School stuff that has stubbornly stuck in your head

[SlayingDragons]

Just that really - what has stuck in your head since you were at school?

• I remember a poem I had to learn in P5 for a Christmas concert. It was 30 years ago now but I can still recite it word for word. (It wasn’t short either!)

• I can recount every county in Ireland in alphabetical order.

• I can direct you to the train station in German just so long as it is straight ahead, take the first street on the right, second on the left and the station is on the right hand side.

(Useful stuff like how to work out the angles in a triangle so I can help my first year with her homework - not so much!)

The quadratic formula.
Collective nouns of almost every animal you can think of!

Susan was a little girl who isn't any more cos what she though was h2o was h2so4!

Selly Oak Hospital Can Always Handle The Odd Accident (that's SOHCAHTOA in Birmingham!)

Someone mentioned sex education. Ours was very limited and some of us, including me, were spectacularly naive. The film we watched was overly discreet and showed a couple going into the sea, and when they came back she was pregnant. It made me nervous about the sea for some time.

Most of the 'give me oil in my lamp keep me burning song', the 'he's got the whole world in his hands' song, the lord's prayer and my personal favourite Lord of the Dance! Those are from primary, I'm not even religious and remember very little from secondary!

@AquarianSquirrel same here! I sing it round the house sometimes (I’m not religious) and DH always responds at the end by saying “and if you believe that, you deserve everything that’s coming to you”

SohCahToa and BODMAS from school. Mr Farmer would be proud to know he’d had such a profound impact.

And slightly more randomly, I can still multiply matrices. Haven’t done so in anger since 1994, but the methodology is lodged in there.

Oh, and my Dad can still say “My postillion has been struck by lightning” in French. He is 82 and it was the name of his French textbook when he was 10! I looked up a postillion once, he’s the guiding coachman on a horse drawn carriage. Not sure of the relevance to 1940s Basingstoke.........

The song in french- quel e le date de ton anniversaire, all the way through the months in full (apologies for the spelling!) A surprising amount of french stays with me but particularly this catchy little ditty!

Ratonastick, I'm willing to bet that even in 1840s Basingstoke, there weren't that many occurrences of postillions being struck by lightning... (I did see a horsedrawn cart being taken up the road in 2019 Basingstoke earlier in the summer, which I noted because it was an unusual thing to see.)

@Ratonastick Multiplying matrices! It's a bummer. When somebody at school asked "what's the point of this?", my maths teacher was as stumped by the one in a children's book who was asked "Miss, what is the hardest sum in the world?"

Amo, Amas, Amat, amamus, amatis amant 1st year Latin over 40years ago

Gehe ich am besten zum Bahnhof bitte?

('How do I get to the station' in German)

Being shouted at and told to wash of my foundation.
So humiliating.

The flame colours of Copper, Potassium, Sodium and Lithium for GCSE chemistry. I remember feeling chuffed when the question came up in the exam.

Many songs from Primary School choir more than 30 years ago.

Green, purple, orange and red to save anyone looking it up!

SohCahToa...

We also had, "silly old harry, caught a herring, touring over Africa"

At primary they taught us the 'Hail holy Queen' in English then in Latin, and then promptly banned us from singing it to the David Essex tune.

Link for those who don't know it

Oh and that before starting a maths question with a diagram to, 'just take a moment and use your feminine intuition to think what the question could be"

The words to the hit Phil Collins song Another Day In Paradise, having sung it multiple times off a handwritten acetate on a portable projector in primary school assembly.

Je suis allé à la piscine (hehehe piss-een)

Hydrogen helium lithium beryllium boron carbon nitrogen oxygen flourine neon. Also Never Eat Shredded Wheat. And How I love to calculate pi 🤣