[Vwoolf] It's *not* all in my mind.

[Stuart N. Clarke]

“It’s all in your mind”, said the young woman on a pony, as I waited at the bus stop.

I’ve been watching bits here and there of “The Durrells” on TV.  I’ve never read any of the books.  I note that the little boy, Gerald (later to become the naturalist), has an English tutor on Corfu in the 1930s.  Presumably, the mother pays him.  (According to the ODNB, he had “a bevy of eccentric private tutors”.)  Yet the family hasn’t a bean (“Actually, beans are what we *do* have . . .”).  Why isn’t he sent to the local Greek school?  Because he’s to be brought up as an English gentleman, that’s why.

Similarly, you may ask yourselves why Mrs Flanders in JR hasn’t sent her sons to the local primary school, even a “higher grade” one.  The “elder boys ... must be got ready for school” - that’s why Mr Floyd (a “gentleman”) teaches them Latin – rephrase that: “the elder boys ... must be got ready for *public* school”.

Stuart
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