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David Sells was known for fairly rowdy classes which were often great fun: he would allow us to

use mild bad language, and a certain amount of personal abuse, though this stopped abruptly in the

sixth form when girls joined us. For someone so laid back, it is slightly surprisingly to learn that he

had been a professional soldier in the oyal !rtillery before he came to endcomb.

Some of his memorable sayings: "#erde de singe" written on a French translation. !nd $this looks

as if a spider has crapped all over it%& !nother time, when someone asked whether they should writetheir French test answers in exercise books or on 'xford pad, he said, () don(t mind if you write it on

the dried scrotum of a yak, so long as it(s *'+*%" !n example of his level of humour was that

it was easy to remember the French for swimming pool, piscine, because of what you must not do

in it.

he -uality of my work went downhill under his tutelage: the main problem was that the emphasis

was on the written language rather than speaking it. 'verall, our results were not great: ) think there

were three failures and no grade "!"s. !lthough ) passed the !level exam, /D0, after ten years of

study ) couldn(t do much more than order a cup of coffee in French. he conversation classes that

we did were hopelessly inade-uate: we only did them once a week and each of us had no more than

a few minutes of speaking, part of which was usually preprepared. Some of us tried to avoidspeaking as much as possible, especially me, and Sandy refused to speak at all. 'nly 1illi had any

fluency, and she didn(t learn that in class. 2ut he did give us some useful advice about how to

improve our spoken French: go to France.

3e used to do our conversation classes in the library, sitting in the armchairs. !fter one session in

which we were particularly unresponsive, if not actually comatose, Sells decided that the

comfortable location was responsible for our performance and told us that this library session was

to end. 3hat he meant was, that the period would not take place in the library any more, but the

way he phrased it, it sounded like he was cancelling the class altogether. 3e didn(t need more than

half a chance to get out of the wretched lesson, so, the following week nobody turned up. Sells was

livid. )n our next class he laid into us, saying it was our fault for misunderstanding what he had

said, and did we really think that he was just going to abolish the conversation period4 3e said that

we had all interpreted his words in the same way, and he accused us of being like the 2anderlog in

he 5ungle 2ook: 3e all say so, and so it must be true. /!s opposed to him saying so, and so it must

be true.0 5on made a spirited defence of our behaviour, and said, that when we were told to do

something by a member of staff it was "ours not to reason why." 6e didn(t punish us: ) don(t think

he ever did, even when we copied each other(s work.

'n another occasion when we were not being very attentive, he just stopped the lesson and told us

to go away: presumably he thought this would shame us into greater efforts. )n fact ) was so

ashamed at having the rest of the afternoon off that ) did a little jig to express my grief.

Sometimes, he would give us information about France and the shortcomings of the French, e.g.

their xenophobia, they don(t like paying tax, their lousy driving etc. 6e could be -uite entertaining

when he was talking, rather than teaching.

!lso, he would occasionally digress into philosophy: ) remember that once in the fifth form he told

us that we would think of a billiard ball as being small, round, hard and red: but, he said, if you

were a very small spider with diamond fingertips, hexagonal eyelenses and bluetinted spectacles,

you would see it as large, hexagonal, soft and blue. )(m not -uite sure what the point of this was, but

it was better than French, and it pi-ued my interest in philosophy enough to major in it on my

degree course. /3hich led to me wasting another three years, but that(s another story70

See http:88www.rendcombian.org.uk8pdfnews89.pdf for official obituaries.

http://www.rendcombian.org.uk/pdfnews/2000.pdfhttp://www.rendcombian.org.uk/pdfnews/2000.pdf

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And http:88www.rendcombian.org.uk8pdfnews8;.pdf for tributes on his retirement.

http://www.rendcombian.org.uk/pdfnews/1983.pdfhttp://www.rendcombian.org.uk/pdfnews/1983.pdf