Let’s do this together

Brass rubbing at Lincoln Cathedral. Giving Dean Henderson a wedgie at the Science Museum. Watching Concorde take off from Heathrow. These were all the school trips from my inner-city secondary school in the 1970s and 80s.

There was also the class outing to Kenwood House in Hampstead, when we lost Joffy until he was found picking the lemons growing in the orangerie.

I recall all my classmates sitting on a wall overlooking the ornamental pond, eating Dairylea triangles from their packed lunches.

As usual, my hippy mum had made me mung beans on rye bread for my lunch, which I fed to the swans, and nicked Nicola’s Disco crisps.

These happy memories were part of an attempt by the Inner London Education Authority (considered by Thatcher to be left of Lenin) to expand and broaden the minds of the youth in their care.

But the terrible news that schools are now cancelling school trips due to Tory cuts is just another example of this boorish government’s mission to turn our country into a cultural wasteland.

Due to Covid and budget cuts, The Dark Lord has only been on two school trips, and that was back in junior school.

Her very first overnight trip away from home was to a cold muddy field in Wales – which is something all kids should experience, especially having to tip water out of your welly boot.

The other was a day trip to London to see the chumps in the Houses of Parliament who are responsible for this gradual decline in our arts and education.

If you don’t take children to experience museums and theatres, then they won’t visit them as adults. And if they don’t use them, they will disappear.

We are creating a generation of Philistines. And you know what happened to them? They got a massive wedgie from the far superior ancient race of Babylonians…

■ Email me at siobhan.mcnally@mirror.co.uk or write to Community Corner, PO Box 791, Winchester SO23 3RP.

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