{"id":5868,"date":"2005-11-01T18:55:46","date_gmt":"2005-11-01T17:55:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.grayblog.co.uk\/index.php\/?p=5868"},"modified":"2005-11-01T18:55:46","modified_gmt":"2005-11-01T17:55:46","slug":"a-memorable-figure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/grayblog.co.uk\/index.php\/2005\/11\/01\/a-memorable-figure\/","title":{"rendered":"A memorable figure"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve just heard that my secondary school English teacher, George Rafferty, has died at the age of 75.<br \/>\nHe was a remarkable figure and an excellent teacher. He engaged with the kids in such a way that being in his lessons was a fun experience. His spittle-strewn, Scottish-accented speech was just the thing for a class studying the Scottish play for O-level (screeching <i>When shall we three meet again? In thunder, lightning and in rain?<\/i> He was particularly good at <i>Upon the heath!<\/i>) and his passion for teaching was evident in every lesson. Plagued by ill-health (his pill-rattling mock death by Sarah&#8217;s desk is something that will live in my memory for years) and perhaps mis-treated by the powers-that-be at the school, he always had the interests of his students at the heart of his work &#8211; I think that the people that I went through school with are testament to his teaching abilities.<br \/>\nDefinitely someone who I&#8217;ll remember for the whole of my life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve just heard that my secondary school English teacher, George Rafferty, has died at the age of 75. He was a remarkable figure and an excellent teacher. He engaged with the kids in such a way that being in his lessons was a fun experience. His spittle-strewn, Scottish-accented speech was just the thing for a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5868","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/grayblog.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5868","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/grayblog.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/grayblog.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grayblog.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grayblog.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5868"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/grayblog.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5868\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/grayblog.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5868"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grayblog.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5868"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grayblog.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5868"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}