Archive for June, 2017


Fishing with Frank

I fished yesterday evening with Frank Huisman who is one of our graduating students this year. We teachers may not be supposed to have favourites, but of course we do, and Frank is not only one of mine but of pretty much all of his other teachers as far as I can tell.

One of the reasons we like him so much is that he´s very smart. He always gets A grades in his exams and, naturally, we teachers like to take credit for our input. The truth is he would probably have gotten the same grade if he had been taught by a cardboard cut out of mickey mouse. Continue reading

One for the yearbook

Around this time every year the school yearbook is put together and someone comes knocking at my door asking for my contribution. My area is Science Education and so the that will always be the focus. When it was done I sent a copy to my daughter Pippa who looked over it and said that it was, in her view, one of the best things I had written. She told me to post it on the blog and so, after giving it a little thought, I have decided to do so. Funnily enough I wrote this in the morning and in the afternoon the news came out about Trump pulling out of the Paris climate agreement. It seems to make it all the more pertinent. Anyway, here it is if you are interested……… Continue reading

On my local stretch of river you can choose what kind of water you fish. There are broad shallow pools, there are riffles and reaches where the river twists and turns, where it speeds up or it slows down. And you can find fish in much of this water if you look closely. To the gypsy barbel the deeper pools with reasonable currents offer prime real estate and the shallow sills where the river empties into them can be relied on to produce a few fish which hold in the shallows but, if they are disturbed, that can reverse effortlessly into the relative safety of the deeper water. Continue reading