Repeat after me: Gotobedgotobedgotobed.

Failing that...

I've got a friend who is appalling at spelling. However he's one of the most articulate, intelligent, fascinatingly erudite people I know. His tutor at college (he's a mature student) told him he should be tested for Dyslexia but he's worried that if he gets tested and he's not Dyslexic, then that means he must be thick.

This is what I think.

If he gets tested and he is Dyslexic then surely that would be nice to know. Also it means he can hand in all his written work on Tape (Strike that, these days I mean CD) which is fairly bargainous to say the least. And if he isn't Dyslexic it just means that he didn't pay very much attention in English at school. That, however, doesn't make him any less intelligent. It just makes him once a child who was far more interested in Lego/Building den's/Star wars* than learning that 'I' comes before 'E' except after 'C'.

I mean, do you know when the Crimean War was? I'll tell you. It was 1853.

Do you know Florence Nightingale had a tortoise on her ward in hospital? That she kept an owl called Athena? That she died in 1910 aged 90?

No, neither did I, even though I was taught it in school. I know it as of yesterday purely because the boy had a homework project to find out about Florence so we had to look her up. You see, it's interesting now. Of course it is! Now I'm 32 and care about knowledge and learning and such like.

*Sigh.* I really think we should start school when we're about 25 and start to care. Before that we should be allowed an entire childhood of dicking about.



*Delete as appropriate.