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!)

We once did a whole school production of 'Joseph & the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat' and as a result, I know pretty much all the lyrics, but it's useless knowledge because I can't sing to save my life.

"Red and yellow and green and brown
and scarlet and black and ochre and peach
and ruby and olive and violet and fawn ...

Every single hymn we ever sang (we had Hymn Practice every Friday morning, and were then released from school to do Something Useful).

That, and the definition of allotropy. I scored 2% in Chemistry for knowing this.

Little piece of advice from my chemistry teacher:

Should you ever make a polystyrene model, then leave it on the lawn (thus acquiring a grass stain), you may be tempted to remove the grass stain using acetone - don’t do it! The acetone will cause the polystyrene to disintegrate.
Be warned

Adenine thymine cytosine and guanine

That geschwindigkeitsbegrenzung means speed limit in German

@ChiaraRimini Another fan of Ecce Romani. I think the silly stories and characters contained therein made them all the more memorable: Sextus the "puer molestus qui semper Corneliam vexat", and "abite, molesti!" (Go away, you pests!); the coachman being beaten by his master for allowing the coach to end up in a ditch.

"The authority does not hold any responsibility for any item of property left by any person on these premises." At primary, I used to memorise notices around the school, even though I didn't understand all of them. Nobody was allowed out to play until the class was lined up perfectly and silently. In the boredom of this, I used to study the instructions on fire extinguishers.

I also memorised the instructions for an experiment to test each other's directional hearing. We'd been given the worksheet for it, but nearly didn't get to do the experiment, because of the bad behaviour of a few. I spent several days stewing on it, wondering if we were going to do it!

Pi r squared sounds like area to me, if you need the circumference you just use pi d

We learnt french through the scheme that Eddie Izzard made famous: le singe est dans l’arbre.
It has yet to come in handy, despite numerous trips to France.
The correct German for ‘Sigrid is cleaning her bicycle’ also didn’t help on a drink-crazed trip to Nuremberg some years ago. Had we been taught the German for ‘caution:door opens directly onto a step’, it would avoided a very humiliating scene.

"Who put the colours in the rainbow, who put the salt into the sea? Who put the tail upon the monkey? Who made you and me? Who made snails and whales and tails? Who made rats and bats and cats? Who made hogs and dogs and frogs? Who made everything?"

Probably the wrong words but that's how I've sung it for years lol

I can do the times tables 6x whatever on my two hands. Don’t know what the ‘technique’ is called?

Off the education subject, I could probably do a Catholic Sunday mass with Our Father and Hail Mary thrown in, word perfect.

From primary school choir, the lyrics of songs such as Skye Boat Song, Linden Lea, and All in an April Evening, and from plays most of The Pied Piper of Hamelin, and chunks of Alice Through the Looking Glass.
Dozens of hymn lyrics from secondary school, and chunks of Shakespeare, especially Lear and Macbeth.

I loved geography so ox bow lakes, scarp and dip slopes, the spring line, that's all trendy again now with the Ordnance Survey quiz books of course. And I'm a whizz on who married whom in the Tudor court as our history mistress was an absolute fanatic!

I'm hopeless at the times tables though, I keep thinking I should learn them by singing them.

Bonjour, ca va?
Oui, ca va bien Merci et vous.

Quelle age et vous
Jai .... ans

Jhabite dans........

That's my recollection of French right there!

The contents of a cell:
Mitochondria
Golgi bodies
Nucleus
Ribosomes
Villi?
and some other stuff.

Latin verbs to carry. Mr Gibbon the Latin teacher terrified me
porto
portas
portat
portamus
portatis
portant

Music - take me home, country roads, to the plaaaaace I belonnnnng
West Virginia, county momma, take me home once again....

As a non catholic in a catholic secondary....the Hail Mary prayer.

Various themes from schools' TV programmes.

'Ticky ticky tox, it's maths in a box
As easy as one, two, threeeeeeee ...'

And the 'Watch' Nativity Special - 'Follow the star, follow the star ...'

Depreciation is an attempt to apportion the cost of an asset over its useful working life

aller, venir
arriver, partir
entrer, sortir
tourner, passer
monter, descendre
tomber, rester
naître, mourir
on checking I don't remember it as well as I thought I did

Küss mich

Leck mich doch

MMXIX

2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024

@Sillyscrabblegames
Did you watch the creepy animations with Roli & Rita too?

Not so much a thing, but I do remember a particular German lesson. The teacher was absent and had left a tape-recorded lesson for us.

So we dutifully listened, and did as our teacher's recorded voice instructed, and then suddenly that recorded voice told one of the pupils, by name, to stop talking.

And that pupil had indeed been talking.

I can read music quite well- I can't play an instrument, though, so it's of limited use!

French: He, André! Que‘est-ce c‘est? C‘est un fauteuil. I was always amazed at the removal men of Créteil who didn’t know the names of basic pieces of furniture.
Latin: Sextus cadit ex arbore. Amo amas amat amamus amatis amant.

And LOTS of hymns. The ink is black, the page is white... 🎶

‘A young lady never eats in the street’. (Headmistress at my snobby grammar school in the 1960s).

Even now, at aged over 60, I would never dream of eating whilst walking around or having a takeaway coffee ‘to go’. .

Jellyfish have four horseshoe shaped gonads.

How to decline 'bellum', which if you say it very fast goes:
Blum Blum blum (Bellum bellum bellum)
Blee blo blo (Belli bello bello)
Bla Bla bla (Bella Bella Bella)
Blorum blees blees (Bellorum bellis bellis)

Kings and Queens of England (Willy Willy Harry Steve Harry Dick John Harry 3 etc..)

Elements of the periodic table as sung by Tom Lehrer

All immensely useful...