At sixes and sevens over fives

YOU know how sometimes you get reminded of something you'd completely forgotten? Happened to me not long ago when an old friend mentioned our school's "fives court".

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The memories came flooding back!

Er, no, actually, they didn't; my only recollection of this neglected corner of the school estate was during the final days of the summer term before it was due to reopen as a comprehensive in the autumn.

Piles of textbooks, some ancient, some less so, had been neatly stacked there by the caretaker. As they were exposed to the elements, they were presumably fated to be incinerated as surplus to the new regime's requirements.

Now I remembered how I'd liberated a complete set of the French textbooks we'd been using, including the more advanced ones we'd not got onto yet. I still have them somewhere. If anyone needs to know how to speak and write grammatically-perfect French as she was parlayed in about 1950, I'll sort you.