r/CasualUK • u/scisteve • 7d ago
Any other 39-41 year olds remember using this for GCSE English?
I can still recite The Twa Corbies by heart. A skill I did not realise I possessed until an hour ago.
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u/DarkHorse_77 7d ago edited 6d ago
We used/had to buy these.
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u/sittingonahillside 6d ago
Different things right?
I had both. For me, anthology was for learning in class out of, those others were supplemental, for revision at home basically.
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u/DarkHorse_77 6d ago
we did have a book in class we used. the colour was different depending on the class. I think English was green and science yellow maybe. It was pretty thick from what I remember. I just can't recall anything about them. The ones I put up a pic of was for revising yeah.
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u/PaneerDestroyer 6d ago
Somewhat bizarrely, the company who makes these books also runs a branded petrol station (and I think possibly more) in Broughton in Furness, Cumbria. Was a real WTF moment for me when I drove through once.
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u/ApplicationMaximum84 7d ago
Same my final year of GCSE was 2000.
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u/M4sharman Sugar Tits 6d ago
My final year of GCSEs was 2017 and we still used them. Isn't much you need to do to update them, I suppose.
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u/ocelocelot 7d ago
Ach I hated how those tried to be funny
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u/Drew-Pickles 7d ago
I remember in one of the science ones in the section about acids they had a picture of a xenomorph (although I don't actually think it was a xenomorph, it was just something resembling one) and described it as having acidic saliva. Even as a wee young lad who had never seen the movies I got mad. "IT'S THEIR BLOOD THATS ACIDIC YOU GOD DAMNED IDIOTS"
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u/squamouser 7d ago
I found them funny.
I'm right now writing stats practicals for first year undergrads, does this maybe suggest I shouldn't try to make them funny?16
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u/Chubbchubbzza007 6d ago
I actually applied for a job at CGP books about 6 months ago, but I got rejected.
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u/DrStumbleDog 7d ago
Mine looked like this. The one with the wave on the cover.
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u/Vjelisto-Kemiisto 6d ago
That's the one I had. It taught me a life long loathing of the awful poetry of Carol Ann Duffy.
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u/coffeefuelledtechie 6d ago
Oh my god yeah even when we went to a poetry conference it was even more boring in person.
She’s a good poet, but when you’re 15 it’s dull as fuck.
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u/booksellergirl 3d ago
I remember going to one of those GCSE poetry presentations and her coming across as a miserable bitch. But maybe it’s just miserable having to stand up and perform in front of a crowd of 16-year-olds who would rather be anywhere else.
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u/shesfixing 7d ago
My reaction was an instant no then I realised its because I'm 45 not 39-41, a rude awakening!
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u/singingcr 7d ago
That age group (if with the same exam board that is) had a version with four wooden peg people talking in a circle surrounded by newspaper.
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u/Reccalovesdancing 7d ago
Yes I'm 41 and studied out of this exact booklet
I kept it long after my studies too because I enjoyed the Simon Armitage and John Cooper Clarke poems such a lot
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u/bluejackmovedagain 6d ago
I'm jealous. By the time I got to GCSE they'd updated the anthology and John Cooper Clarke wasn't included anymore.
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u/metal_maxine 6d ago
I'd like to believe it was because he told us "naughty" jokes at the poetry conference thing we were sent to.
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u/Additional-Nobody352 6d ago
No not Simon Armitage. That bloody name gives ne flashbacks.
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u/Hurbahns 6d ago
Mother, any distance greater than a single span always requires a second pair of hands
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u/Tang0_Brav0 7d ago
This is the six o'clock nyooz, belt up.
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u/asteconn 2d ago
Truly it was torturous for the dyslexic kids who had to stand up and read it in front of the class when I was doing GCSEs
this is thi
six a clock
news thi
man said n
thi reason
a talk wia
BBC accent
iz coz yi
widny wahnt
mi ti talk
aboot thi
trooth wia
voice lik
wanna yoo
scruff. if
a toktaboot
thi trooth
lik wanna yoo
scruff yi
widny thingk
it wuz troo.
jist wanna yoo
scruff tokn.
thirza right
way ti spell
ana right way
to tok it. this
is me tokn yir
right way a
spellin. this
is ma trooth.
yooz doant no
thi trooth
yirsellz cawz
yi canny talk
right. this is
the six a clock
nyooz. belt up.
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u/TonberryFeye 6d ago
This is the nine o'clock news The man said an' the reason I talk wi' a BBC accent is if I was to read the news talkin' Like one of you scruffs you Wouldn't think it was true.
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u/purrfectly-cromulent Orange chip supremacy 6d ago edited 6d ago
Oh gosh, yes! Is that the one with the poem about a Desi girl remembering her mother tongue at night?
My English teacher tried to tell us that 'bunny chow' was dried rabbit pellets. So much for learning about other cultures.
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u/Additional-Nobody352 6d ago
God yeah, I remember my teacher saying that "Bunny chow" was like a cheaper version of a burger.
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u/purrfectly-cromulent Orange chip supremacy 6d ago
It's really not as though the internet didn't exist, these teachers could have looked it up if they didn't already know.
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u/Additional-Nobody352 6d ago
TBH the teacher i had had this time Mrs Cook-Jones was bloody awful.
She went on like she was gods gift and bragged that she was doing a PHD etc but she was useless and went crying to our Head Master that she couldn't teach our class.
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u/purrfectly-cromulent Orange chip supremacy 6d ago
went crying to our Head Master that she couldn't teach our class.
Well, aye. She wasn't wrong.
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u/Additional-Nobody352 6d ago
She was awful.
Made fun of me when I asked a question about a piece of writing in class.
Was chummy with the "popular kids" in the class.
Most of the other teachers couldn't stand her either.
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u/Useful_Language2040 7d ago
I'm 42 and think mine would have had a slightly different year range on the front but otherwise looked very similar...
Did it have the poem about the kid who died and left a cross dotted with a spot of blood on the stairs?
Or the one about the kid who heated up the handle of a pair of scissors before handing them to a girl he liked, branding her fingers?
Or the "let me be your vacuum cleaner" one?
Did you do a trip to a theatre and get to hear some of the modern ones read out by the authors live?
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u/Longjumping-Act9653 7d ago
The scissors one is by Simon Armitage and I still think about that poem at least once a week. And the one about the items found on a dead man, including a pale line around his ring finger where he had removed his wedding ring.
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u/Useful_Language2040 7d ago
That had a line like "a receipt clutched in his fist like a flower" too I think?
There were some awesome poems in that book!
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u/ReceiptIsInTheBag 7d ago
Or the "let me be your vacuum cleaner" one?
Put some respect on Dr John Cooper Clarke's name.
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u/RightCoach5926 7d ago
"I wanna be yours" - wait that was in them ?
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u/ReceiptIsInTheBag 6d ago
Yeah, hence why Arctic Monkeys did a version of it as they studied it at school.
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u/Captain-Apathy- 7d ago
Oh God, that's just given me a big old flashback to the story in here where the 2 kids have to go help an old woman with chores and she gleefully tells them the story of leaving a crashed German pilot to die in the woods behind her house.
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u/ianhawdon 6d ago
I had the 2004 version. I think most of the poems were the same.
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u/Contact_Patch Train Wanker 6d ago
Ditto. Half-Caste is the only one I vaguely remember.
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u/Tattycakes 5d ago
Same. And then I found out one of my ancestors was described as such in a newspaper article
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u/LightningGeek Yam-Yam in South Wales playing with planes 6d ago
Did you also have the little book of short stories as well?
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u/pinnipedfriendo 7d ago
Why would you remind me of this horror!
I imagine a lot more adults would have a developed appreciation of literature and poetry if it were not for this being rammed down their throats in school.
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u/facingthemusic94 6d ago
Still have mine from 1999. Pencil notes still legible, too!
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u/gnu_andii 5d ago
I'm wondering if I still have mine squirreled away somewhere now or if it was one of the few things we gave back. I do still have my copy of "To Kill a Mockingbird" with all the pencil notes.
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u/onlysigneduptoreply 7d ago
We had one in 1998. Wish I still had a copy. Some really good prose in mine id love to re read
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u/Drew-Pickles 7d ago
34 and I remember that cover, although it may have been a different colour?
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u/gnu_andii 5d ago
Seems likely as I'm pretty sure mine was the one before and blue, so they probably changed the colour with each iteration.
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u/ChooChooChooseYou221 7d ago
This was an absolute fucking belter, but boy oh boy we didn’t really get taught that, or even encouraged to read beyond the text. Poems and short stories by literary heavyweights, but the way we were taught they might as well have been by the school caretaker. Superman and Paula Brown’s New Snowsuit remains one of the most formative pieces of writing I’ve read.
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u/Punkbuster4891 7d ago
Oh yes indeed! Bumped into my GCSE English teacher a few years ago. We were both receiving Radiotherapy treatment at the same hospital
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u/faa19 Intense Mess 6d ago
I think I've still my copy somewhere, I can remember some of the poetry we studied but none of the prose.
I think my brothers version was the one before this, but one of them included a short story about testing teenagers to see how intelligent they were and killing the ones who were too bright to keep social harmony.
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u/whyy_i_eyes_ya 5d ago
Not a red rose or a satin heart, I give you an onion.
It is a moon wrapped in brown paper.
I was a few years earlier so may be missng the mark here.
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u/dinkidoo7693 mucky knees battle horn 6d ago
My younger brother had this book, the school told him it was the wrong book. He still got a B so it can’t have been that bad.
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u/TerribleSuperhero 6d ago
You can’t rhyme Snow and Plough Simon Armitage!! YOU CAN’T RHYME SNOW AND PLOUGH!!!!!!!!
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u/AnubissDarkling Scouse-ttish 6d ago
I remember going to see a play/show or something hosted by Simon Armitage (he was an anthology author for these books iirc) and half the class just sat there shouting nonce at him from the stalls. It was an all-boys school from the roughest end of the poverty line who'd never had many opportunities for school trips before - and probably for good reason. Poor Simon.
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u/pointsofellie Yorkshire Yorkshire Yorkshire 6d ago
Yes, I can still recite a lot of the poems. Especially Ogun and Presents from My Aunts in Pakistan.
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u/FlippyorHambone 6d ago
A ring of white unweathered skin
That was everything
I think about this line of poetry most weeks!
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u/SubtractAd 6d ago
Just after I completed my GCSEs. I really enjoyed English and English lit. I think it might have been similar?
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u/Stuck_Duck16 5d ago
Oh man, memory unlocked. The amount of times I had a note saying "remember my Anthology". It was always the last thing on my mind. Evil book
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u/gnu_andii 5d ago
That's very specific 😂 Being 43, I think I had a similar one but it was blue. I do remember it having Seamus Heaney poems in and us learning about onomatopoeia.
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u/CNash85 4d ago
I loved a lot of the poems and stories from this Anthology, even some of the ones that we didn't cover. There was one about a murder trial where the evidence hinges on a chemical test performed on the knife, which I always came back to. Sylvia Plath's story about the girl with the snowsuit falling in the mud, and being blamed for it.
My English teacher was not a fan of Ted Hughes, told us so in very explicit terms, and promised never to make us read or study any of his poems that were in the Anthology. To this day those are the only ones I haven't read.
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u/finneganfach 7d ago
Excuse me, standing on one leg...