Tuesday 13 May 2008
Near misses with greatness
In a lesson today featuring the present perfect, the question came up "Have you ever met anyone famous?" While I didn't bore my students with old war stories, I thought I might risk boring you, dear readers, as you can escape at the click of a mouse, rather than having to wait politely for the end of the lesson. Actually, I haven't met anyone really famous, but I've had a handful of near misses - the Queen drove past me at high speed when I was a primary school student during her Silver Jubilee year in 1977; while inter-railing around Europe I saw Yasser Arafat in the distance in Vienna, and while on a sightseeing tour to Philadelphia, I swear I saw the Dalai Lama go in to Independence Hall ahead of me. My greatest near miss, though, was while covering the visit of then President Bill Clinton who was opening a Sherwood, Arkansas, school named after him in 1994. While waiting for the Secret Service to allow us out of the school campus I nipped out for a quick cigarette (an evil habit that I have since renounced). When I retook my seat at the back of the auditorium, my editor said, "Where have you been? The President and Hillary just swung by and shook my hand." Dang. Another near miss.
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5 comments:
old age must be getting a grip and warping your memory... or, since i am a bit older then perhaps it is my memory which is warped.
my recollection of philadelphia involves a cracking hangover (as most of those trips did), a visit to the liberty bell from where we saw the dalai lama enter liberty hall (we had wondered what all the secret service agents were doing as we passed on our way to the liberty bell) and then the pub.
i don't think we were all that impressed with the liberty bell because it had a whopping great crack down it. the pub was good though.
Your version is more accurate. Was that the pub where Henning explained his name meant Henry in German, and so the American said, "OK, I'll call you Hank"?
no, i believe that the henning/henry/hank conversation took place in baltimore, a city so boring that we didn't bother looking for a single sight to see after spending almost 5 hours getting there.
it wasn't all bad, the pub did make the most potent australian kamikazes of the whole lh adventure.
my recollection is a tad fuzzy but i seem to remember that we left the pub once, quite late on, to run to a mall down the road for a souvenir. i think we ended up with a security escort, no souvenir for you, wet trainers and a pair of extremely gay white maryland sweat pants for me.
the one thing i always hated about baltimore was all the damned yuppies =)
Yeah, but Baltimore was fairly `armless, er, much like Jesus in LH.
okay, you win mr. schaeffer! =)
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