"You're going to be sent to Coventry if you're not careful.
" That was the threat if you stepped out of line in my youth.
If you're sent to Coventry you're going to be ignored by everyone.
I never knew or understood why Coventry was the unfortunate location for all those disgraced and in exile.
It's suggested now that it had something to do with a bunch of royalist troops being sent to Coventry by Cromwell to get them out of the way, where to a man, they were shunned by the local 'parliamentarian' populace.
It sounds plausible, but like many an old saying, its origins are obscure, but I can well imagine a whole town, noses in the air and lips pursed, giving the royalists a silent piece of their mind.
The other little gem about Coventry taught to every pupil of my generation, was the desecration of the heart of the city and its old cathedral in World War II.
Coventry was blitzed by German bombers because of its industry.
Within the factories that had devoted their energies to car manufacture and accessories such as tyres, radios in peace time years, the British Ministry of Defence found its sources for production of armaments.
The intelligence of those industries converted easily to arms and Coventry became the producer of armaments and military vehicles for the British effort and a target.
It was November 1940 when the German Nazis party took action, bombing Coventry in retaliation for a raid on Munich.
The raid started in the evening, lasted all night into the next morning.
It wiped out the small historic city centre, levelling all buildings to the ground and killing hundreds.
That's how I think of Coventry - a black and white newspaper photo in my memory where in the foreground lie smoking piles of bricks and rubble, a few home lovers scouring through the wreckage for possessions, and the eerie skeleton of the Old Cathedral, with gaping holes and roofless walls as the backdrop.
Not nice really, and neither is being sent to Coventry.