An hour of power

I went to a rather trendy progressive Comprehensive School in the 1970s. It was stuffed with idealistic, radical teachers, and I have to say, I got a fantastic education there for five years. Most of the teachers were the “handpicked, cream of the crop” types. We had an award winning music department and some pretty good scientists strutting up and down in the designer labs.
There was one throwback to the “old school master” type however. He was our librarian. His name temporarily escapes me, but we all thought he was very eccentric and he could seldom keep control of us in our library hour.
He would regularly insist that a class of squirming, hormone rampant teenagers listen to LPs of bird song in his one hour of power. We were a captive audience. We were only allowed to leave the library for a different call of nature.
He would regularly give a monologue over the top of one of the recordings, telling us how to distinguish blackbirds from robins from chaffinches. It usually produced a cacophony of uniformed brats trying to be Kukaburras, parrots or that well known bird, the chimpanzee.
This evening, I was sat on our deck after a shower of rain, listening to the dusk song of birds well fed and settling down for the night.
I was able to identify every bird on every branch. And I know who I have to thank for that.