Half Past Two
U. A. Fanthorpe
“Once upon a schooltime
He did Something Very Wrong
(I forget what it was).”
(Full poem unable to be reproduced due to copyright)
VOCABULARY
Timeyouwereofftime - Fanthorpe uses a lot of compound words that compress
idioms / expressions together - in this case ‘time you were off’ means ‘it’s time for
you to leave and go home’.
Timefors - this is a made up word that refers to a collection of phrases that
Fanthorpe uses in the poem that begin with ‘time’.
STORY/SUMMARY
The poet tells us a story of a boy - whom we assume is quite young. He did
‘something’ bad and was punished for it - although what he did is never made clear.
The punishment was in the form of detention, he was kept back with the teacher after
class ended. However, he couldn’t tell the time so when the teacher told him to stay
until ‘half-past two’, he couldn’t understand what she meant and so he waited until he
was finally dismissed. The final line ‘And knew he’d escaped for ever’ can be
interpreted in two ways - either, he knew that the teacher would feel guilty for making
him stay so long due to his lack of knowledge of how to read clocks (which is
essentially a failing in her own teaching), or we can interpret it more metaphorically -
the boy waits out this time in his life until he’s older and more free from the judgement
of teachers and family.
U. A. Fanthorpe
“Once upon a schooltime
He did Something Very Wrong
(I forget what it was).”
(Full poem unable to be reproduced due to copyright)
VOCABULARY
Timeyouwereofftime - Fanthorpe uses a lot of compound words that compress
idioms / expressions together - in this case ‘time you were off’ means ‘it’s time for
you to leave and go home’.
Timefors - this is a made up word that refers to a collection of phrases that
Fanthorpe uses in the poem that begin with ‘time’.
STORY/SUMMARY
The poet tells us a story of a boy - whom we assume is quite young. He did
‘something’ bad and was punished for it - although what he did is never made clear.
The punishment was in the form of detention, he was kept back with the teacher after
class ended. However, he couldn’t tell the time so when the teacher told him to stay
until ‘half-past two’, he couldn’t understand what she meant and so he waited until he
was finally dismissed. The final line ‘And knew he’d escaped for ever’ can be
interpreted in two ways - either, he knew that the teacher would feel guilty for making
him stay so long due to his lack of knowledge of how to read clocks (which is
essentially a failing in her own teaching), or we can interpret it more metaphorically -
the boy waits out this time in his life until he’s older and more free from the judgement
of teachers and family.
