To the City of Discovery and St Saviour’s High - where a four-day induction session was held for first-year pupils on learning styles - to discover that while the Whitfield area of Dundee may not be the most affluent part of the city, the trappings of modest affluence are all too real.
A group of the new first-years were asked how many had a mobile phone, and nearly all raised an arm. When the subject turned to holidays, Florida proved considerably more popular than Broughty Ferry. One pupil even added a fourth J to the jute, jam and journalism the city was famous for - Jamaica.
To show that you can take the child out of Dundee but you can’t take Dundee out of the child, when the class were asked to read a piece of dialogue in which one person had to be “M” and the other “A”, one boy immediately let his choice be known in the best traditions of the well-known Dundee pronunciation of the “I” sound (as in “peh” for “pie”): “Eh’m M.”
When later informed that the M concerned was in fact Hollywood sex symbol Marilyn Monroe, another boy piped up: “Wha’s that?”
A young man with a lot more to discover, we are sure.