Mappa Mundi...

...Geography and I have never been close. As an academic discipline to be studied at school, well quite frankly I could not see the point.

One knew where France began, one had a generalised sense of Europe sufficient for the purpose and as for the rest it was all pretty plain sailing: Japan somewhere above Australia, Russia fast behind the Iron Curtain with all its allied satellites, China where she was - very east, India quite obvious on any map, Canada the home of cousins, Africa below Europe, America due west and South America well south. That sort of thing. Should the time come one needed more precise information then a good guide book would do the necessary trick.

All the natural features of these foreign places were of course terribly relevant to those who lived there, but not of great interest to oneself from any purely physical perspective. Mountains, lakes, rivers, plains - terrific stuff in their own right, but really only in any way of significance for locals.

A narrow perspective one might argue, but a reasonably pragmatic one one might riposte. Arts and science had clearly universal application, but the precise make-up of the sub-Saharan climate, for example, was not to a schoolboy with no great yearning for foreign adventure desperately a matter of particular relevance.

So it came thus that Geography was never a subject taken to examination level at school, and if I have suffered from not having that 'ology' it has never knowingly affected or afflicted me. When later in life - and I admit it has been rare - I have ventured east of Dover a stout Blue Guide has kept me completely well informed.

E too is more or less of that same persuasion - blessedly wise child - and would not have been taking Geography at all as a GCSE subject had her school not forsaken her preferred option of Sociology (a true - the true - 'ology'!). I did warn her not to expect any factual information to be forthcoming, merely endless slanted guff about 'global warming'.

I was not wrong. Two years of indoctrination on how beastly men [mostly] have been to dear Planet Earth and how we all need to hug a dolphin if we are to be redeemed from our sin of very existence. Two largely wasted years it must be said, as one can lead a teenage daughter to political correctness but this one will wrinkle her pretty nose at anything that is not about glamour, fashion or - in her special case - concerning horses.

Well, cometh the hour cometh the examination. Not being a studied or a star pupil at this one subject - no shame or her for that perhaps quite the contrary - she is entered into the 'foundation' examination. Simple questions for easy minds.

But even I could not, in my darkest - and they can be very dark - hours of despair at the corruption of the modern educational system (all of course the fell workings of that shithead T. Blair and associated cronies) and the downgrading of examination standards in order to prove - as only George Orwell could have predicted - that things not only can but are getting better all the time - have dreamt of the bathetic, puerile drivel that constitutes a test of geographic knowledge in this country in this year of Our Lord 2007.

Believe this if you are able:

Question 1: Does 'conservation' mean a) helping to protect species that are in danger of extinction or b) talking to a friend?

Question 2: When somewhere is designated as a Site of Special Scientific Interest does that mean that a) it is an important natural habitat worth preserving for the future or b) it's a place to be careful of lest you might fall into a swamp?

If Christ - and he did - wept for Jerusalem, then I in turn weep for my country and my people. The only geography lesson I ever needed and never wanted.