ABSTRACT
When I was a little girl at primary school, my headteacher called me a ‘plodder’. Many years later I still remembered this designation and I didn't like it very much. A plodder is somebody who gets there in the end, is terribly slow—has no flair, genius or creativity. A snail or a tortoise. I wanted instead to race like the wind, to soar like a bird. When I was at grammar school, I learnt some humiliating lessons, quickly. I learnt that my parents didn't ‘know’ any of the things that they were supposed to know and that there was right knowing and wrong-knowing. I learnt that if I opened my mouth to relate a piece of knowledge from home, I was ridiculed: we read the wrong kind of newspaper, listened to the wrong kind of music. I also learnt very quickly that I had to work hard—I got my mother to test me on whatever subject until I could recite my notes in a word-perfect way. I passed all my ‘O’ levels this way, but still thought that I lacked ‘brains’, especially in relation to the boys, who I saw as a different species. It never occurred to me to think that actually I had learnt some very valuable things that helped me to survive in that context. I had learnt how to succeed, what the rules were, when to open my mouth and when it was better to say nothing.
