Literary
Section

LETTER FROM AMERICA

Monday, 24th May.
Dear Readers,
I am writing to you during an English period at the Princeton High School, all the others are writing an essay about some novel or other. We arrived in the USA at 1.45 p.m. on Saturday. After spending thirty minutes at the John F. Kennedy Airport going through customs and immigration procedures we were taken by bus through New York to Princeton. NY is the biggest collection of roads, highways and skyscrapers I have ever seen. Sitting in the bus for once I really felt as if I were in the "asphalt jungle" - sheer brick walls looming up on all sides, with fast moving cars weaving about all over the place. I could not help noticing that almost all the girls walking along the streets were wearing jeans or "hot pants", very few were wearing skirts. Among the many other sights I have seen was what must be the biggest and most densely-packed graveyard in the world, it stretches for miles on both sides of the road. We travelled over, under, beside, and along on many different roads that after a while I thought we were going round in circles.
At the Princeton University car park we were greeted by hundreds of young Americans all trying to grab their own particular Scots student.
Since Saturday I have been shown around Princeton and the area in which I am staying (Washington-Crossing Pennsylvania) by my host family. The town (Princeton) is just one big University - the place is packed with faculties and halls of residence. As well as the university colleges there are quite a number of schools (which by comparison to QVS are all huge, very few of them have less than 1,000 pupils). The one which I am attending has about 1,800 pupils. The Scottish students have been given a free hand to go where they want so if you want to go to a particular class it is just a matter of asking any American to take you along. So far I have been to classes in Maths, French, Latin, Music, History, Humanities (Sociology), Spanish and English.
I haven't as yet mentioned the people so I will do now.  The hundreds of Americans whom I have met up until now have been very kind, everyone has gone out of his way to make me feel welcome. Well, I must finish off here.

Dateline - Monday, 24th May
Bill Common,
Victorian Reporter,
Princeton, NJ.

THE CHICKEN  LADY
In Omagh we had our bins emptied on a Friday morning about half-nine. But before the conventional garbage collectors called the "chicken lady" arrived. Her name was derived from the fact that she owned half-a-dozen scrawny hens and sold the eggs at black market prices, but as the nearest shop, Joe's, was about half-a-mile away one usually went to her for eggs.
Nine o'clock on a Friday morning, every Friday morning whatever the weather, one would be aroused by the sound of bins rattling. Opening a window you would see a bent up old witch exploring the contents of your bin. Under her arm she carried an old shopping bag, probably thrown out by Mrs Maple up the road.
When she found anything she or her hens might need or use she'd look around to make sure no one was looking then slide the item into her bag.
One Friday I was rudely awoken by the clattering of our bin. Heaving my head out of the bedroom window into a blinding blizzard, I shouted to the old hag "What do you think you're doing ?" She replied with all the bad language she could muster and went on scavenging. When she'd raked out the contents of our bin, leaving half of it on the ground, she screamed up to me in her finest brogue that I was to mind my own business. Then she crawled on to rake in next door's bin. All along the street she'd left heaps of rubbish beside every bin, as she did every Friday.
M. Dolan, IIIA.

AN EXPERIENCE
Behind my house there was a short strip of woodland, a field and then a forest. It was raining sun and I decided to go for a walk. I walked for a short while in the cool brown-green strip of wood and then into the yellow field of tall, dry grass. I started running, often stumbling as I frightened animals from their hiding places. I stopped breathlessly outside the large wood which challenged me to go in, the tall trees frowned at me as I stepped boldly in. It was very quiet in the wood, not even distant sounds pervaded the silence of the vast forest, the green of the small wood had left me, except where the sun filtered through in patches.
The forest reminded me of a cathedral, large, dark and ominous. I decided to retreat to the field and when I got there I lay in the long yellow grass
looking at the sky.
R. Knox, IIIA