skool

  1. Anonymous says:

    congrats to the prodigy!

    The proud father must have gone through the Aztecs so fast that it made their weapons of personal desctruction melt.

    Kinda like Steve Martin roller-skating through that LA museum in L.A. Story

    argh

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