Eleven Plus Information

We need to start with some useful information you can pass on to your eleven plus child. You never know when your child may need to know this little piece of etiquette. It is to do with placing guests at a dinner party.

The guest of honour, if a man, is placed on the hostess’s right, if a woman on the host’s right. When there is no `guest of honour’ the senior man sits on the hostesses right and the senior married woman on the host’s right, the next senior on the left and so on – alternating men and women of course. Women take their seniority from their husbands – never seat husband and wife together.

We are indebted to Lady Enid Cumings for this information.

Now there may be some mums and dads today who would take issue with these nuggets of information. I wonder how some women would approach taking their seniority from their husbands!

What brought this to mind was that I wanted to ask someone whether they thought that garlic would be a useful addition to the eleven plus tool kit.

We know that garlic has been used in cooking and for medicine since the times of the ancient Egyptians. Even today some families use the remedy of honey and garlic mixed together for chest infections.

Now we all know that any medicinal benefit is lost by cooking. So we have to take the garlic raw. Naturally the breath will smell a little – but you get used to this. A trick that will make your children very happy is when you rub the soles their feet with garlic then you will eventually be able to smell garlic on their breath.

To convince children, however, of the benefit of taking garlic is to remind them that garlic has the ability to ward off vampires!

So now we know. If you invite your child’s teacher home for a meal you know where to seat the teacher. If you want your child to be popular at school make sure that you include some garlic in the lunch box – after all your loved one can spend break time rubbing the soles of the classmates with garlic! And finally, if you want your child to banish fearful thoughts at night, and keep the you know whats at bay, then wrap a piece of garlic into the pillow.