Hello, hello everyone, good morning or good afternoon, or whatever it is, wherever you are.

This is episode 118 of the Victor Prep Vocabulary Podcast, and to get us started today, I

found a poem, and I didn't know this one before yesterday, I think, and it's a more modern

poem by Carol Ann Duffy, and it's called, In Mrs. Tilsha's Class, and I don't know why,

but I read it, and I got a sort of nostalgic feeling from it, and it seemed to touch me

somewhat, and I just felt, okay, this is the one I have to read. So yes, this is Carol

Ann Duffy, In Mrs. Tilsha's Class. You could travel up the blue Nile with your finger, tracing

the root while Mrs. Tilsha chanted the scenery, Tana, Ethiopia, Cartoum, Aswan, that for an

hour, then a skittle of milk, and the chalky pyramids rubbed into dust, a window opened

with a long pole, the laugh of a bell swung by a running child, this was better than home,

and throwing books, the classroom glowed like a sweet shop, sugar paper, coloured shapes,

gradient-hindly faded, like the faint uneasy smudge of a mistake. Mrs. Tilsha loved you,

some mornings you found she'd left a good gold star by your name, the scent of a pencil

slowly, carefully shaved, as Islephone's nonsense heard from another form. Over the

Easter term, the inky tadpoles changed from commas into exclamation marks, three frogs

hopped in the playground, freed by a dunce, followed by a line of kids jumping and croaking

away from the lynch queue. A rough boy told you how you were born, you kicked him, but stared

at your parents, appalled when you got back home. That feverish July, the air tasted

of electricity, a tangible alarm made you always untidy, hot, fractious under the heavy

sexy sky. You asked her how you were born, and Mrs. Tilsha smiled, then turned away.

Thoughts were handed out, you ran through the gates, impatient to be grown, as the

skies split open into a thunderstorm.

...