TALES OUT OF SCHOOL

Many of my former students from both Middleton and Haslingden have asked me how I became a teacher; some even asked why (I bothered.) A number of my neighbours and surviving friends have clamoured for the re-telling of interesting anecdotes experienced during my forty years at the Chalk face.

Each fortnight I hope to publish an extract from my teaching autobiography. I've abbreviated and disguised some of the real life people's names to avoid law suits.

Chapter One

Most people from he West have attended school and this, of course, qualifies them to be an Expert on Education. Having served 38 years at the chalk face, effectively never having left school until my merciful retirement, I consider myself even more qualified to write my memoirs under the above title. I hope to do for Education what Attila the Hun did for World Peace.

My mother knew I was going to be a teacher after watching me with my dolls. (I was sixteen at the time – she was beginning to worry about me.) I had a whole classroom of dolls: there was Big Herbert & Little Herbert, Big Ted and Little Teddy and one effigy named after my little brother Kevin who had deposed me from my parents’ affections. You can be sure he was subjected to a very rigorous regime, otherwise known as Special Education.

I had all the prerequisites for becoming a successful teacher: patience, sympathy and a desire to inflict pain on any student who ‘looked at me funny’. Kevin was one such, though to be fair he couldn’t help looking at me funny; he had a glass eye that hung from a thread and, because he was home-made, a lop-sided mouth permanently fixed in a sardonic grin that used to enrage me beyond measure. Many were the beatings he endured and yet, like my real life students in later years, he never made the required progress and as my real life students will testify, ‘it never did them any harm.’

I’d like to pay tribute to one special teacher who inspired me to take up teaching. I’d like to, but to tell the truth I never met one.

At Belfield Road Primary School, there was Mrs Crabtree whose idea of a good lesson was to make all her students take a nap after lunch. All her students would unroll beds of coconut matting and lie down with eyes closed. There was only one bodily position – eyes closed, on your back with knees bent. To ensure we stuck to this regime, she prowled restlessly ‘looking for a glimmer of blue’. This betokened, ‘someone was peaking’ and the punishment was a slash across the raised thighs with the flat of a ruler.

Including University I spent seventeen years as a student. Mrs Crabtree, however, was the only person to give me a position of responsibility; she made me a toilet monitor - my duties consisted of taking Melville to the lavatory and wiping his bottom. Sometimes if Melville told me too late, I had to wash out his pants.

Because I was a bright student; I could read before I went to school, I was eventually promoted to Milk Monitor after my eyes started to water from a particularly strong Melville stool. Here my duties further honed my preparations for a career in teaching. I spent precious learning time in the open air – otherwise known as rain or frost, man(child)handling the milk crates indoors from where the milkman had dumped them at the bottom of the playground. Then I would lovingly lay the tiny bottles out on a table and pierce each silver top with a straw.

Then there was Pop West, my junior school headmaster, who used to make his assemblies interesting by singling out some-one for a beating for not closing their eyes during prayers. His appearance in this rogue’s gallery was because he ruined my tenth birthday. I remember filing into Assembly that day feeling mature, determined to shed my naughty pupil image now I was ten. My shining morning face blazed with evangelical zeal as he ground through the prayers.

I suspected nothing when he invited all the Michaels on to the stage. There were seven of us. I even thought secretly that he might be about to lead a chorus of Happy Birthday for me. My hopes were dashed when he began to tell a story about a naughty Michael who had been throwing stones at cars the previous day. He asked the Head Girl to guess who the bad Michael was. (She was only Head Girl because she wore glasses.) In a panic she tagged Michael Vere.

‘No,’ he whispered. He used his cane to part the Michael gang and tapped me on my brylcreamed head. ‘Go to my room, Bell. You know where it is by now.’

He delighted in prolonging the agony of expectation. I stood jiggling from one foot to the other until I heard his steps sweeping down the corridor. He placed his cane on his desk. Then he began a clever interrogation about the previous night’s escapade. It was not my first time I’d suffered this Third Degree. (The first time he’d gone on about my misdemeanours in class, I thought he thought I was in Miss Demeanour’s class and got my answers muddled.) All the time you were answering his clever questions your gaze was riveted to the cane on the desk. I blame my inability to communicate in job interviews directly on this training. It was n’t done to cry when you were caned so I held in my tears until I got home for lunch and my mum wished me a happy birthday.

My final junior school teacher was a success at getting pupils through the 11+ exam. She was a harridan; a witch in twin-sets. Old Ma Pass would n’t let me sing during her music lessons. She walked round the class whilst we were singing away lustily and dubbed me ‘a groaner’ and decreed I could only mime. At least she taught me the words to ‘Jerusalem’ even if I was n’t allowed to mouth them aloud. Instead, I had to stand at the front of the class and write the names of those who were n’t singing lustily enough. Thus was born my desire for power over a class. Any boy’s name on the board missed break-time. Many of the best footballers in the class were unable to play giving me a chance to shine.

As a side note, it is worth explaining that the pupils’ toilets were outside. Boys’ were divided from Girls’ toilets by a high wall. The educational term ‘pissing competition’ was derived from trying to douse the girls on the other side of the wall. The training for this event consisted of gulping copious quantities of tap water during morning break then holding it till lunchtime before making a mad dash after the lunch bell.

Chapter Two

My First Head Teacher

The training to become an inspirational teacher continued at Secondary school level.

Amazingly I passed that iniquitous exam known as the 11+ and went to a Boys Grammar school. Here I met Dr Bland, my headmaster for the next 8 years. He taught me stamina.

One Wednesday afternoon, (there were no floodlights in those days) my beloved Manchester United had a FA cup semi-final replay against Fulham. The game was to be televised. I quietly slipped away after lunch, sniggering to myself that I would n’t be missed.

On Thursday morning there was a Special Assembly. Of 1200 boys on role, over 400 had had the same idea as me and had absented themselves on the previous afternoon! The file of ‘sick’ students formed a line round the quadrangle from the Head’s study door. The interview went exactly like this: ‘Where’s your note for yesterday’s absence?’

‘Sir I …..(insert various reasons for non-production of said note).

‘Hold out your hand.’

True stamina. I conservatively estimate he caned 369 sick students, including me. I did n’t care; Manchester United won and Alex Dawson got a hat-trick.

Still a fan after 60 years

I passed into and through the hands of many teachers during the next eight years. Only one of whom, looking back, I rate as excellent. He was my first form teacher; we were his first form. It was his first year. Dan, as he was affectionately known was a big-boned, ex-RAF man. He was a natural born actor who could transform himself into a variety of guises using only his gown as a prop. He did a very good Dracula. He also enjoyed the company of kids.

There were a couple of honourable mentions: my English teacher allowed me licence to read quietly at the back of his classroom, totally ignoring his wise words, only re-calling me to the lesson when he was setting homework. He confided on the day I was to leave that he felt I learned more English by reading privately than I would have done listening to his lessons. After thirty eight years as an English teacher, I am firmly of the same opinion. I tried to instil a love of reading into all my students. When I succeeded they had no need for an English teacher.

Another worthy of mention was my Geography teacher. Even today fifty years later, the world is still the same blurry place it was when he first laid hands on me. His worthiness stems from his ability to face away from the class whilst writing on the board; then, on detecting a whisper, he could snap the chalk, whirl and throw this missile, hit the offender and turn back to the board, catching the other part of the chalk and continue writing.

There were others less worthy. Jack Flash was so named for his ability to spin from the board to the class so fast his brylcreamed hair never moved. Our creepy music teacher liked boys, particularly those that stayed behind for private lessons after school. Our PE teacher had a gammy leg so was unable to demonstrate anything. One of our teachers appeared on a Quiz show on national television, only to score ‘nul points’ and be a source of derision for ever after.

I think it was easier to enter the profession in those days yet they were viewed with awe and respect on a par with doctors and lawyers. Where did it all go wrong?

Chapter Three

When I was 16, I reached a milestone: I passed the 5 foot barrier and got to wear my first long trousers – grey flannel. This lack of height prompted the next phase of my education – VI th Form. I attended a Careers Interview. It went exactly like this: ‘What sort of job were you thinking about, Bell?’

‘I’m not sure, sir, something in an office?’

‘You’re too little to leave; you should go into the VI th form.’

‘Yes sir.’

My ‘A’ level French teacher inspired me to the next phase of my educational journey: His name was Dr Hastings – familiarly known as Dr Nasty. He terrified me. I once saw him take hold of a boy’s sideburn between finger and thumb, jerking his head from left to right like a demented marionette until tears ran down the boy’s agonised face. There had NEVER been a failure at French in the VI form – I was determined it wouldn’t be me. I decided to study English at University.

I was nearly 19 when I left school. On my final day there was still time for a last humiliation. It started brightly enough. A group of rebellious leavers had climbed into the school building the night before. They’d hung a skull over the stage where Dr Bland was to give his final assembly. To ensure it could n’t be removed they’d dismantled the ladders leading up to the gantry. We assumed he would cancel but not a bit of it. Despite the skull bearing a remarkable resemblance to the Head below it, not one member of the audience cracked a smile. Beneath this grinning skull he delivered a homily to the outgoing sixth form and dismissed us.

There was much hilarity in the playground afterwards. Some of the students built a bonfire of their blazers and caps dancing round it like primitive savages. I did n’t. I was aware that I had a younger brother who might one day inherit my uniform. (He didn’t so my nobility was wasted.)

So it was that a number of excitable leavers poured into the pub opposite. I joined them – my first time in a pub. I asked a friend what to order. In a clear and confident voice, I ordered, ‘A pint of pitter please.’ I was astounded and degraded when, wearing my blue cap and blazer, my order was refused. Even showing the bar staff my bus pass to prove I was over 18, was to no avail.

The irony was compounded (later) when I took a part-time job – selling ‘Cockles, Mussels, Shrimps and Prawns; ninepence; a shilling, one and three and one and six.’ (I also had kipper fillets in their own bag complete with a knob of butter. They were half-a-crown so I didn’t sell many of those.) I was sixteen and looked fourteen but it was fine to wander the streets and enter pubs and be mauled by drunk old ladies yet I couldn’t buy a drink when I was legally old enough.

Chapter Four

My three years at Leeds passed in an alcoholic haze. A University scarf opened all pub doors. My first day was spent trying to choose my subsidiary subjects to accompany my Honours English Course. I needed two. French was easy thanks to Doctor Nasty – I had passed scholarship level. The final choice was more difficult. There were counters set up round a huge hall and you were expected to interview the staff and they you. I toyed with History but when I asked about the syllabus, the smarty-pants prof answered, ‘Everything that has happened up to yesterday afternoon. I chose Biblical Studies, having attended Sunday School every week for over ten years, I figured the course would be easy. It was the only one I failed at the end of the first year!

This entailed a re-sit before term began. I returned to Leeds early before my grant arrived. I had a minimal amount of money from a vac job. When this all but ran out, I faced a quandary; risk a criminal record or starve. I chose the former and went shopping at Leeds Marks and Sparks. I browsed the food section putting some items in a basket and some under my jacket. It was these items the Store Detective seemed most concerned about.

After the dreaded hand-on-the-shoulder moment, I was shown into a manager's office. My University scarf prominently wound round my neck; the under the coat food items prominently displayed on his desk. Dry-mouthed I related the paragraph above. The guy listened, all the while holding the phone with which to call the police. Eventually he put it down; he had been there himself; a hungry University student with next-to-no-money. He even let me keep the unpaid for items which I remember included a pack of unsmoked back-bacon. Bless this guy; I owe him the next forty years as a criminal record would have prevented a teaching career.

My English tutor was a famed writer, Dr. Arnold Kettle. His two books ‘An Introduction to the English Novel’ were required reading. I was in awe of him. Every Thursday morning I would sit with five others in his study and say nothing. One week I went to the Wednesday Night Hop in the Students’ Union; The Swinging Blue Jeans performed their (only?) hit ‘The Hippy Hippy Shake.’ I got drunk on euphoria and Tetley’s Bitter. The next day I was hung-over and irritable. I joined in the debate and got rather fierce with Dr. Kettle. He asked me to stay behind and wondered why I had contributed to his tutorials for the first time ever in such a manner. When I confessed the reason, he told me he wanted me drunk every Wednesday night for the next three years. What could I do?

Part of my English Literature Course involved studying Hat-Making in my home town of Stockport! Luton wasn't the only club nicknamed The Hatters. I think the thesis on local industry was part of the Linguistics course. I wandered round photographing the various hat-making techniques all done by hand. The University even provided an expensive camera so I was able to illustrate the different stages and snap my dad on a surprise visit to the toilet. His hat-size was 'Six and three eighths.' The company made him a special hat when I showed them the toilet photo.

Then came D-day. D was for Decision not Degree. Given my alcohol intake and its corresponding brain-cell annihilation, I figured I would not qualify for an MA course. I still deemed myself too little to go to work deciding, therefore, to apply for a Teacher’s course, thus giving me another year of growing before I joined the wage earners.

Despite the chronic shortage of teachers even this next step was not plain sailing. I’d filled in the forms and been given a date to attend the Leeds University School of Education where my application would doubtless be rubber-stamped by a trio of learned professors and skilled judges of men.

Naturally I was wearing my best suit. Naturally I was early; too early. I decided to pop into the Union bar to see if any of my mates were still about. They were. The conversation went something like this: ‘You look very smart, have a drink.’ ‘OK.’

The interview went exactly this. ‘Good afternoon, Mr Bell. What made you decide to become a teacher?’ Giggle. ‘Mr Bell, would you like me to repeat the question?’ Giggle. ‘Next candidate please.’

Chapter Five

Eventually I was accepted for a Certificate of Education course at another University -- Manchester. The course/lectures/lecturers were rubbish. The only thing it did to prepare you for teaching was to give you three teaching practices each of six weeks. You would go into a nearby school where you committed a series of mistakes in front of students, observing head teachers, University tutors and anyone else who’d heard about the best free show in town. Just when you felt ready to commit ritual disembowelment in front of your worst class, the powers-that-be whisked you away to a new slavering audience in another school where you made fewer mistakes.

In the bar at weekends, (you were too shattered/busy during Teaching Practice to drink during the week,) we would swap tales of horror, embarrassment and occasionally humour. I’m not sure what category this next tale falls into!

Neil was a good-looking bloke. This being the swinging sixties, his conquests were many. Lots of females, emancipated by the pill, were only too willing to join him in a bout of horizontal dancing. One Sunday night he was at a party, the last for a long time as he started Teaching Practice the next day.

A girl started eying him brazenly. She was just his type, ie she had a pulse. Within minutes, they’d found a vacant bedroom and had consummated their all too brief affair. Her name was Doreen (not a good start to a long relationship) and he arranged to see her the following weekend, announcing airily that he was a teacher and was to start at a new school on the morrow.

The following day with a banging headache and a dry mouth he followed the experienced teacher whose class he was to take over for the next six weeks. She beamed encouragingly at him and led him into the classroom. The introductions went something like this: ‘Now 5C, as I explained to you last week, this is to be your new teacher until half-term.’

‘Good morning. My name is Mr Davenport, but you can call me sir,’ smirked Neil confidently. He noticed one student turning round and felt the need to exert his authority. ‘And what’s your name at the back?’ She turned back to him slowly, blushing and simpering wildly. ‘Please sir, Doreen, sir.’

The rest of that year passed in a blur of nightmarish visions. I remember my University Education tutor observing me floundering in a class of black faces, (the school was in Moss Side, synonymous in those days with immigrants.) I was trying to teach 1st World War poetry under the banner ‘Gory or Glory’. I thought it a rather neat distinction; my students thought otherwise. My tutor summed up my lesson pretty well with the succinct comment: ‘Another nail in the coffin of English teaching.’

I remember the headmaster; Mr Trickett. He was an unpleasant man, given to bullying not just students but other teachers in inferior positions to him; ie – everyone. His presence haunted all my nightmares and the lessons he deigned to observe. He was not averse to delivering his view of the class, the lesson, the teacher, loudly and with great satisfaction.

At last came the final examinations on which the award of the Certificate of Education

depended. They took place in a venerable lecture hall with wooden panelled walls and tiered seating. The exams were a farce. Any supervisor with one good eye might have noticed that the candidates did not spread themselves about the hall but sat in rough triangular shaped clumps. At the apex was a studious geek who had attended all the lectures and had taken copious notes. The clump of candidates all overlooked his papers and answers were shared. Nobody failed! Those with first class vision got first class grades.

Chapter Six

Before the exam results were published you were expected to seek job interviews by reading the Situations Vacant columns of Educational journals. The application form gave ample space for the more imaginative to wax lyrical about their educational strengths and enthusiasms. Naturally these were tailored to suit the advertisement. Despite being able to play the opening bars of the ‘Z Cars’ signature tune on the piano, (albeit with two fingers only) I wisely chose not to mention this in case I was called upon to accompany the hymn in morning Assembly. A third class referee’s certificate might mean you were given a job on condition you ran the under 14s team on a Saturday morning. I included this on my form – a fallback position, figuring I could always manage Manchester United if I failed as a teacher.

Thorough research was necessary as schools also embroidered the truth – choosing not to mention the suicide rate among the staff or the number of race riots in the last term. I studied bus timetables and eventually I was called for interview.

Naturally I was early as I strode confidently down the school drive. It was a glorious summer day. The sun shone on beautifully manicured lawns surrounded by well-stocked garden beds ablaze with colour. I wore a new suit; there was a spring in my step; I was irresistible.

To kill time before my interview, I strolled round the gardens. There was an old guy in brown ©overalls pottering among the flowers. We spent a few minutes discussing the merits of hybrid tee roses. What I know about horticulture can be engraved on a medium-sized grain of rice but my dad had had an allotment and I’d been pressed into service – my principle task being to follow the many horse-drawn carts about until I’d collected a bucketful of steaming manure. I advised the old gardener to put some washing up liquid on some of the roses afflicted with greenfly. He was a gracious old boy and obviously proud of his gardens – I was born to be helpful. I strolled into school to await the interview.

There were four of us up for one assistant English teaching job. The other three seemed much more mature than me; their suits looked made-to-measure. I swallowed nervously. Interviews today are much more rigorous than back then. Now a panel of experts sit in and ask questions. There could be the Head, Chairman of the Governors, Head of Department even a representative from the Education office. In the interests of Equal Opportunities the same questions were asked of all candidates. If one of the candidates confessed on his application form that he had been in jail, no-one was allowed to ask why unless the other candidates were also going to be asked, even though they had n’t been in jail, yet.

In those days things were much more relaxed. If the Education Authority deemed some-one good enough to run a school, he was left to get on with it. Often an interview was just a cosy chat when the Head could ask about a range of topics pertinent to that particular interviewee.

A gruff voice growled my admittance. I stepped smartly to the desk and waited to be told to sit. I could see nothing of the Head as he was immersed in my application form. He gestured to a seat and I licked my lips in preparation for the first question. The interview went something like this: ‘How much washing up liquid to a pint of water?’ he growled, revealing the face of the old gardener! Blackness overwhelmed me and I remember only sitting waiting with the other candidates for a decision. I was called back into the study to hear his verdict.

‘You may not know ‘owt about Education, but I’d not heard that tip about greenfly before. You start August 31st.’

It was three months away.

Chapter Seven

To pay off my University overdraft, it was customary to take vacation jobs. The most satisfying was Xmas in a Pie Factory. The employees were mainly young girls, so a male student was highly prized. Because of the Xmas rush you could work your own hours; clocking on at 8 am and work as many hours as you felt like. All employees were entitled to unlimited pies, hot from the oven. It was possible to work twelve or more hours, guzzling pies for breakfast, lunch, dinner and supper if you had sufficient stamina and liked pies. I qualified on both counts. An added incentive was the pub next door.

By highlighting my student existence on a grant, I often got free beer being the only male in a gang of half a dozen girls. By this time my younger brother had grown up and discovered girls. Naturally I regaled him with tales of my many conquests in lurid details.. He asked me if I could fix him up with a blind date. I nodded enthusiastically; my eyes gleaming whilst keeping a deadpan face. I owed him one.

Years earlier, I had asked him for a similar favour. He agreed and furnished me with the arrangements. I showed up at the park only to meet a girl known locally as Fat Pat. It wasn't her size that killed the deal. She showed up on a man's bike, wearing men's trousers. She punctuated each sentence by clearing her throat and gobbing into the flower beds. Her language made my sensitive ears freeze. I made my excuses and left; mulling over the adage, 'Revenge is a dish best eaten cold.'

My dish for Xmas Eve was called Angela. I said I had wanted a romantic twosome but my brother had asked to come along. Did Angela have a friend to introduce to my brother with a view to a long term relationship, at least until New Year. 'He likes his girlfriend a little on the plump side,' I added. She enumerated five, four of whom I dismissed as being, variously too slim, too good-looking, too pleasant, before deciding on Mavis, a suitable riposte for Fat Pat.

To give him his due, my brother displayed no disappointment. He nodded in understanding at my revenge. 'What would you girls, like to drink,' he asked suavely. 'Could you give me a hand with this order, Michael?'

'Is there a back door out of here?' he asked at the bar. I described a window in the toilets through which two desperate youths might escape. We returned to our table; finished our pints , made our excuses and helped each other on to the pavement. I'm not sure our dates missed us for a couple of hours. Though I got the silent treatment on my return to work.

There were many other jobs to choose from advertised on a notice board in The Students Union: Grape-Picking in France; Kibbutz in Israel; Voluntary Service Overseas. I chose Handyman in Salford Manchester. My uncle was Gaffer of a team of highly skilled engineers; my dad was one of them, so luckily no interview was required. We travelled to Power Stations all round the North of England overhauling and re-fitting the Giant Cooling towers. At least the rest of the gang did. I was Cabin Boy. My first day was a near fatal disaster. Trying to show no fear I followed the half-men, half- spiders up the inside of a tower. Near the summit, hands greasy with sweaty fear, I dropped a tool, a hammer or spanner. I heard it clanging against pipes all the way to the ground. Luckily no human body parts interrupted its clangorous descent to the ground. My career descent followed just as swiftly.

My duties as Cabin Boy were no where near as glamorous as those of Jim Hawkins. I had to sweep out and tidy the wooden hut; keep the water boiling for tea breaks and read The Daily Mirror. The only thing that relieved the tedium was the money. We were paid for working 84 hours a week though we actually did only half of that. We were paid lodging allowance as you could not work 12 hours a day then be expected to drive home after all that work. (So we worked seven or eight then drove home and pocketed the subsistence money.)

The spider men were paid danger money and they earned it. On one occasion, I was sent for urgently; some scaffolding had collapsed and my dad, uncle and three others were clinging to unsecured metal poles eighty feet above my cabin. As I’d just cleaned it out I was most perturbed. Happily they were able to scramble to safety without lowering my standards of cleanliness.

As the weeks ticked nearer to my teaching debut, I totted up the figures: my monthly teacher's salary would be exactly one eighth of what I got for finishing The Daily Mirror Crossword before 9am. I discussed it with my dad; if I deferred starting teaching for a year, I could save a healthy deposit for buying a house. (I'd recently got engaged.) He nodded thoughtfully and the following Friday sacked me. I was destined to teach.

Chapter Eight

It was 1965. Forget The Fab Four, we were The Four Bees. Four apprentice teachers starting the same day at the same school, Hollins High; our surnames beginning with the same letter, B. In our early twenties we were just seven years older than our oldest girl students or a decade younger than any other teacher on the staff. Forget Beatle Mania, we had it first.

On our rubbish teacher’s course, no professor had thought to warn us of the female wiles; the adoration in class that could divert lessons and turn heads. Two of us were married and escaped unscathed; a third seemed older and wiser, somehow more immune; but the fourth! Oh Dear. He was a year younger, having elected to go straight into teaching without a year’s preparation or three teaching practices. Because of him and others like him, it soon became mandatory to do a four year degree course which involved teaching practices.

Bill fell for every trick in the book. He fell in love. He fell from grace. It was an innocent enough slip to begin with. He was a smoker. I am sure he could go two lessons without a cigarette until break, but he did n’t. I think he thought smoking in his storeroom in full view of the class lent him a certain mystique in the eyes of the girls. From there it was a short step to borrowing a lighter or matches from his female student smokers, then sharing cigarettes and other intimacies.

He fell in love with a fifteen year old. He was going to marry her. They had n’t had a date but ‘she was so mature’, unlike Bill. Our group began to split asunder; he was destined for a solo career. He began asking advice about contraception. ‘I’ve heard these Durex are not 100% safe. Should I wear two?’

‘Yeah, one on each thumb should do it.’

He was great to have around because, however inept we were, he was more so; he made us look good. One day, a Thursday, he was missing from school. A phone call to his mother revealed he was still in bed. The day before, a student had convinced him that the school was shut for Voting in the General Election!

Telling Lies cut both ways, of course and came in many forms. There was The Hypocritical Lie: ‘Smoking Pot is bad for you.’ The Self-Aggrandizement Lie: ‘I turned down Manchester United to be a teacher.’ The Self-serving lie was the worst and was easiest to spot: ‘I have n’t done my homework, sir, because….’

The best and most unintentional lie took place as I started my second year as a teacher. There is a fine distinction between Irony and Sarcasm. Both involve the opposite of what is intended. A biting, sneering tone is used in the latter. It certainly was in this case. One hundred and eighty new first year students were crammed into the Assembly Hall for a series of (de)grading tests to allocate them into their new classes. On their first day at their new school, the sprogs, as they were fondly known, were understandably, nervous. For many, this was their first dealings with Male Teachers. After twenty minutes of writing, a timid hand was raised. ‘Please sir, when you get to the bottom of the page, do I turn over?’

‘Turn over? Do you turn over?’ The master in charge was clearly exasperated. ‘No, you turn your answer paper side ways and write in the gaps between what you’ve already written.’ This was delivered in a biting sneering tone. Had he stopped there, I think every one would have understood him and done the opposite of what he said. He could not resist, however, adding, ‘There’s Education Cuts going on, we’re trying to save paper.’ That was reasonable, they’d all heard of Education Cuts. Over half turned in essays that resembled Ancient Egyptian Papiri(uses). I know I was one of the team assigned to grade them. We took the easy way out – those who understood Sarcasm ended up in the top sets, the Undecipherable went into the bottom sets. And they say Sarcasm goes over the heads of children!

Chapter Nine

They say you always remember your first; this is true of schools as well. My first was a huge holiday camp dedicated to making the teachers happy. Happy teachers mean happy students. We were all happy from the youngest sprog to the oldest, most embittered cynic. This was mainly due to my gardening friend, the Headmaster, usually known as Ross the Boss. His genial good-humour infected us all. A rotund bear of a man, he would sometimes wander into a room where a red-faced teacher was bawling at a class. With a playful punch to the stomach, a genial smile to the class, he would wander out, situation diffused.

Sometimes on a sunny day, he would announce in the staff-room ‘Extended break. T’ kids’ll learn more in t’ sunshine than they will in class.’ So we’d have another coffee and an extra cigarette and shelve lesson three.

His assemblies were a joy! There were Bible readings, Announcements and the singing of hymns. The Boss had a rich baritone voice, frequently entertaining the male staff on their bi-termly nights out. He led from the front, the rest of the staff massed behind him on stage, shaking with hysterical silent laughter. For variety’s sake, during long hymns, he would order ‘Verse 2 girls only. Boys will sing verse 3. Only the staff to sing verse 4.’ Somebody would murmur ‘Verse 5 Caretaker and cleaners,’ or ‘Alternate words sung by girls then boys.’ The whole staff would struggle to hide their mirth, in vain. The kids, looking up to us, would smile back and Ross knew he had a happy school.

His favourite hymn was Bunyan’s ‘To be a Pilgrim’. It had a strong marching rhythm, had only three verses but, most importantly, had scope for twiddly bits. The last word on the third line of each verse allowed two extra notes to be inserted, sung boldly and only by Ross. The three words were: relent, fight and say. So if you ever felt the need to bring a staff-room to its knees with mirth, you could utter, ‘On the corridor last lesson, there was a fight-hight-hight.’ ‘You don’t say-hay-hay.’ ‘Relent-hent-hent’ was possible with practice and prior rehearsal with a stooge.

Only his camping assembly had no hymn. This was because it was for parents not students. Even Ross had not mastered the art of invigorating a hall full of parents into song. Each year we took a group of sprogs camping. Each year Ross gave his enuresis speech.

It went something like this. ‘For many of the children, this will be their first time away from home. Naturally they will be nervous and might suffer occasionally from Enuresis.’ Here he would lick his lips and wait for comprehension to dawn on some faces. It never did so he was forced to explain. ‘BEDWETTING,’ he would thunder. In my four years not one pupil ever wet his sleeping bag which is more than can be said for the teachers!

He had a simple vocabulary but was most proud of enuresis. We knew it of course and ragged him mercilessly. Sometimes, at break, he would find a group of us huddled over The Telegraph crossword, our brows furrowed with concentration. One of us would murmur ‘Eight letters, bedwetting?’ He would grow another four inches in height, adopt a nonchalant air and toss ‘Enuresis,’ over his departing shoulder. Rapturous applause would break out. This same clue seemed to appear at least twice a month but Ross never seemed to notice.

For most of the time Ross didn’t seem to have enough to occupy his mind and he took to blundering into lessons just to smile at his students or staff. Occasionally however the burden of Headship grew too heavy. He would isolate himself in his office, having first instructed his dragon-lady office guardian that he must have no visitors. Things got to crisis point one month. The Head of Maths, Edgar, needed an urgent meeting with the Boss. There being no mobile phones in the sixties, he walked up to a pay phone on the main road, and impersonating the Head of Lancashire Education, managed to be put through to Ross.

Edgar secured his meeting and was admitted to the inner sanctum. Ross had his high powered executive hat on that day. Audibly groaning with the cares of Headship, he took off his glasses and laid them carefully on the desk. With a sigh he covered his tired eyes with both hands, wearied beyond measure. When he finally looked up, Edgar had vanished and the precious glasses. Stunned he peered myopically round the office. ‘Edgar? Where the bloody ‘ell are you?’ He bellowed for the dragon lady who hastened in. ‘Did Edgar go past you just now?’ With a shake of the head she went out. Then Edgar’s head appeared from his hiding place under the desk. ‘Don’t go playing them silly management games with me. I’ve kidded thousands.’ He returned Ross’ glasses and the meeting commenced.

The only time I fell foul of Ross was one glorious summer day. Wednesday morning first two lessons, I was required to teach something called Rural Studies. Basically it was a way of occupying the ‘non-academic’ fourth years. It was also a way of getting the gardening done cheaply. Every day Tommy, the grounds man, would collect a class and set them to work hoeing, weeding or feeding the goats. Because Tommy had not endured four years of University Education, he had to have a teacher minder. On Wednesday morning I was It.

So it was that on that glorious June day I stood and watched Tommy teaching the intricacies of weeding on the front lawn whilst my nose steadily irrigated the grass. Sunny June is the high season for Hay fever sufferers as every one knows. Every one, that is, but Ross.

As the sun beat down, I dry swallowed an antihistamine tablet. The sort that says on the bottle ‘Can cause drowsiness. Do not drive, handle heavy machinery or supervise fourth year weeding.’

It was as easy to supervise sitting down as standing up. Tommy had everything under control. My back ached so I lay back to stretch it. I closed my eyes against the glare of the sun.

Dimly I became aware of a great roaring sound. The sun had been blotted out by a Ross-shaped cloud. I could make out words, harsh, humiliating, bitter words. ‘What the bloody ‘ell do I pay you for? To catch up on last night’s sleep? To let Tommy do your job for you on half your pay?’

There were fifteen classrooms on the ground floor and the same number on the second floor. Because of the weather all the windows were open. At least 600 students and staff saw and heard strips being torn off my sensitive skin. As if awakening from a deep sleep….. Oh alright, awakening from a deep sleep, I could not speak. Words like antihistamine or even allergic rhinitis refused to slip off my tongue. I made an appointment to see him at break.

Our conversation later was less one-sided but equally as futile as the first. It went something like this: ‘Every year, at this time, I suffer from allergic rhinitis.’ Like enuresis on parents, this failed to register on headteachers. ‘Hay fever,’ I almost bellowed. ‘I have hay fever.’

‘No you don’t.’ Ross cut me off at the start of my carefully prepared apology and cunningly constructed excuse. ‘There’s no such bloody thing as hay fever. It’s all in your mind.’

In vain I tried to convince him it was all in my nose and in my eyes. I showed him the instructions on the label. I tried to explain the curse of summer pollen. All to no avail. In his view it was all psychosomatic; a newly invented disease like Yuppie flu’ to excuse sleeping on the job in front of 600 tender impressionable young minds.

I might have changed his mind if he’d wandered into my next lesson. They say seven consecutive sneezes are as pleasurable as an orgasm. Thirty and still counting left me weak as a kitten: each sneeze greeted with an olé from thirty voices, my sodden handkerchief fluttering in each gust of pollen impregnated wind.

Chapter Ten

Why are the two words Capital and Corporal so interchangeable when paired with Punishment? In later years I barely raised a smile when student essays began boldly, ‘Capital Punishment should be brought back into Schools.’ By this time Corporal punishment HAD been abolished in schools and was well on the way to being abolished in homes. Parents could n’t discourage bad behaviour in their own children any more than teachers with their students. In my final years of teaching, before I took the cowardly early retirement exit-route, I was party to the following conversation.

‘Back off, Baldy, you’re invading my space. Do you fancy me? Are you gay?’ This was from a fifteen year old student (the word used laughingly here.)

‘No I am not gay. I am merely asking for a note from your parents explaining yesterday’s absence.’ I was turned sixty by this time and a senior member of staff.

‘You’ll have to talk to my brief then.’ Back when teaching was fun and corporal punishment allowed, nay encouraged, in the classrooms, I would have put the boy across a desk and convinced him that I was not only gay but also into sadistic beating of bottoms with a gym shoe.

Oh for the glory days of the sixties and seventies, when the simple question, ‘Are you chewing?’ elicited a truthful answer even when it might mean a beating. Our weapons were plentiful and chosen to suit our personalities. There were some teachers who could cheerfully slash a wooden cane across the living flesh of an open palm. Others, mainly Scientists, used the rubber tube from a Bunsen burner.

My own favourite was a size 9 gym slipper across the tightly stretched material of school uniform trousers. To lessen/lesson the blow to adolescent pride, I would make it a full blown production. My victims belonged to The Star Club. I would carefully chalk a star on the shoe’s sole which was transferred on impact to the offender’s bottom. My Table-Tennis prowess was there for all to observe as I practiced my forehand smash on the guilty party.

Amazingly, during my Rubbish Teacher Training Course, we had been given some instruction about Corporal Punishment! It was n’t practical advice like the correct grip on a gym shoe or how to administer a cane. We were taught timing: before lunchtime was good, after lunch was bad. It had something to do with the length of time a mark takes to fade. I only once forgot this rule with disastrous consequences.

Roland was a chubby, red-haired, red-faced boy. I don’t think he was any naughtier than five or six others in the class but there was something cheeky about his face that got under my skin. At 2.10pm, I yielded to temptation and slippered him. I know the time exactly because it was five minutes before afternoon break. Having done the deed, I dismissed the class and went for a coffee.

Ten minutes into the final lesson of the day my classroom door burst open. Framed dramatically were a tearful Roland and his indignant mother. She too was chubby and red-haired, her face flushed with exertion and vexation. ‘I’ve seen the mark Mr B.’ she announced. Even in her excitable state she remained respectful. Before an amused and bemused class of second years she brandished Roland’s bottom at me, naked! I had to admit that the sole shaped livid bruise was not a pretty sight, a violent red on Roland’s pink buttocks. Explaining that Roland’s cheeky face aroused unspeakable fury in me was not to be countenanced. I concentrated on exaggerating his misdemeanours, all the while struggling to keep a straight face. Eventually they left me to pick up the pieces of my shattered lesson. Roland’s shorts still had the chalk star sign on them.

Years later when I was having central heating fitted, the plumber told me he had been in my star club. I asked how he felt about my beating him, nervous about slow leaks during the night or faulty gas connections. He smiled broadly, ‘No problem but it will be reflected in the price.’ The following day, his electrician told me I had beaten him too, ‘for something I did n’t do!’ ‘What was that?’ I asked aghast.

‘My homework.’

‘Well that was fair enough,’ I opined. He disagreed and explained he had been absent when the homework was set. I was as upset as the electrician and asked why he hadn’t told me. ‘I was too scared!’

A colleague had a worse experience. He had piles, not in the bank but in his bottom. After several ineffectual creams he had to go to the hospital to have them cauterised. The offending area had been shaved; his knees were trussed up to his chest. Dimly through the soporific effects of the anaesthesia, he heard a sinister yet familiar voice murmur in his ear. ‘Hello Mr May. I’ve waited years to have you in this position.’

Chapter Eleven

Besides teaching you were expected to perform lots of other extra-curricular duties. This was especially true of the younger staff who had not yet acquired the confidence to say NO. Dinner duty was the best. For five free dinners a week you sat with the students and had ‘a civilising effect’ on their eating habits. It worked too; no food was thrown while we sat with our pupils. We even taught them to make artistic patterns in their semolina by skillfully stirring in the jam.

We were also required to patrol the school once a week during dinner break. Today’s students are allowed the run of the school during inclement weather with all the resultant litter and vandalism. Back then no student was allowed indoors except in dire circumstances like a nosebleed or diarrhea. Thursday lunch duty became games day for us. We had organised it that the Three Bees were on duty together. One of us was a French teacher and he had secured some old copies of Paris Match. Wonderfully weighty magazines, we rolled them up and cellotaped them to form truncheons.

The school was a two storey building and two exits were opened to allow toilet visits. We could have merely manned both doors and had an easy time of it but where’s the fun in that? Sometimes we deliberately took a tour of the upstairs corridors knowing that the doors downstairs were unguarded. Sure enough, within minutes a face would appear at the end of the corridor. A direct charge was out of the question – too undignified? no; pointless? Yes – they would escape outside. We used cunning. Sometimes a pincer movement did it. One of us would dart downstairs and race along the bottom of the corridor whilst the other two engaged the pupil’s attention. Sometimes one of us would hide in a classroom whilst the others would walk to the far end, tempting our victim past the door which would then open silently behind them.

Then with all the swagger of French riot police we would poke and club the miscreant to the floor with our rolled Paris Match. If you smile and deliver pain good-humouredly, the victim doesn’t suffer. They always came back for more the following Thursday.

On our teacher training course we were also taught not to mouth any threat unless we were willing and capable of carrying it out. ‘Any more of that and I’ll dangle you out of this second floor window by your ankles,’ was fine if you were teaching first years. Usually the threat was enough but in case it wasn’t, they were light enough to carry out the threat. (This was before the Obesity Epidemic that now afflicts schools.) Saying it to hulking fifteen year olds was only possible if you had a strong back and Samsonesque biceps.

Mr Wright had not been on my Training Course. We were on Break duty which meant that once a week you had to forgo your precious stress-free relaxation and supervise human chaos. Armed with no more than a mug of coffee, a cigarette and a whistle, working in pairs we would patrol the playground; administering to grazed knees with a bit of spit and a grubby handkerchief (pre-Aids days); diffusing potentially explosive situations by adjudicating whether the ball had gone wide of the pile of coats; breaking up fights slowly so the combatants could damage each other a bit.

The end of break was signaled by a piercing blast on the whistle. Several hundred bodies would freeze all sound and movement. Raw power and fearful respect demonstrated in striking tableau form. Too much noise, too slow to stop in mid-jump could mean a slippering. A second blast and the students began to queue up in forms. That was when Mr W lost it. ‘If there’s any more noise, I’ll slipper the lot of you.’ He tried to bite back the words but too late. And there was more noise!

‘Right, don’t say I didn’t warn you.’ Being his junior, I was instructed to explain to a bemused and incredulous staff-room that period three would be starting late. En masse the staff rose to observe this feat of stamina. From the back corridor they gazed in admiration as the slipper rose and fell. Whole classes shuffled forward to take their turn under Mr W’s clockwork arm. Girls, boys, first years, fifth years, all bottoms were the same to him. Not one student objected; guilty of noise or not, they took it; it was school and these things happen. Years later, after Education had made Gods of the students, had taught them their rights but not their responsibilities; I kept a class ten minutes into their break as a punishment for their unruly behaviour. The following morning I received ten letters of complaint from unruly parents! And Politicians wonder at our binge-drinking, violent, promiscuous, drug-gobbling youth!

Chapter Twelve

For your first year, you were known as a Probationary Teacher. Towards the end you were inspected and if you passed were taken off Probation. If you failed you served another year’s probation.

Nowadays whole schools are inspected by teams of retired or failed teachers. For months all paperwork is brought up to date and scrutinised in advance of the week long visit. Policies are written and every one instructed to appear to be delivering them. For a week all nerves are shredded as you wait for an unannounced visit from an expert to observe a lesson. Unruly students have suspensions cunningly timed to coincide with the visit. I would estimate that Education is hampered to the tune of six months in any Inspection year. The cost in terms of wages and hotel expenses for the Inspecting Team; lost hours of sleep, extra stress, deprivation of confidence among the Inspected; disruption to student progress is incalculable. That is the system now.

In 1966 only the probationers were told about their forthcoming inspection and then only ten days in advance. (Schools today receive months of notice to ensure maximum stress.) Furthermore probationers then were told humanely which lesson to expect the Inspector.

I had been told I was to be done lesson three, Wednesday morning, third years, Religious Education. My main specialism was English but I filled up my timetable with RE and Games. RE in those days meant the Bible, (not the Koran/Tales from Buddha or the like) and in my case it meant the Old Testament – there were some great stories in there. I treated it exactly as if I were teaching Chaucer: we’d read the original, I’d tease out the meaning then set a written exercise to test the students’ comprehension of my teaching.

For this lesson, however, I knew some extra groundwork was necessary. One week before my Inspection, I confided in the selected class. ‘I expect your form teacher has told you about next week’s visiting Educational Psychiatrist,’ I began to a sea of puzzled faces. I expressed surprise that they were not in possession of this nugget. ‘He’s coming to observe if there are any students in this lesson with behavioural problems. Once identified, they will be taken from this school and enrolled in a Correctional Facility otherwise known as the Loony Bin.’ The laughter that greeted this had a nervous edge to it. There was some glancing about as if the identification process had already begun.

I hesitated and looked sorrowfully around at tight, dry-lipped mouths. ‘I wonder if…No I daren’t do that.’ I wrestled with my conscience until their curiosity got the better of them. ‘Go on, sir. What are you thinking?’

‘Well I like this class. We have a good relationship. I’d hate to see any of you sent away. I’ve got an idea. I wonder if this might work.’ I paused for effect then outlined my plan. I was prepared with great reluctance and only because I liked them so much, to teach next week’s lesson today. Then repeat it next week. They would look good with their responses; I would get a dress rehearsal of my inspected lesson.

I have to say, with a certain amount of smugness, the plan worked like a dream. The Inspector/Ed Psych was a grave-looking man who seated himself at the back of the classroom as I admitted my nervous-looking class. Within two minutes the lesson was up and running. Some of the pupils I am sure had maybe forgotten last week’s lesson but were aware of knowledge. They were eager to display it for the benefit of the stranger in their midst. Almost leaping from their seats they sought to impress. Even the shy ones who had never previously answered questions aloud were bouncing with a desire to respond, hissing ‘Sir’, waving raised and shaking arms like Newly Born Again Baptists; only the Speaking-in-Tongues was missing.

All too soon it was over; the class dismissed and I awaited the Inspector’s verdict. He could barely contain himself. At a time when Religious Education was dying, I had breathed new life into it. My rapport with the class was stupendous. I was a gifted and caring teacher. I ought to consider switching from English to full time RE. His report would say as much. I was a Probationer no more.

Chapter Thirteen

All too soon, my first school love affair was over. I was forced to move on up the pay ladder. With only four years of teaching experience, I knew I stood no chance of becoming a Head of English Department so this was what I applied for! I reckoned three or four interviews would sharpen me to the point where I would be successful as Second in Charge of an English Department. Hopefully the present incumbent would be old enough to retire or die and then I might inherit his mantle.

Early in September, I caught a bus to a school in a semi-rural valley in East Lancashire. My heart sank as I gazed at the Victorian stone building in the gloom of what passed for a fine day thereabouts. I consoled myself that I would not be stopping longer than the time needed to gain Interview Experience.

My rivals looked a sorry bunch: a pert braless woman who was obviously making a feminist statement about the low number of females in responsible positions; an old guy who looked like he’d taken early retirement once on the grounds of ill heath but had decided to make a comeback to replace his demob suit. The only other normal person was the dreaded Internal, some one who already worked at the school and wanted promotion without leaving. This type of candidate was frequently preferred as the Head knew what he was getting. There was always a chance that the unknown candidate was a closet paedophile or worse a dinner-money thief.

The head was a lean and angular man, with a shrewd piercing gaze. As I faced him across the desk, I quailed inwardly. He would quickly pick my bones bare and discover I was only here for the experience. His first question, however, seemed reasonable enough. ‘Your letter of application shows you to be some one who considers Oral Communication to be every bit as important as the written side of English teaching. How would you go about introducing this concept here?’

‘Bleeagh. Oral Communiation,’ I began confidently enough. After all this was a subject close to my heart. ‘I important, very much, a student‘s confident. Self esteem bleeagh and furthermore there are no spellings in speech.’ The head was gazing at me rapt; his mouth fell ajar with wonder. ‘The world is mightier than the word,’ I gushed on, finishing rather lamely, ‘so it is written and that.’

One hour later, I was the new Head of English at this Secondary Modern school. The Head told me it wasn’t so much what I’d said (he’d understood not a word) but the way I’d said it. He was popularly known as Nat on account of him sharing the same surname as an England International centre forward. During my career I have served under nine head teachers and he was the best. He was not as lovable as Ross but he listened hard to what you were saying and never forgot anything. Weeks later he would ask about some plan or idea that I’d thrown about. Naturally I’d not done anything about it until he asked. Then I’d move mountains to bring it into being simply because he thought it was worth remembering.

On the bus going home, I was elated at becoming the third youngest Head of English in Lancashire along with a sizable rise in salary. I was also sad that I would be leaving Ross and my first school.

So I said my final goodbyes to my first love. I am not ashamed to admit there were tears: in public as I gave my farewell speech to my first staff. (My immediate boss described it poignantly; ‘not a dry leg in the house.’) There were private tears when I went up to my empty classroom on the second floor. I looked round at my wall displays. I thought of the students who had created these testaments to my teaching, and I cried.

I was soon to join the ranks of the Establishment putting aside the carefree youth of being an assistant teacher, assuming extra responsibilities, becoming a grown-up.

So I thought.

Chapter Fourteen

In January 1970, I boarded a bus to begin my Middle Management role. I determined to wear a cloak of gravitas as befitted my new station. I grew a moustache and vowed to put away childish things to join the ranks of the middle aged. Not a hope!

My new school wasn’t, very; new that is. It did not have a custom built staff room; it had two dingy and overcrowded rabbit hutches. One was deemed The Men’s staff room and the other was for the remaining sexes. There was one toilet attached to each room: for a minimum of fifty staff. The possibilities were endless.

Naturally I gravitated to the Men’s staff room where, without the civilising influence of the fairer sex, anarchy ruled. Burping, swearing and farting were naturally the order of the day but so too was ragging, bullying and telling of tall tales. Initially I was miserable. I had left a circle of friends behind in a bright and light building to come to this gloomy Victorian heap staffed by wild mountain men. After a few weeks, I came to love it.

One night after school, a group of us went to the Other staff room with a serious problem to solve. Somebody had said it was possible to do a circuit of the room without putting your feet to the ground, using only the coat hooks round the wall. There were several failed attempts; some made it to the window at the far end, scrambled across the radiator but could not bridge the gap where the toilet door was.

Jack brought the game to a close. He was a short stub of a man, Deputy Head no less; a member of Senior Management. Here he was, hand over handing it along the long wall. Some said afterwards, it wasn’t Jack’s weight, but all the previous attempts that caused the staff

room to be re-plastered and re-decorated. With an almighty crack and a tearing sound Jack disappeared in a pother of ancient dust. The whole wooden batten bearing the coat hooks had torn from the wall leaving a jagged fissure some twenty feet long and three feet deep.

How does a Deputy Head explain that sort of damage to a Head? Near the school was a hillock known as the Torr. If you couldn’t see the Torr, it was raining; if you could see it, it was going to rain. Certainly the valley was wet but to say half the staffroom wall had collapsed under the weight of too many sodden coats was stretching credulity. Still we got a bright new staff room out of it.

Things went quiet for some months until the Day of the Domestic Science Interviews. It used to be called Cooking and many families relied on what their daughters brought home on Tuesday evenings; Macaroni Cheese usually. (No boys EVER took this namby-pamby subject.) Naturally all DS teachers were women and a vacancy had arisen. It was a normal man thing to check out the talent in advance of the interview. Because the position was a lowly one all the applicants were straight from college in their early twenties, innocent, nubile. Form was studied, bets were taken. One of my head teachers confessed to me, ‘When in doubt, I give the job to the one with the best legs.’ (He was talking about a short list of women – I think.)

On interview days, the Men’s staff room was out of bounds to house the candidates as it was across the corridor from the Head’s study where the interviews were to take place,. The toilet was still in bounds however. I went first. Nodding politely at the four nervous girly candidates, I strode purposefully across the room and into the toilet. I didn’t lock the door. One minute later, Dave came in and strode towards the door. One of the candidates began to tell him that the toilet was engaged but too late. He strode confidently in and closed the door. Jim came next, then Peter, then Dougie. By now there were five of us crammed into the narrow cell; hands stuffed into our mouths to stifle the silent laughter.

After maybe a couple of minutes which must have seemed an age to the four perplexed innocents, we burst forth. Holding hands we skipped gaily across the room and out. Amazingly none of the candidates withdrew from the job despite this display; it was, after all, the early seventies, they were new women. The successful candidate in later years went on to become a Head in her own right. I put this down to the character forming experience of that day.

Chapter Fifteen

The problem with teaching is not the students but the teachers. This is a popular view and I quickly realised that being a Head of Department meant honing my people-handling skills. One of my head teachers told me that I ran a very ‘cohesive’ team. I think he meant we stuck together and certainly Mac was a sticky sort. He came straight into teaching from Oxford or Cambridge and was seen as a real capture for the staff of this sleepy educational backwater. Though he was on a temporary short term contract, we hoped to make it permanent and expand the English Department. He was tall with the languid body movements associated with a literary Oxbridge graduate.

His problems in the classroom were minor, he was inexperienced but popular. He confided to me, that he had money problems. We got paid monthly and as he was in his first month he had to exist on his savings. He had none. What could I do? I’d been a struggling teacher myself; with my new found wealth as Head of Department, I could afford to lend him a fortnight’s wages. So I did.

The following day he did not come to school. There was no phone call; the first we knew was when some one investigated a noisy class with no teacher. I phoned the contact number on his application form. A languid, female voice answered. ‘No Mac’s not here. I’m his mother. Does he owe you money?’ During the conversation, I learned that he had debts all over the place, not least at his Oxbridge college who would not release his degree until he had paid up. I told her, I’d leant him money but she didn’t sound in the least bit concerned nor did she make any offer to honour his debt. ‘He’s probably down in Cambridge with his chums.’ He was never seen again. Nor was my money!

Despite the reputation that teachers had in society for being upright citizens I encountered a surprising number of petty offences against the law. On my teaching practice in Stretford, close to my beloved Manchester United’s ground, I witnessed a violent altercation between a male Maths teacher and a female RE teacher. Whilst no actual punches were thrown, the language used and threats thrown disturbed my delicate sensibilities. I had assumed it was a matter of passion or unrequited love. The truth was even more horrifying. The RE teacher had parked her car in the spot often used by the Maths teacher. A couple of years later, at my next school, the whole staff room turned out to watch a fight between a senior English teacher and the Head of Handicraft over the same reason. (I am happy to report the English teacher won.)

Teachers are obviously very territorial and set in their ways. If anything disturbs a set routine, they can lose all reason. This was brought home to me as a cocky student on the first day of my final teaching practice. It was morning break and I was sitting in an easy chair coffee in hand. An elderly member of staff approached me and, somewhat testily, told me I was sitting in his chair.

Knowing what I know now, I should have immediately apologised and vacated forthwith.

However, I was in my early twenties; overblown with the confidence of being a movie star in my own classroom. I came out with some crack about chairs being communal property and only ‘bums reserve seats.’ I enjoyed the horror written on some nearby female faces. The old man’s face never changed. He merely seized me by my coat lapels and hurled me, coffee not withstanding, to the floor. Then he calmly sat down and opened his newspaper.

After this formative lesson in people managing skills, I learned that the higher your position in school, the more you had to bite your tongue and swallow hard. Head teachers, therefore were in the most vulnerable position of all. If you alienated a member of staff, his department would rally round and you found you had lost the love of a dozen teachers. This dozen would spend their break converting their friends to ‘The Head is a Bastard’ banner.

About this time there was an advert on TV about the Man from Del Monte. This handsome stranger in white tropical suit would arrive in a remote Andean village; taste the local produce; gaze seriously at the anxious villagers gathered about him. Then he would smile and nod his head. A rousing cheer, a burst of local music and a voice cried, ‘The Man from Del Monte, he say yeah.’ I became that man. I would say yes to anything and everything, and then work out later how I could honour my pledge. I became known as The Man from Bell Monte.’

Chapter Sixteen

After redecorating the staffroom, the pranks began again in earnest, as if the outcome would result in further refurbishment of the run-down school fabric. First it was the school cat’s turn to suffer indignity and imprisonment. It seems amazing in these ‘Health and Safety’ days to imagine a school allowing a cat the run of the corridors. The alternative was rats. About four times a week, an unfortunate rodent was deposited outside the staffroom for our delectation. We decided to catnap the perpetrator.

Our Senior Mistress, Mrs Pea was a harridan, protecting the virtue of our girls and the modesty of the female staff. Each Friday, long after every one had vacated the premises for the weekend break, she would return to the staffroom, collect her weekend marking from her locker and leave. She was a good sport, we argued, and wouldn’t mind a little shock to the system. The cat, trusting by nature, was easily lured in to our arms and placed in Mrs Pea’s locker. We guffawed in advance at the look on her face when she opened her locker door later that day.

We hadn’t even considered the possibility of an unannounced dental appointment which caused Mrs Pea to take her marking early, before we incarcerated the cat. All weekend it must have fretted and fumed until Monday morning. When the door was finally opened, the cat burst, spitting and snarling, from the confines of its cell and bolted. Strong hearts and stomachs were required to overcome the stench of wounded feline pride. They never advise you on your Teacher’s course how to explain away the smell of cat urine on your Science book!

We felt chastened by our cruelty to the cat and resolved to only dupe humans in the future and we had a target in mind. Sue was a young PE teacher, attractive in her own mind. Her vanity made her a suitable case for treatment. Each Friday she would struggle into the staff-room with a suitcase with her weekend clothes in. She had a boyfriend in Sheffield. Each week she caught a bus in to Manchester then a train to her boyfriend’s basement flat.

I had been chosen to do the deed. Letting slip that I had to go into Manchester after school, I was unsurprised to find her snuggling up to me at break gazing adoringly at me with her gorgeous brown eyes. No problem to take her to Piccadilly station. I would put her bag in my car and we could leave immediately on the bell at the end of school.

We chatted inconsequentially all the way to Manchester. At the station, I leaped lithely out of the car and lifted her case effortlessly from the boot and deposited it on the pavement. I shrugged off her thanks and was away before she could turn to her luggage. I watched in the rear-view mirror as she struggled to straighten and I laughed all the way home and for most of the weekend. During the last lesson, those of us who were free had emptied her case of clothes and make up, replacing them with exercise books! Whole sets of old books, unmarked books, current books. We called a halt only when I could barely lift it.

I’m not sure how long she remained angry but by Monday morning she had seen the funny side of it. Unable to move the case, after discovering its contents, she had paid a porter to transport the offending article to the Left Luggage. She had paid for a taxi on Monday to return the books to school. We had a whip round to compensate her for out of pocket expenses. She refused to elaborate on what she had done about clothes for three nights and two days (despite our considerable curiosity.)

Chapter Seventeen

When I was 21 my parents sent me £21. I was at University at the time and decided to celebrate in the time-honoured traditional student way. The deal was that I would buy the first round and the others would buy a round each. I had to drink whatever awful concoction the others came up with. Our first port of call was a high-class hotel in Leeds City centre. I ordered ten pints. The supercilious waiter sniffed and announced, ‘We don’t serve pints, sir, only halves.’ Quick as a flash I altered my order. ‘OK, bring us twenty halves then. No, make that twenty-one, it’s my birthday.’ To his eternal credit the waiter never faltered and a relay of glasses were dispatched to our tiny round, brass-dimpled table until every square inch was covered.

Seven years later in a Haslingden pub, this ritual was repeated. We were paid on the last Thursday of every month. We used that as an excuse to celebrate surviving thirty more days towards our pension. The small pub table was filled with glasses, this time, pint ones. Our dinner 'hour' was forty minutes. Being an all-male ensemble, things naturally became competitive. It wasn’t a test of drinking the most or the fastest – we were teachers with an afternoon of lessons before us. It was a test of fluid retention. Outside the staff room toilet was a notice board with a list on it. As and when you were forced to empty your bladder, you signed your name and added the time. The winner was he who went last or least.

There was no cheating; we were honourable ‘men’. There was, however, outside interference. There had been a leak, if you’ll pardon the expression. The rest of the staff became aware of our predicament, probably last month’s winner, bragging about the size of his bladder. Peak time for toilet visits was naturally at lesson change-over. Accordingly, some of the women took to getting to the loo first and spending more than a penny whilst outside a number of males danced and jigged anxiously. Occasionally one of us would crack and race fifty yards to the other staff room, not easy to do with dignity and a painfully full bladder!

One of my special drinking buddies was Mr Birtwell. A rugby player built like a prop forward who liked his beer. His preferred tipple was draft Guinness. On one of the end of term celebrations, he over did it. He’d had had, maybe twelve good pints before he drank ‘a bad ‘un.’ We were walking home when he began to vomit. Great gushers of black fluid spewed forth into a neighbour’s garden. I gently supported him as he evacuated the bad pint. He paused, looked deep into my eyes and gently murmured, ‘You know draught Guinness tastes as good coming up as it does going down.’

Chapter Eighteen

Mr Birtwell was a historian. He told me students had no sense of history; they couldn’t do the maths. To prove it during a Study of World War 2, he told his class about his war service despite the fact he would have been three years old at the time! The class of 14 year olds swallowed it totally. To add verisimilitude, he roped me into the story too.

Every Wednesday the class would have history with Mr B then troop along the corridor for English with me. The first part of the lesson, I had to deal with the latest of his preposterous lies. According to him, I had been his Commanding Officer! He told them of our war time adventures. One memorable incident was when we had been in Italy with no supplies and were literally surviving on what we could scavenge. A shell went off close by and I found Mr B covered in blood lying in a field but still breathing.

Being immensely strong and a heroic sort, I put Mr B across my shoulders and half-carried, half-dragged him nearly two miles to the field hospital. All the way there he was moaning, ‘What a waste, what a waste.’ I assumed he was talking about his young life being cut off in its prime; (ie 3 years of age!)

Anxiously I hovered as the doctor checked his vital signs, cutting away his uniform to find the wounds which had produced so much blood. The sound of the doctor’s laughter stunned me as he fished about in the bloody pulp of Mr B’s torso. When the shell went off, he had flung himself to the ground, crushing the tomatoes he had recently scavenged and stuffed down the front of his jacket. There was not a mark on him. What a waste of ten pounds of tomatoes! The kids loved it.

Then it was my turn. Mr B had turned up to his lesson sporting a black eye, a real one; sustained during his weekend rugby match. Mysteriously he refused to explain but urged them to ask their English teacher, hinting it was something to do with our wartime experiences. I was totally unprepared for the barrage of questions thrown my way so I had to improvise and told them this story.

It was 1945 which made me three years old and Mr B an imminent twinkle in his father’s eye. We were on a mission in Occupied France. I was in charge and I explained our orders to the rest of the team. A prominent member of the French Resistance had recently been captured and was imprisoned nearby awaiting the arrival of Gestapo interrogators. It would not take long for them to unlock the secrets inside his head. We had to free him or ensure his permanent silence – I mean permanent. I watched the class as they realised the implications of my last sentence. Their evident pity at my situation was touching.

Mr B was the dog man. This made perfect sense to the class as he had regaled them with tales of his modern-day pet terrier, taking walks across the moors of Oswaldtwistle. (Yes it is a real place, difficult to say but instantly familiar to the class of fourteen year olds, sitting mesmerised in front of me.)

His skills were such that he soon had the Germans’ Doberman guard dogs literally eating out of his hand; drugged meat. We made our way stealthily through the camp in the misty haze of what promised to be a fine sunny French day. Silencing guards en route, we freed our man.

It was on our return journey when all hell broke loose. We fought a running fire fight with the remaining guards and escaped. Unfortunately, our brave Resistance leader was killed by the German fire. Most of the soldiers under my command escaped alive. I paused to let the class assimilate the weight of the word ‘most’. My eyes grew moist at the memory of the fallen.

But where did Mr B’s black eye tie in? Widely reported in the local newspapers was a story about a failed Post Office robbery in Oswaldtwistle. Mr B had been in the Post Office, so my story went. Contrary to what the papers had said, it had not been a failed robbery but the attempted murder of Mr B. A ripple of astonishment swept the class or did I detect scepticism? That sort of thing didn’t happen in Oswaldtwistle.

Some of the class were aware that a foreign man was ‘helping the police with their inquiries.’ I nodded triumphantly. ‘He was French.’ My words fell with the weight of steel girders. Some of the slower ones began asking their neighbours. I hurried to give them the ending.

The Frenchman was the son of the Resistance leader, convinced that his father had been murdered by English commandos. Papers recently released by the War Office had implicated me and my team. The Frenchman had confronted Mr B in Oswaldtwistle Post Office. There had been a struggle, an unspecified weapon had been recovered and thanks to Mr B’s commando training his only injury had been a black eye.

There was a clock on the classroom wall. I watched the second finger tick towards the bell for the end of the lesson. Then I delivered the perfect ending; ‘The police found a list of names on the Frenchman. I was next on the list. Mr B probably saved my life.’ I strode from the room, head hung low, humbly, counting my blessings.

Chapter Nineteen

There’s a great many newspaper reports about violence towards teachers as if this were a new thing. It has always been there; from parents mainly. What is new is the rise in violence towards teachers from students. Society has made ‘youf culture’ all important so it is no surprise that youth feels confident enough to take on the two main bastions of society: the police and teachers.

I experienced my first violence on Teaching Practice near Old Trafford football ground. I taught Games, which in Manchester meant football. The Head of PE needed to leave school early and asked me to supervise the showers then lock up. One student, irked because he’d been on the losing side, decided on a go-slow protest. He was last out of the showers then took an inordinate time towelling himself dry.

Ordinarily I am a patient man but I had a bus to catch. I gave the lad an ultimatum; hurry up or I would throw his clothes outside the building, so I could lock up and leave him to get dressed outside at his considerable leisure. When I carried out my threat, he went into overdrive, dressed then confronted me as I made my way across the playground.

The skirmish was over before it started: I was older, stronger, bigger. The next morning as I handed the keys back to the PE teacher, I casually mentioned the incident. The first lesson of the day, as luck would have it, I was teaching the same class, this time English. The lad was a bit sullen but both of us were taken aback when the Head of PE asked if he could borrow the student to help out at the gym.

At break I learned that no fewer than three other teachers had visited the gym and ‘made the boy feel very uncomfortable.’ Fast forward thirty seven years to another occasion when a fifteen year old offered violence towards my person.

I was now Head of English and as such responsible for discipline not just in my own classes but those of the dozen or so staff in my Faculty. I had been summoned to remove a recalcitrant student from a junior teacher’s lesson. Normally the routine was easy. I was a venerable sixty something; a senior teacher with my own office. I merely had to crook my finger and the problem would be resolved.

Higgins hadn’t read the script however. It took a lot of persuading to get him to leave the classroom. Outside, on the corridor, he became violent. I had two choices; run away to the Head teacher’s office or use ‘reasonable force’. This phrase had come into being with the demise of Corporal Punishment.

Eventually, I managed to overpower him to the point where I got him to the Head’s office. I handed the miscreant over to the powers-that-be and left expecting Higgins to be expelled or at the least to have a heavy suspension. (By heavy, I mean ten school days; the maximum allowed under these ludicrous rules.)

There followed an uneasy two or three days when, not only was Higgins in school, but seemingly untouchable, strutting his stuff; glaring menacingly at me on the corridor; being followed by an adoring crowd of acolytes. Eventually I saw the Head. What he said left me devastated. Higgins had told him that I had beaten him up and thrown him down the stairs. He wasn’t being investigated, I was. Furthermore he had a witness.

For three days my future hung in the balance. If I was deemed guilty of assault on a student, I might be dismissed, face police charges. What would happen to the pension I had built up during my long career? I wandered round in a daze. I couldn’t concentrate in lessons so I began my own investigations. The ‘assault’ had taken place in my English block. The witness had been seated in an adjoining classroom and had seen me beating Higgins up through a window in the door. I asked the English teacher to show me where the witness sat in her class.

From my seat at his desk I could see nothing of where my assault took place. Later that lunch time, I conveyed my findings to any one who’d listen to me. A Tech Drawing teacher was sympathetic. ‘Higgins did the same thing two years ago; same witness too.’ He took me to their office and found the relevant report. Higgins had accused a(nother) Senior teacher of assault. His witness verified it but cracked when interrogated further, admitting Higgins had coerced him into lying. Armed with a photocopy of the report I returned to the Head. I was home free; there was no apology for doubting my word; no compensation for the stress experienced when my retirement pension was under threat. Higgins confessed and was punished to the full extent of the law: he had to do two detentions after school! I began to make plans for early retirement. The dice was too heavily loaded in favour of the student.

Chapter Twenty

Violence in schools, whether legalised or not, has been around for my entire teaching career. Pupil on pupil was commonplace. Playground fights, often sportingly arranged to take place after school, were regular. Spontaneous ones during breaks or at lunch were rarer. It was up to the duty staff how they dealt with it. If it was one-sided, a bigger or older pupil against weaker opposition, it was quickly broken up. Occasionally the teachers were tardy and appeared to be more interested in crowd control than separating the combatants. This was especially true if the two were well matched or one was an unpopular student in danger of being well beaten.

Teacher on teacher fights were rarer and drew no crowds. Usually they took place long after the students had gone home or during our half-termly ‘socials’. I was involved in one myself. I am a pacifist by nature having a healthy fear of being hurt but for Ronnie, I made an exception. He was a horrible little man. Note the word little’ which may explain why I got involved. He had pursued, with amorous intent, a female member of my Department. She sought my help.

‘I’ve tried to let him down politely but he keeps trying to embrace me and saying suggestive things.’

‘I’ll have a word,’ I growled in my masterful voice.

I strode up to him in what I imagined to be a menacing way. ‘Ronnie, a word to the wise. You are distressing Miss Sykes with your attentions. Cut it out, will you?’

‘Or else what? Sir Galahad are we tonight?’

I had tried the polite approach and it had fallen on deaf ears. It was time for the impolite attempt. ‘Or I’ll take you outside on the carpark and beat seven bells out of you.’ (My actual words did not contain any reference to bells.)

‘Right, I’ve had enough of you, taking the piss.’ (This was reference to a teaching alphabet he had once proudly pinned up in his classroom. It began ‘A is for Astronaut,’ which I pointed out was difficult enough for the slow learners without the spelling mistake he had included.)

So, we staggered outside. The Duke of Wellington had a roomy car park, half full of teachers’ cars whose drivers now stood around us in a semi-drunken circle. (This was in pre-breathaliser days.)

I had no idea how to start a fight so took my lead from Ronnie. He was almost a head shorter than me; certainly, drunker than I was but his dander was well and truly up. He kept rushing at me flailing with both arms. I easily fended him off. Eventually when I noticed the audience had got bored with this non-event and begun drifting back inside, I was forced to hit him. It was really an apologetic poke on the nose rather than a roundhouse right. It stopped him in mid-tracks; his nose began to bleed and he started to cry. I was immediately sorry and put my arm round him and ushered him into the toilets. We remained uneasy colleagues for another two years.

More frequent and certainly popular with the students was the parent teacher violence. They could not be called fights in the true sense of the word as usually the teacher was a bespectacled academic who had had the misfortune to punish the son of a burly farmer.

I remember two however which resulted in rare victories for the home side. Mr C was peacefully teaching history in the safety of his classroom when an irate parent burst in. I can’t imagine he was there to complain about insufficient history homework being set, so I assume it was a revenge attack for some act of violence perpetrated on his son. Despite having his glasses broken in the opening round, Mr C gave as good as he got and managed to wrestle the parent out of the classroom and on to the corridor where teacher reinforcements separated them. After negotiations involving police, the parent paid for new glasses for Mr C.

The second home win was even more satisfying as it involved me. By now I would be in my late forties. In-built inertia meant I was still at the same school though in a new building. Staying too long in one place could cause second generation problems though it also had its joys. At Parents Nights, for example, the conversation might begin, ‘I’m here about Ben. Do you remember me, Mr B? You taught me in 1973?’ Little Ben would then be forgotten as we reminisced about the good old days and how Corporal Punishment made the parent the success he was today. Those warm conversations usually ended, ‘Never mind what the Government says, Mr Bell, if little Ben steps out of line, you have my permission to clutter him.’

Occasionally, however, the opposite was true. There were problem families where the sins of the fathers were visited on to the next generations. I had fallen foul of the Storeys; the name has been changed to prevent the public at large from identifying them as the nest of vipers they were. They say genes can skip a generation but in my three generations of dealing with them, they were all the same: foul-mouthed, bullying, disruptive and almost any negative adjective you can think of.

Years earlier, I had skirmished with the son and resorted to corporeally punishing him. This incensed the father who came to a Parents Night, (for the first time ever) in order to rebuke me. Harsh words were exchanged but no blows. It is extremely difficult to argue with stupid people as they are too thick to understand reasoning. I resorted to invective and told him straight that the reason his son was such a bad student was because he was such a bad father who encouraged his son’s disruptive behaviour by the sort of support he was showing now.

We parted for many years until the day I had occasion to punish his son’s son. The first I knew of it was when Grandfather Storey leapt from a parked taxi one morning as I arrived. I had not associated the punished student with this rogue family until this bloated madman seized my jacket as I tried to cross the car-park. In full view of many sixth form students gathered round the windows, they saw their revered Head of English accosted.

Surprised and hampered by a set of exercise books that constituted my social life most nights, I lost round one. He forced me back against the bonnet of my car, all the while roaring what he was going to do to me. All of a sudden, I was angry at the situation, where simply doing your job, left you exposed to this sort of treatment and from such a slob.

I remember carefully putting the set of books on the car, difficult as he had me by the lapels of my jacket and was shaking me. I looked him in his bloodshot eyes and calmly warned him. ‘If you don’t take your hands off me this instant, I’m going to beat the shit out of you.’

I was particularly pleased with the effects of my words. All the students began cheering as they saw their favourite worm turn. Storey’s mouth sagged open in surprise at this unteacherly address. Before he could recover, I took hold of his fingers and bent them back against the joints. He suddenly found himself on his knees in pain and disgrace. I was feeling very pleased with myself and rather gracious. I spoke quietly. ‘I have maybe one hundred witnesses who saw you assault me, while I only had one hand free. If I call the police you’ll be in big trouble. If you leave now, quietly, we can both get on with our lives.’ I released him and turned away and strode my dignified way into school. I heard the taxi start up behind me, drowning out the sound of applause from the VIth Form .

STOP PRESS

My first book was completed with help of Haslingden students. I am still receiving that help nearly fifty years on. Mark Alston just sent me this report – I have quoted it almost word-for-word.

'It was around 1979 ish. I was in 4p and you were my English teacher. Other people in my class that you might recall included Michelle Richardson, Tony Hayton and Ian Fleming....anyway; Our exam texts included ‘Lord of the Flies’ and ‘The Merchant of Venice’. I’m guessing it was Merchant of Venice day as I’d lost concentration.

We were in one of those rooms down the steps, passed the cloak room in the old building (F1/F2) It had views of the tennis courts that were never used for tennis ... smoking courts? I was sitting about three rows back, near a window next to Nile Pawson (was Nile Haydon) and out of your line of sight. Nile & I we’re playing a game of dare! It worked like this. One of us would place our hand on the desk, palm up and fingers splayed. The other would stab a compass between the spread fingers. Increasing speed all the time, whilst staring intensely ahead at the teacher. In this case you!

“The quality of mercy is not strained” -faster & faster - “it droppeth as the” - eyes ahead, don’t look, faster still - “gentle rain ......”. You stop mid-sentence as a jet of blood shoots up into the air. I pull the compass out of Nile’s wrist and a second geyser pumps out again. The human body is amazing. The first squirt was about 4 feet high, the second about 2 feet, the third just a few centimetres and then it stopped! There was nothing to see except a small lump on Niall’s wrist! Funny thing is I can’t remember what happened next. I’d love to wax lyrical about an extreme punishment, but I think you just gave us a stern look and carried on reading!'

As Mark said above this particular scene was all about Mercy and how a pound of flesh (Niall’s) was to be taken without the spilling of blood. Neither Shylock nor Mark managed it!

Chapter Twenty-one

Violence by students against teachers has become more popular. The more important society made the student feel, the more antagonistic he or she became towards society. I suspect attacks on police have multiplied during this same period though there is a minimum height requirement for joining the police force. (It used to be 5 foot eight inches when I was sixteen and had just crossed the five-foot barrier.) No such Heightism existed for entry into the Teaching Profession – perhaps a Karate Black belt might have been enforced.

The most common scenario was a male student versus a male teacher. There might have been some loss of face like the confiscation of a football; or some particularly cruel comment struck a nerve. Tempers might have been lost by both sides, some blows might have been thrown; some might have even landed.

My story, however, is untypical. My assailant was female, I am using the word kindly. As a senior member of staff, I was patrolling the corridors when I heard raised voices. A young female teacher was embroiled with a reluctant student. Sir Galahad rode to the rescue. It was just after break on a cold winter morning. The teacher had ordered the student to move from the back of the classroom to a desk at the front. Unfortunately, this new desk was not near a radiator. The student, best described as butch, sat in a black donkey jacket, obstinately clutching the radiator to her huge bosoms. (I use the plural to convey some idea of scale.) I was told her name was Karen.

Seeking to keep the situation low-key, I tried for the reasonable approach. ‘Come on Karen, do as Miss says and then the lesson can start.’ Karen stared back from piggy little eyes set in a fat, raw-pastry face. ‘I’m cold.’ No sir, just the flat statement of intent; she was not going to move. My voice took on a harder note. ‘Karen, you’re making things worse for yourself. Just move to the front and we don’t have to involve the Headmaster.’ There was no response but I could hear the wheels turning in her tiny brain.

My patience ran out before her mind had grasped the situation. ‘Right. Outside now. We’ll see what Mr Grind makes of it.’ The Head’s name had the desired effect. He was universally admired and respected, a by-word for fairness. She lumbered to her feet and dragged herself towards the door. Standing up she was even more intimidating. If she had even cast a glance at the alternative desk, I would have called it a draw and run out for the safety of a Karenless corridor. She pushed past me with all the power of a driverless bulldozer.

We set off in a strained silence and I had begun to think the situation had been defused. We crossed the quad and came to the usual entrance to the building housing Mr Grind’s office. Karen turned left away from the door. I put my body in front of hers.

‘You are going the wrong way Karen.’

She sniffed and stared at me. I had the impression I was having to raise my eyes to hers. ‘I’m going this way.’ This meant walking the full periphery of the building. I had the urge to reason with her and point out that she was supposed to be cold. Instead I lost my temper.

‘You are going in the normal way.’ I started to hustle her towards the door. She resisted with all the strength of her considerable bulk. At the time I was nursing a shoulder strain sustained on the squash court. Even pushing a door open was painful. I managed it and began propelling her towards the second set of porch doors. Unfortunately I hadn’t reckoned on the mat. It was a great hairy beast designed to clean off some of the playground mud before hundreds of feet tramped it across the corridors and classrooms.

I am not sure who lost their footing first but we both went down. As we struggled to orient our selves on the mat, the outside door opened and the Head of PE jinked in. He was a great cross country runner and he used to train by darting his way from sports hall to changing rooms. He never broke stride. There was the Head of English writhing about on the floor with a vaguely female student, obviously engaged in some curious sexual congress; with a lithe bound he was over us and through the next set of doors and gone before I could ask for help. And help I needed. Once down Karen was seemingly unable or unwilling to get up.

With a superhuman effort, ignoring the pain, I dragged her upright and began to force her the fifty metres to Mr Grind’s office. She resisted all the way. By the time I flung open his door, I was exhausted; sweating, red of face and short of breath. I couldn’t speak. My chest was heaving, heart pounding, thighs quivering. I could only point at Karen. Mr Grind’s face remained impassive whatever he thought of the madman at his door. He stood. ‘Thank you, Mr B., I’ll take over from here.’ And he did.

Chapter Twenty-two

The names of the teachers have been changed.

Of all the great characters who have crossed my path over thirty-eight years, Mr. Edwards is the one for whom I have the most affection. He was a great raconteur, a practical joker, a liar for whom the words ‘dead pan’ had been invented. He could face a class with an utterly serious face and tell them of his latest success as a vegetable grower. His prize marrow had won first prize at Edenfield’s Annual show. Whereupon he had donated it to the local Scout troop who had hollowed it out to make a canoe! He convinced many generations of students that he was the first gardener in England to grow red cabbage.

He had a wonderful long-standing relationship with Mr Drone, both of them affecting dislike for each other in front of the students whilst being the best of pals in private. ‘When Mr Drone was much younger, he won second prize in a beautiful baby contest.’ He paused to allow the puzzled class to digest an unheard-of compliment to his arch enemy before adding, ‘A pig came first.’

Once, Mr Drone decided to play a joke on Mr. Edwards. His classroom abutted mine in a prefab in the playground. There was a small cloakroom/washroom between us where we used to meet for a cigarette once our classes were busy. Mr Drone came down and, puffing on his cigarette began puffing smoke through the keyhole to Mr. Edwards’s classroom. Realising this was Mr Drone’s doing, he dropped a small boy through the window to alert the school to a fire in the cloakroom.

I think he over did the serious talk he had with the boy. Within minutes, two burly firemen carrying axes, burst into the cloakroom to discover the deputy head, on his knees blowing smoke, chortling with glee at Mr. Edwards’s efforts to quieten his panic-stricken class. Luckily the firemen saw the funny side and the fire station was only fifty yards up the road.

Mr. Edwards used to regale us with stories about the time he served his Woodworking Apprenticeship making coffins for the local undertaker. He would evoke the atmosphere of a young boy working late in the night surrounded by coffins and the occasional body. Apparently, the bodies would make noises as gases were emitted and fluids settled. It was a scary hour to be working overtime.

He told us of a hitherto unheard-of phenomenon called rigor mortis erectus. Sometimes a corpse, male obviously, would develop an erection whilst waiting for the coffin lid to be fabricated and fastened in place. One occasion left him in an awkward predicament. No amount of manipulation would enable the erection to be strapped into a position to accommodate the lid. Time was too short to make a deeper coffin. Eventually he was forced to bore a hole in the lid of the coffin and fit the erect organ through the hole where it still protruded by an inch or so. Then he reached for his electric sander. The entire male audience would involuntarily gasp and simultaneously cross their legs.

Perhaps his greatest coup came at a staff end of term party. As was customary it was held in a private room of a pub. Always the socialite, Mr. Edwards had been circulating round various groups and there was talk of money changing hands. Eventually he happened to arrive at the side of the then Head of English, Tony. Like so many Heads of English, he was narcissistic; a great keep-fitter. It was rumoured, mainly by Tony, that he did fifty push-ups every day. The conversation went something like this.

‘Still keeping fit are you, Tony?’

‘Of course, my body is my temple. I worship it every day.’

‘Some one told me you could do 20 press-ups at one go.’

A snort of derision greeted this paltry figure. Mr. Edwards went on. ‘I told them that was just propaganda. I bet you couldn’t do ten at one go.’

‘How much do you bet?’ Tony was eager to show off and make some money.

‘I bet you a fiver, you can’t do ten push-ups now.’

‘Easy money,’ said Tony and dropped to the floor and began pumping flesh. Mr. Edwards watched ruefully as the man easily did the required number and jumped lithely to his feet, holding out his hand. With a sigh the fiver changed hands. Tony laughed as Mr. Edwards left, a beaten man. He was a little puzzled to see a crowd begin to gather round and noticed a number of wallets being produced.

He pushed his muscular way over. ‘What’s going on?’ Even Mr. Edwards had the good grace to look a little sheepish as he replied. ‘I just bet a large number of people here, that I could make a senior member of staff perform push-ups for them.’ He smiled beatifically, ‘Despite the fiver I had to give you, I reckon I’m £34 up on the night.’

Amongst his other gifts, Mr Edwards was a wart-charmer. Notice I wrote ‘was’, not ‘claimed to be’. I can only report what I saw. I’d like to do the report with tongue in cheek as I’m a cynic about many things: bankers; politicians; religion and the occult. What I saw prevents me from my usual cynicism.

My youngest daughter had warts on the back of her hand; she would be about four years of age. She would probably have never minded them were it not for her older brother. He delighted in drawing attention to them with some cruel puns. ‘Wart’s the matter with you?’ he would quip; or solicitously ask if she wanted ‘a glass of warter’.

Of course, we visited the doctor who gave us various useless potions and creams.

One day after a session of Mr. Edwards’ tall tales, I approached him over his earlier claim to be a wart charmer. He agreed to see my daughter as soon as possible after his fortnight’s holiday as he was leaving the following day.

I knew that part of the ‘magic’ was belief so after school I repeated to my daughter some of the stories about wart charming. Some charmers used pieces of raw meat with their spells. The meat was rubbed over the offending warts. After burying the meat (in various magic places like the Crossroads) or at mystical times (midnight or Mid-summer night), the worms would eat the meat and consume the virus causing the warts.

It was like a compendium of bedtime stories all with happy endings as, dressed in her pyjamas, propped up against a pillow, she hid her disfigurement beneath the bedclothes. Then the phone rang. It was Mr. Edwards. His packing was complete; he had a fifteen-minute window of opportunity if I could bring my daughter to his house immediately.

My daughter burst into tears of joy as I bundled her into the car and drove the couple of miles to the wizard’s house. He was waiting most unwizard-like in a cardigan in his front room. There was no attempt at mystique; he merely examined the cluster of warts on my daughter’s right hand; spat on three of his own fingers and intoned the following in a normal tone: ‘I viggie, viggie, viggie thee.’ All the time he rubbed his spit into my daughter’s hand. He repeated these three times and then ‘They’ll be gone before I get back from Scotland.’

Naturally we checked each morning for a week. Then we forgot and got on with our lives. One morning I remembered and checked. They were completely gone and Mr. Edwards was due back the next day.

One last story sums Mr. Edwards up perfectly. It concerns one of my most regrettable lessons. Most young writers concentrate on plot with an adventure on every line. I was trying to teach DD or Descriptive Detail. I decided to fake a heart attack! The plot line was simple – teacher begins to feel unwell and gently collapses at his desk. My young writers would observe this incident then later try to capture it on paper. For this I needed help from the teacher next door. He remained deadpan whilst I outlined this exciting lesson idea.

A few minutes into the lesson, I began to falter in my delivery. I started to rub my chest. I stopped pacing about and sat down at my desk. Gently I lowered my head onto the desk; my words of wisdom tailed off. In the silence that followed, I could hear comments of concern mainly from the girls; the boys seemed to think I was fooling. Someone said, ‘He’s had a heart attack; ' someone else, thankfully, said, ‘Get Mr. Edwards.’

He came in unusually emotional for someone so used to keeping a straight face. He hovered over me rapping out questions at the class. ‘You, get a glass of water from the washrooms outside.’ Whilst this was being brought he continued his ministrations. The water arrived. ‘Thank goodness for that,’ he said and proceeded to drink it all in one gulp. I think that was when the penny dropped for the rest of the class. The resultant writing was all I hoped it would be but many students rebuked me for dying on them. All congratulated Mr. Edwards for defusing the situation.

Under his tutelage I became as adept as he at deadpan delivery. One day he brought a student teacher to me and introduced him with the words, ‘He’s thinking of having a vasectomy.’

Chapter Twenty-three

Of course, I was the expert on vasectomies: the only one on the staff to have had this mutilation done. I checked in to Bury General as an In-patient. I was given the choice of Local or General anaesthetic. This was a no-brainer; I elected to be put under. After a quick shave of the nether regions (not by an ex-student, I faced the knife.) A couple of hours later I awoke in indescribable agony with balls swollen to Herculean size. (Not sure if he did have big ones but the adjective fits.) I inched gingerly into my going-home clothes; climbed painfully into my trusty Robin Reliant (the suspension was not designed for drivers with swollen testes, and, anaesthetic not withstanding, drove home to Ramsbottom.

One month after the op, I was to take a sample to the hospital to check that my sperm was now sterile. The stipulation was that the sample had to be fresh and the clinic closed at 4pm. By getting some-one to cover my final class for ten minutes, I sloped off to a remote toilet. With difficulty, in these unerotic surroundings, I successfully produced the required sample. Slipping out of the toilet, I came face-to-face with the Senior Mistress. Her look of disgust showed she knew exactly what I’d been doing. Placing the plastic container in my pocket I sprinted for my car.

Twenty minutes later I handed it to the receptionist. ‘Oh,’ she gasped, reddening visibly, ‘I was about to ask if the sample was fresh. It obviously is; it’s red hot.’

So, I faced the young would-be teacher with some confidence. He had married his student girl friend when she was pregnant. Another baby followed soon after. I don’t think he knew where babies came from. Now he was asking me about the operation.

‘Well you can have it done under local anaesthetic and drive home but I opted for a general. I didn’t fancy seeing all the nurses laughing and pointing at my privates.’ He nodded sympathetically.

‘But what does the operation consist of?’ he asked earnestly.

‘Well to put it bluntly,’ I replied, ‘they cut your balls off.’

His mouth fell open in disbelief, so I hastened on.

‘Don’t worry,’ I laughed, ‘you don’t look deformed or anything. They sew imitation ones in so your sac looks perfectly normal. Made of silicon,’ I added.

‘Mind you, there is one thing I could do without. Sometimes when I’m walking down a quiet corridor at school, if I’m wearing boxer shorts, I can hear them chinking together. I think some of the students have started to listen for me.’

He sat stunned as I walked away. We heard later his girl friend was expecting again.

Chapter Twenty-four

When I first started teaching, I used to joke about the perks of the job. ‘£46 a month and all the chalk you can eat.’ As I gained seniority, I learned that you could arrange your own perks. Of course, as an assistant teacher, I’d taken pupils camping in Grassington and sat shivering round a campfire, eating cold beans, determined to enjoy myself as it was free. Then I had my first foreign holiday ‘on the house’.

My friend Al had already signed up for the annual trip to Switzerland and I sat in the staffroom, secretly envying him and the other three teachers who were going on this freebie. Then a marvellous thing happened; one of the staff got pregnant. They sought a replacement female teacher. Staff/pupil ratios decreed four staff for forty students, two of each sex. As none of the other female staff were willing or able to give up their pre-arranged holidays, I became an honorary woman. There was none of this political correctness or Health and Safety regime in the good old days.

Al and I were on one of our non-smoking jags at the time but we agreed to smoke abroad; after all it’s practically compulsory in France and half the price. Thus, it was as the coach pulled away, tearful students waving goodbye to relieved parents, Al produced a ten packet of Nelsons. Flying through the night en route for Dover, we worked our way steadily through the packet.

On board ship it was time for breakfast. Whilst I contemplated the price of a full English, Al decided on a beer! It was 6am. Not being a prude, I forewent breakfast in favour of a cognac and coffee. They were very more-ish. When we climbed aboard the coach in France all three male teachers were pleasantly unbreakfasted in charge of forty students. We slept till lunch.

Being an ‘educational’ trip, the students were given ten francs to buy their own lunch. Al and I found a quiet bistro where we ate bread and cheese, pain et fromage accompanied by a litre carafe of vin rouge. Our alcohol levels topped up, we slept till Rheims where we were to spend the night at a pre-booked hotel. Al and I shared room 16, seize in French.

After dinner, Al, myself and Mick the coach driver hit the town. Al and I decided we would not be having any alcohol. We found ourselves in a lively bar where many young French were ordering something called diable menthe. I translated this as Devil Mint. We liked the sound of it and ordered a round. They were green and very refreshing. After four drinks, we fell in love with the bar maid. Her name was Giselle. She was very French, a coquette and readily agreed to come to our hotel room when she finished her shift.

Once back in room 16, a squabble broke out about who was to have the bed nearest the door through which Giselle would come. I won the toss and we both lay back in feverish anticipation. Soon the Devil Mint worked its magic and the last coherent thought that flashed through my addled brain was the certainty that in my schoolboy French, I had told Giselle chambre treize, not seize. Room 13 might prove lucky for some one. I imagined her walking unannounced into the married teachers’ room.

Over breakfast Al and I sniped irritably at each other. Only the arrival of Mick brought a halt to our wrangling. Fat and cheerful he tucked into his breakfast with gusto, swallowing each mouthful of food down with thick French coffee. I eyed him uncomfortably, a suspicion growing like toothache. ‘Did you sleep alright?’ I asked.

‘Like a top, mate,’ he answered cheerily. Not once throughout the meal did he ask about our planned night of passion with Giselle.

‘What room were you in?’ I was struggling to keep my voice steady.

‘Just down from you, mate. Room 13 numero treize.’

I stared hard at his inscrutable cockney face but discerned nothing.

Chapter Twenty-five

We put Giselle behind us and started to climb the Alps. We had been assured that we had only one travel sick patient; Anderson and he assured us he had taken his tablet at the required time. As we swerved round hairpin bends, always climbing, my admiration for Mick returned, replacing my jealous suspicions. Gazing through the windows at alternately blank rock faces or dizzying drops, there were more than a few green faces.

Finally, we pulled up outside the Semi Ramis Hotel and immediately cancelled the football match. We had contacted the local school and arranged to play a friendly between two teams of teachers and pupils from each school. As we fought for oxygen carrying our cases from coach to reception, we realised we wouldn’t last ten minutes.

Our host was an ebullient Swiss French named Henri. He was ebullient as each of the four English teachers presented him with a bottle of whiskey as pre-arranged. He gave us the Duty-Free price in Swiss francs then proceeded to sell it back to us over the next six days at the equivalent of £60 a bottle. We had a serious talk with him about serving alcohol to our students, none of whom were older than sixteen. We had a plan: Beer X.

First night after dinner which had been roundly condemned by many as ‘foreign muck’, some of our older lads sidled furtively up to the bar. Checking to see no teachers were watching, Henri winked and served them. All that first night the lads poured copious quantities of non-alcoholic beer down their necks. Some even managed to get drunk, slurring their words and walking unsteadily to the toilet. Autosuggestion is a powerful thing.

Henri meant well but he had the Sadim touch. Like a backward Midas, everything he touched turned to dross. There was the torchlight parade where every student was issued with a living flame torch and ordered to walk around the village under the low-hanging wooden eaves of the mainly wooden buildings. The first six or seven students were fine but as yet another flaming torch was applied to an already smouldering timber, the alarm was raised, the torches confiscated, the parade cancelled and back we went for another night of Beer X.

His piece de resistance was the Treasure Hunt. Valuable prizes had been secreted about the hotel and grounds. Bits of paper were issued with clues on them. No teacher was allowed to take part on account of their supposed greater intellect. We sat and watched forty hysterical children rush about madly and in vain. All afternoon we watched them get redder and more and more frustrated as despite seeming to follow the instructions no one had actually found one of the ‘valuable prizes. It seems that Henri’s spoken English was fine but when writing in English he got ‘right’ and ‘left’ confused.

We spent a very pleasant week in Switzerland though I don’t remember doing any thing ‘educational’ with the students. We took a ski-lift up a further 3000 feet. I remember being unable to keep a cigarette burning so scarce was the oxygen. But all too soon it was time to go home.

Henri waved us a tearful goodbye; no more customers for his whiskey rip-off. Mick started the engine; Anderson immediately deposited his breakfast in the handy vomit bag. He handed it to me; I passed it smartly to Al who handed it to the female teacher just as the soggy bottom split open. The coach stank of sick all the way back to Haslingden.

Chapter Twenty-six

Once this precedent of a free holiday had been set, I began to avail myself of it every year. I love camping yet all the family holidays in England under canvas were disasters. I can remember digging a drainage ditch round the tent on Anglesey to avoid the family home floating away. In Cornwall I remember employing a team of children to each pick up a leg of the tent and carry it to higher ground. Even crossing the sea to the Channel Islands didn’t bring any better luck – we chose the year of The Fastnet Gale!

A free holiday in the South of France was, therefore, impossible to resist. Each year we would be driven 23 hours on a coach in search of sun. For most of the passengers it was not only their first trip out of England but their first trip out of town! Their eyes were big with wonder and so ripe for some merciless ribbing from the staff.

We convinced one set of nervous students that the coach driver hadn’t passed his test and that was the reason he drove all through France on the wrong side of the road. Our best pranks were reserved, however, for the camp site. It was a PGL Water sports holiday. Nobody knew what PGL stood for so we told them it was short for Parents Get Lost.

J K Rowling’s latest money-printing machine is entitled ‘Fantastic Beasts and Where to find them.’ I’ve got news for her; we did it first. The humble scorpion is not that fantastic, nor does it live anywhere near our French campsite, yet ask any of our gullible students and they will solemnly relate how they suffered a plague of them.

The first job on alighting from our coach into the sunshine of France was to allocate tents. This had all been pre-planned to avoid too many troublesome boys in the same tent. After their luggage had been stowed each tent was issued with a Scorpion kit. The staff explained that the scorpion’s sting was not usually fatal but certain precautions were necessary. A plastic bag was issued to each tent and the students were given fifteen minutes to follow the instructions printed on (scanned) headed PGL notepaper to scorpion-proof their tent.

The bag contained two lolly sticks (unused) and a piece of string. By tying the string tautly between the two sticks at a precise height of two inches from the floor, the tent’s occupants were protected. We painted a mental picture of the scorpion headed in determined fashion towards the door of the tent – its sting already raised menacingly. As it tried to scuttle under the string, it was swung vertically in a complete circle until it faced the other way. No matter how many times it tried to enter, the string swivelled it away until it gave up and tottered dizzily away. Every year we listened to stories of numerous sightings or tent invasions because the string wasn’t tight enough.

The most fantastic beast however was the infamous gummy shark. This invention had initially served a serious purpose. A ring of buoys across our bay indicated a safe area beyond which naughty boys must not venture. ‘Pour encourager les autres’, as the French say, the gummy shark was invented. It lived outside the ring of buoys which allegedly supported a shark net. As the name suggests this particular breed of shark had no teeth but it could give you a right good gumming.

Every succeeding year there were constant ‘sightings’ of the gummies by highly imaginative students. With no TV in the evenings, some students were invited to describe their shark encounters for the amusement of the staff. This was all very hilarious until I had my own encounter!

My partner and I were in a small sailing boat supervising pairs of students in similar craft. At the extreme edge of the ‘shark net’, a couple of girls had capsized and couldn't right their boat. My colleague and I sailed expertly over and rescued the girls and sent them on their way. In doing so we managed to overturn our own boat. We were expert in the technique of righting capsized craft. We took up our positions on opposite sides, one to pull down, the other to push up and began our exertions. It was then the shark struck.

My leg was seized between two clammy jaws. Despite being present when we invented this fantastic creature, I knew instinctively what it was. I roared in fright and gasped to my partner that I was being gummed by a shark. I could feel the two jaws rubbing and gnawing at my calf and thigh. The more I thrashed about the tighter the jaws clamped on my leg. It was only when my partner managed to quiet my terrified roars that she managed to convince me that it was her legs I could feel under the boat and not some ravening beast. What a tale I had to tell round the campfire that night.

Chapter Twenty-seven

Going to France wasn’t just to create a freebie for impoverished teachers. It was intended to broaden the mind; assist in the acquisition of French customs and the French language. On early trips before the Euro rip-off, we would reimburse the students with a ten franc note and they would be encouraged to buy their own lunch. Nobody taught me what a kilo of jambon/ham looks like. It took me three days to finish it by which time it was a bit green round the edges.

One of the most popular trips was to a French Water Park. Here we would dutifully queue in an orderly fashion till one minute before opening time when a surge of French customers swept aside any civility and it became a free-for-all. As we fought our way in everyone was issued with a ticket which the French promptly threw away. Our students however had been primed as to its importance. On the journey there we had told horror stories of how, without the ticket, it was impossible to get out. Children had been imprisoned for days living off left-over ham till the fine could be raised.

Some brighter students pointed out carrying a valuable paper ticket on to water slides might result in the valued item disintegrating. Cue the following French lesson over the coach loudspeaker.

‘As we have pointed out you must keep this ticket from getting wet. Over the years we have found the best way of doing this is to place it in a plastic bag and carry it with you everywhere you go. We teachers can’t issue plastic bags as it’s a Health and Safety issue. Don’t worry however; all the rides have French Life guards at the entrance who will issue you with one on request. Who knows the French for plastic bag? No? What on earth do French teachers do in your lessons! Don’t laugh; the word you require sounds rude in English but it’s perfectly polite in French. When you meet the lifeguard you must say, ‘Avez-vous un condom?’

We have countless photos of lifeguards falling about in hysterics as fifteen-year-old English girls ask them the above question. The plus side was we never had any cases of pregnancy during the ten years I attended.

One year a group of, mainly boys, approached us with a request which was hard to refuse. It was 1 September 2001 – a date that will live long in the memory of English football fans. England were playing Germany and the match was being shown live at a bar near to the camp site. Normally we operated a strict policy of all students were to be confined to camp during the hours of darkness.

As this was a special occasion we held an impromptu staff meeting of the five teachers on duty; three male; two female. A democratic vote by 3-2 decided that the students would be allowed out accompanied by the three male teachers, whilst the two ladies stayed in camp.

We filled the café and took all the best seats by placing towels on them and relegating the few German tourists to the back. Their discomfort was increased when a party of girls accompanied by one of the afore-mentioned female teachers, having taken a vote between the two of them, decided girls might be interested too, so our numbers swelled by a further dozen.

As each English goal went in a round of drinks was ordered – five in all. The French proprietor could not believe his luck and bought a boat to be moored at Monte Carlo on the proceeds. The toast that rang out loud and clear, was ‘Michael Owen’.

None of the German tourists joined in!

Chapter 28

If you hold a party in your house, you have to be prepared for it to splinter into two. All the females of both sexes gather in the front room and dance to the music chosen by a self-appointed DJ from your miserable collection of Beatle LP’s. Meanwhile the real party takes place in the kitchen where proper men gather close to the drink. The conversation begins innocuously enough. School stuff, the latest political scandal, moving through to Football until enough drink has been poured down every one’s neck and all inhibitions are lost; then, and only then, does the talk turn to ‘Great Vomits I have known’.

I have to tell you that there’s only one thing that makes me sick. I have been in gales on the North Sea, long car journeys; I even survived my own 21st birthday party without regurgitating a single drop of the 20 different shorts I had consumed. The one thing that induces vomit from me is other people’s vomit. The sight of IT; the smell of IT; starts me retching immediately.

As a teacher you were surrounded by would-be vomiters. You learned to spot the signs: the green face; the clasped stomach; watery eyes, you dispatched them all to another place; known appropriately enough as the Sick Room. There was even an optimum time for it and optimum weather too. First lesson after lunch on a warm, sunny day was dangerous. The students had gobbled their food down then run madly about the playground playing chasing games. We are talking boys here. Girls didn’t run about shouting and swearing. They stand in groups chatting and looking at running boys. Indeed, some Educational research has put this forward as a reason why girls tend to outscore boys in language-based subjects.

My first tangle with vomit came after over ten years of teaching. I prided myself on spotting the signs and weeding out the up-chuckers before they could pollute my classroom. It was a hot summer day and the students were arriving red-faced and sweating. I scrutinised them carefully as they filed past me for registration. I sent one suspect to the toilets ostensibly for a wash but in reality, to keep him out of my room.

I swiftly called the register and then a boy put his hand up. ‘Please sir, my leg hurts.’ Being a dutiful form-teacher, I hastened over and knelt down to massage a muscle strain. And he vomited on me! I felt liquid warmth begin to soak through my shirt and turned and inhaled at the same time. I immediately vomited on him. Talk about getting your own back! We were both dripping and heaving. Simultaneously we headed for the washrooms where we peeled off our shirts and began throwing water over each other. What an officer investigating me for paedophilia would have made of it I don’t know. We were both given time off to go home and change. I was back within the hour; the vomiter had two days off whilst his school uniform was washed, dried and ironed.

So we come back to Switzerland, and our only travel-sick student. The four teachers were sat on the front two rows. Anderson sat immediately behind me. Mick started the engine and Anderson began to vomit. To his credit most of it went into a brown paper bag which he handed to me as I turned round. When some one gives you something you take it without wondering.

As I realised what it was I passed it to Al sitting on the coach aisle. He, just as smoothly, passed it across the aisle to the leader of the party who in turn gave it to his wife. Then the music stopped on this bizarre game of pass-the-parcel and the soggy bag’s bottom fell out!

Despite Mick’s clean-up operations; despite opening all windows with pure Alpine air scouring through the coach; I smelled vomit for the next two days as we journeyed back to England.

Chapter 29

It is a common fallacy that English teachers are good at INTERVIEWS. Apparently, their language skills and sensitivity to people are such that they are able to smoothly lie their way into all the top jobs in Education. After English teachers come Historians who have language plus political awareness. In my case, however, sensitivity outweighed language to leave me a gibbering hulk in interviews. I remember one interview which took place two days after an operation to remove four wisdom teeth. In mid-answer I felt my stitches fall from my gums and hang in the middle of my mouth. That was another failure!

As I moved slowly up through the ranks, I found myself on the other side of the table; conducting or at least taking part in the interrogation part. Initially the interviews were low key; the Head of Department and I would conduct informal conversations with temporary supply teachers for short term contracts like Maternity Leaves. We had a rough rule of thumb, Brian and I; when in doubt, the one with the best legs got the job.

We used to have hysterical preparation sessions where we drew up a list of possible questions to ask the nervous and anxious young ladies. When we were satisfied with our list we would admit the first candidate. The trick of course was not to laugh. Most of the questions contained double entendres or keywords from the latest joke list circulating round the staffroom.

‘I see Miss Jones that you have two outstanding features ….on your application form.’ This to any large breasted applicant always got us off to a good start. ‘Where do you stand on the question of administering a beating to naughty boys?’ We would listen seriously to the answer, occasionally licking our lips suggestively. At the end of the interview, before we began our deliberations, it was customary to ask ‘Are you still a firm candidate for this position?’ With the right set of pauses and a suggestive stress on the word ‘firm’, it was possible to reduce both of us to hysteria as our possible new colleague left the office.

We were found out only once. A black-eyed beauty, who would probably have got the job anyway, in answer to our shoulder-shuddering, ‘And what can you offer us in the way of extra-curricular activities?’ She considered our tone and in exactly similar vein responded, ‘Balls. I love playing ball games; the rougher the better. I can’t get enough. I would like to start a soccer team for older students, the younger ones, I find, have no control over their balls.’ We took her to our hearts immediately.

My career up the ladder had been put on hold. After Comprehensive Re-Organisation, I found myself second-in-command of the English Department and wanted the number one spot back again. In a fit of pique, I applied for a job at a school in Salford and found myself in a room with only two other candidates. I evaluated them and decided I was in pole position: one was too young with only a couple of years experience; the other looked well past it – even older than me. As a consequence of this confidence, I delivered probably my best interview.

The Head came into the room in the late afternoon and began to dismiss us in reverse order; the young one was congratulated on a good interview and with more years of experience would become a successful Head of Faculty. I forget why the old guy was dismissed (probably the quality of his suit). By now I was surreptitiously wiping my hand in preparation for shaking my new Headmaster’s hand. He turned to me and said, ‘As for you Mr Bell I find we have irreconcilable differences in our views of Special Education so we are going to re-advertise!’

I shrugged nonchalantly; I didn't really want it anyway.

Eventually I became Head of English in my own right. Remembering my own stumbling efforts during my own failed interviews, I insisted on a short one-to-one chat prior to the formal interview with all candidates for jobs in my Faculty. I explained how nervous I had been and told them I was sympathetic to their situation. I also revealed the first question that they would be asked later so as to get them off to a flying start with a prepared answer. The question would be ‘What project/lesson do you rate as your best/most successful? The candidates were forewarned when invited to interview and asked to bring printed materials/lesson plans. During lunch before the interview proper, I and my deputy would photo-copy/steal these materials for the benefit of the Faculty.

It was customary for the Head teacher to end with, ‘Is there anything you would like to ask us?’ I told all would-be colleagues that if they directed a question at me, the Head of English, their application would prove to be unsuccessful.

This was ignored only once during twenty years of interviewing. The candidate was an Internal; some one on a temporary contract already who was now looking to make it permanent. We’d had a bit of previous during departmental meetings earlier in the term. She was a bossy, over-confident woman, who I was not anxious to employ full time. She was, however, by far and away the best candidate of the afternoon. When it was time for her to vacate the interview room, (the job almost certainly hers, she turned to me with a vicious glint in her eye. ‘I have one question to ask the Head of English.’

Then she asked it. I can not remember what it was she asked, so enraged and, yes, nervous was I. Luckily it did not matter one jot as she proceeded to answer it herself in what became a very long, obviously rehearsed, critical statement against some/all of my policies. After an age she fell silent and I added my response. ‘Thank you.’ When she had left, the Head asked me why I’d thanked her. ‘Because she’d just saved us the trouble of considering her as a serious applicant.’ He nodded and we moved on.

As a side note, this bossy, posh woman was employed as a Support teacher and would sit in my class of ‘difficult’ students with special educational needs. She was universally disliked (by both the students and me.) She was nick-named ‘Beaky’ on account of a rather prominent nose. Someone in the class, not me, produced a plastic doll and managed to tweak its facial features into an extremely life-like facsimile of her. This doll made regular appearances by peeping round desks and being passed quickly from one to another so no-one was ever caught. It would send Beaky into screeching fits of rage and the class into fits of helpless laughter whilst I struggled to keep a straight face in a futile search for the offending doll.

STOP PRESS

Continuing my pledge to use contributions from Hassie students, here is Ian Redman's sent last night.

Many of you recognised my rubbish attempt to disguise the Edenfield Wart Charmer by naming him Mr. Edwards. His real name was Eli and Ian's favourite teacher (and mine.) We both taught in the prefabs on the playground. Whilst most students in the big school luxuriated in central heating with thick stone walls, the two of us and our classes made do with cardboard walls and extra layers of clothes.

One day Eli was commiserating with Ian's class on how cold the prefabs were. To demonstrate he rolled up his trouser leg to reveal his red flannel pyjama bottoms! Eli had a foolproof way of teaching (not thinking of his swinging on a naughty student's sideburns,) but his ultimatum at the start of the GCE course. He would explain at the beginning of the 4th year that he would give a weekly home work which would take ninety minutes to complete. He made a solemn promise that this would unerringly produce a pass grade.

He also said if students did not complete the assignment they would not be punished as it eased his marking workload. Ian said this approach put the student firmly in charge of their own learning and Tech Drawing was always the first homework completed. A lovely man and a wonderful colleague.

Chapter 30

As I grew older, wiser and more experienced, the job got steadily more complicated on account of all the help the Government decided we needed. First came The Raising of the School Leaving Age. At fifteen, students were given a choice: stay on another year and sit some academic exams variously known as GCEs, CSEs, GCSEs. The ones who weren’t academic left to seek Trade Apprenticeships and learned how to bore holes in coffin lids.

It dawned on the Government, too late, that thousands of extra school places would be needed to accommodate these undiscovered Einsteins. The ROSLA block was born. Some apprentice architect was given fifteen minutes to draw up plans for rapidly erectable extra classrooms. His budget was severely limited; the building should cost no more than a second-hand ice-cream van though much larger. Thus, the blocks were built of plastic! They were two storeys, though there were insufficient funds for an upstairs fire escape. Known popularly as Death Traps, one burnt to the ground in twenty minutes luckily over a weekend when only the caretaker was about. It was rumoured that all the roofing was of grey asbestos. This would ensure many teachers would not draw their pensions for very long and only those students immune to asbestosis would make it to sixty-five and an old age pension.

To save more money there were NO inside walls except round the toilets and staffroom. This was grandly called Open Plan teaching. It allowed for Team Teaching whereby two teachers could occupy fifty odd students by showing them a video. Naturally the sound had to be turned up to maximum irrespective of the other class next door-less.

In inner city schools sometimes, there was not enough room on the playground so the building was sited elsewhere. One of the principal reasons behind England’s rubbish World Cup teams was the number of soccer and cricket fields which were ploughed under to accommodate these architectural blights. Teachers were required to commute during their breaks and dinner times. Some travel expenses were paid but it was no substitute for not having a coffee all morning. (Thus adding kidney failure to the growing number of obstacles against drawing a pension for very long.)

To avoid classes sitting waiting for commuting teachers, different time zones were created; the big school started five minutes earlier than the ROSLA block whose students still turned up according to GMT. Any educational gains that were claimed for ROSLA block students, (and I have heard of none,) could be attributed to studying an extra fifty minutes a week. No overtime was paid for staff also working extra to compensate for the time lag.

The students themselves were split roughly fifty-fifty between those academics who would have stayed on to sit external examinations and those who would have left to earn good money as apprentice plasterers, electricians, coffin-lid grinders. Naturally this group resented the loss of income and contrived to convey their displeasure at this infringement of their civic liberties. Their targets were threefold.

The building itself was fair game: great strips of plastic cladding were ripped off revealing the fibre glass insulation inside. The cheap-jack furniture seemed to have been designed to fall to pieces under a merely malevolent gaze from a recalcitrant pupil. One lesson collapsed in sadistic laughter as the avant-garde teacher gathered his students round his desk to create a better atmosphere for discussion. His students responded by loosening the supporting screws until the whole desk dissolved.

The second target was naturally the teachers themselves. We were fair game and the pranks played on us were many. One poor, (and I use the adjective literally to mean impecunious,) teacher wore cheap cardboard soled shoes. During snow and wet weather, he skidded his way between classrooms. One of his lessons was in a Domestic Science room complete with cookers. Being intelligent he saw no harm in putting his damp footwear in a gas oven on low to dry them out before his next commute. Being inexperienced, he took his eyes off the cooker long enough for a student to turn up the gas. Thirty minutes later his shoes were nicely done; they disintegrated into a pile of black charcoal dust.

The third target for the ROSLA kids, as they became known, was their fellow students; the snobs, academics, swots. Like Cambodia’s Pol Pot, the next generation of our country’s intelligentsia was subjected to a merciless regime of derision and intimidation (thankfully without the Killing Fields). So was born the wave that has swamped all our schools except Public, fee-paying ones: studying, exam success, attention in class, and respect for teachers are all uncool and punishable in many ways both subtle and otherwise.

Chapter 31

Despite this catastrophic failure, the Government decided to go another stage further down this egalitarian path; the Comprehensive Revolution. It was decided to scrap the 11+ exam and send all pupils to the same secondary school. Why just tinker with a few Secondary Modern schools, went the clever thinking? Why not ruin the Grammar schools while we are at it? Of course, some Councils saw right through this complicated plot to eradicate the Intelligentsia and clung to their Grammar schools. The Government, however, ploughed mercilessly ahead; they seemed determined to kill off the idea that study and knowledge is enriching. Despite ample proof to the contrary, they seemed determined to make Life fair. But it patently isn’t.

There are some students born, by dint of parental genes, more intelligent than others. There are some children more bent on academia than sanding coffin lids. Be that as it may, everyone under one roof went up the howl.

As Head of English in a Secondary Modern school, it was my job to re-build the students’ confidence shattered by the 11+ exam and to coax a late learning spurt from those who had never really considered themselves academic. I did it by making them feel special – they were big fish in a little pool. I milked the exam system for all it was worth; I entered students for two exams simultaneously in the same subject. CSE exams came in the month before GCE so timing wasn’t a problem. Sometimes a student passed this but failed that; it didn’t matter, one or the other pass would equip them for life in the adult world or Sixth Form College.

My/their exam results improved year on year. I had a demonstration of how much faith students had in my teaching abilities. I taught English Literature by performance. One year a CSE set book was Dylan Thomas’ Under Milk Wood. There are fifty seven characters in the play. By popular demand I ended up reading them all! With a different voice! The class were much amused at my accent which drifted between Welsh and Pakistani. I sneered at Richard Burton grappling with just the one character though I admit his Welsh accent was better than mine.

I enlisted as an Examiner to supplement my income and marked late into the night in the weeks following exams. I saw a pattern in the successful answers and incorporated it into my lessons. I reduced it to a formula: P + Q = 2. My candidates were instructed to make a point about the text or character (P); support it with a quote or textual reference (Q) and this would ensure 2 marks. To score a CSE grade 1 pass, a mark of 75% was required. There were four essay questions on four set books.

Les was an intelligent and trusting student, in my mind a certainty to get his pass. On the day of the exam, I strode importantly up and down the hall, peeping over shoulders at answers, wincing occasionally. I arrived at Les’ desk just as he screwed the top on to his pen and set it down with a satisfied sigh. There was still a half hour to go. I glance at his paper and saw, to my horror, he had written on only three of the texts. In vain, I harrumphed and raised eyebrows and nodded dementedly at his answer sheet. I was not allowed to say quietly, ‘Why have you only attempted three quarters of the paper you blithering idiot?’ He smiled confidently at my antics.

I cornered him later on the corridor and began my tirade. He heard me out politely then explained as if to a three-year-old. ‘P + Q = 2. In each of my three essays I made at least fifteen points each with a quotation. I reckon I got full marks on all three answers. 75%.’ He smiled at me pityingly. On results day he airily waved his pass certificate. He had been 100% correct on 75% of the paper. (In later years he became an accountant.)

Chapter 32

This free blog, within the first week, attracted five hundred members of the FB page. I was entranced and read all the reminiscences; recognising familiar names; being reminded of unfamiliar staff (there were 100 teachers on the staff when I left.) It would be impossible to write chapters about them all.

I attended reunions in Waterfoot of the final year group at Ryfield Avenue when they all reached 30 and then 40. Les was one of these. To right the balance, it seems only fair to mention a student with whom I had a similar mutually close relationship on Broadway; Ian Fleming. No not that one, though I did discover a Thai equivalent – Somkinda Tealeaf! (You can read about him in ‘Amusing Thailand’).

This Ian was fourteen and in my year 9 class or Third years for older readers. He was a difficult student; given to expressing his opinions forcibly. I can even quote one of the first things he said to me and our class, ‘Shakespeare is a self-perpetuating myth’; this was in my first Shakespeare lesson of the year! Things could have gone downhill from there on, but they didn’t. He didn’t enjoy these lessons but I enjoyed his contributions. During our, sometimes heated exchanges, I let slip I’d written a book called ‘Skinner’ with the help of a class. He politely showed interest and I lent him the only copy (a handwritten one which I still have today nearly fifty years later!)

He returned it some days later with some grudging praise and a couple of suggestions for improvement. My own suggestion was that he should author his own novel and I would serialise it with our class; his very own captive audience. So, he did! And I did!

Whilst the rest of the class got on with my homework, Ian was excused providing he turned in the next chapters of his book. I can’t remember the title; I expect he can’t remember mine. His topic was The Mods and Rockers battles in the news at somewhere called Brighton – very ‘Quadrophenia’. I duly read it aloud, uncomfortably, as I remember because of the frequent use of the F-word. Nowadays it is used so frequently on TV it would come as no surprise to hear on ‘Songs of Praise’ screened every Sunday. Then of course was different. I expected complaints from parents or teachers next door.

All too soon the year ended and he moved on to another English teacher. We would pass on the corridor and grin conspiratorially. It came as no surprise to learn he was writing TV programmes for students of Secondary age. A list of his credits can be found here - iandfleming.com.

The last I heard, (last week) he was lecturing trainee teachers and helping his 77-year-old teacher become an overnight success in the film world.

Despite being a rebel whilst at school, he recognised HHS' contribution to his development; Only this week, he emailed the following; ''Hazzy High was incredibly progressive. You lot taught us about life.' He reminded me of that great stalwart, Mrs Cherry and her VD lesson.

This took place in the Assembly Hall. There were horrifying close-ups of people's not-so-private parts; suppurating sores; rotted syphilitic faces. A man in a white coat delivered the punchline: ' if you have sex with four or more partners in your lifetime, you are almost guaranteed to contract one or more of these venereal diseases.” Can you imagine the impact this might have on sixteen-year olds, boys, in particular? No need to imagine.

' Stewart ‘Jasper’ Beardmore asked Miss Cherry if that meant we had it as we’d gone past that tally by then! (After being answered in the affirmative - )So we went back to his, as we usually did after school. He was the very first person I knew who had two bathrooms. And we were each over a sink, running tap, tackle in hand, soap galore and nail brushes, scrubbing the bejeezus out of our manhoods! True story.'

Despite this, Ian went on to father children. I think I would have entered a monastery!

Chapter 33

In 1974 the countdown to C-day had begun. A lovely little two-form entry rural Grammar school was about to attempt to swallow the local Sec Mod which was twice its size. A huge building programme was begun on the Grammar school site as they had fields and Ryefield Avenue Sec Mod had merely an asphalt playground. Millions of pounds were spent to ensure Comprehensive education didn’t fail. It wasn’t just the expense of the buildings that would cost. Each school had its own management structure. There were two Headmasters: two Deputy Heads and of course Heads of the different departments: English, Maths, Science etc. None of these could be demoted – their salary scale was protected.

How were the decisions about the new Heads of Department made? Easy – if you were a Sec Mod teacher, you taught thick kids so you were by definition thick yourself and incapable of running an Academic Department in a Comprehensive school. All the academic Heads of Department in the new school were taken from the Grammar school staff on account of their ability to teach ‘A’ levels; all except PE and Tech Drawing – these were true Sec Mod subjects! In most cases this meant huge salary raises for these lucky academics. No account of scale was considered. The new Departments were much larger than previously. In the Sec Mod I had a Department of twelve staff. The Grammar school English head had one and a half!

Naturally there were casualties. Within the first year a small number of Grammar school staff had nervous breakdowns or took early retirement. They were unused to students who got in your face, albeit in a fit of zeal. The opposite was true for Sec Mod teachers; they were introduced to whole classes of students who stood respectfully to greet you; who listened quietly to your every word. When I was finally entrusted with a Grammar school class, I thought I’d gone deaf!

How successful was Comprehensivisation? In terms of exam results, not at all. I’d kept careful records of the numbers of my Sec Mod kids who secured GCE passes. The number had crept up annually. I separated the annual Grammar school’s 90+ % from their creamed intake. In the next five years, the new Comprehensive school’s results never once matched the combined total for the old Grammar school and the old Secondary Modern. I suspect this pattern was repeated across the UK. I expect statisticians, given long enough, could come up with reasons.

My own simple take was down to basic human nature. Take the high-fliers in the Sec Mod and suddenly place two classes above them in the ranking order. These kids immediately feel less special, their worth diluted. Now take the two Grammar school classes and surround them with several hundred pupils lacking their drive, intellect and high standards of behaviour. There is a resultant slackening of attitude; it is easier to float with the tide than swim against the current. Despite the millions spend annually on Comprehensive Education; this simple fact of human nature seems to have escaped the attention of the experts.

As these exam results began to filter back to the Government, they realised, with some desperation that this catastrophic experiment had gone horribly wrong. What to do? What to do? A simple answer stared them in the face: make the exams easier. So, they did. As the number of passes soared so the public would accept this dumbing down as the norm.

[PS In the year 2016, the Government of the day has just announced plans to begin the introduction of new Grammar schools. I make that nearly fifty years of wasted student opportunities + billions of pounds in new buildings + paying extra salaries for newly promoted Grammar school teachers + early retirement pensions for staff with nervous breakdowns + extra stock + extra salaries to cope with a new strata of pastoral staff necessary once a new year group exceeded 200 + ..... oh well never mind, you get the idea.

Chapter 34

It began innocuously enough; combining GCE with CSE and calling it GCSE. They trialled it with English teachers first; these stalwarts had prided themselves as always being ‘first over the parapets.’ If it could be sneaked past them the other difficult group, the Historians, would fall into line.

Lots of promises were made. The set texts for English Literature would stay on the syllabus longer; the choice would be widened; you could avoid Shakespeare. There were hints about Course work, even 100% Coursework – no EXAMS! I am ashamed to admit, we fell for it.

As a Head of Department money was the root of this evil. I had only a finite sum to spend on set texts. If these texts didn’t change so often I could save the exam text money and spend it on, say, chalk. These were the hard choices you had to make. I once sold a lot of old library books to a second-hand dealer for a penny a book. I asked what someone of his obvious entrepreneurial skills would want with such a load of old tat. He confided that locally there were lots of old Mill owners’ houses – huge stone edifices with oak-panelled walls. The new owners converted rooms back to libraries and bought rubbish books to line the walls – the first attempts at insulating walls, I surmise. With the penny-a-book money I bought paint. One of my classes and I spent a week’s holiday painting the walls and ceiling of our own library – what a way to spend Easter.

Thus, we allowed ourselves to be bribed into accepting the new exam. We all knew that you could set essay titles that would tax the brightest whilst still allowing the weaker candidates to score. We also knew that there was not an author alive or dead whose writing would be a challenge to the comprehension skills of the ‘A’ candidates without being total gibberish to the ‘G’s.

Gradually coursework crept up and up. With 40% awarded for a folio of writing plus 20% awarded internally for something called Orals, English teachers were now in control. Of course, to avoid accusations of cheating there were Moderation meetings for all the local schools.. These were great fun. The English Heads of half a dozen local schools would gather at a host school where their candidates were judged; marks were awarded and discussed, then you were sent back to adjust your marks in the light of the discussion. Naturally you were very mean on the day and accepted, reluctantly, that all your marks should be raised.

Ultimately this trend culminated in 100% Coursework; that is NO EXAMS after five years of study! . Naturally as there were no exams in English after five years, there were no exams necessary lower down the school. For a teacher who had had to mark maybe two hundred scripts every other term, this was Nirvana. To say we were envied by other subject teachers would be to state the obvious. Whilst the rest of the staff was ploughing through exam marking, we English teachers were already on our report writing.

There was a price to be paid. There were two days of being closeted in the library with over 230 folders each containing a minimum of seven essays. All had to be rank ordered and a decision made as to where we drew the ‘C’ or PASS line. The other cost was of credibility. However good our results were or were not, we never received any credit either from other staff or Head teachers. Again, I kept careful records. When 100% Coursework was finally killed off by greedy, cheating English teachers, (in other schools) our results improved year on year, suggesting I had drawn the line too high. How many of my students had I failed by my determination to be fair?

Chapter 35

For most of this time, I was still 2-i-C of what I always considered to be my Department or Faculty as the new trendy word would have it. When the old Grammar school Head of English did the honourable thing and took early retirement because she hated the new monster that had been created, I thought at last justice would be done and I would become HOD (Head of my Department) again.) It was not to be.

A school of 1,500 students with a strong Sixth form attracted all sorts of high-flying candidates. I suspect I only made the short list out of courtesy. Once again, my interview was doomed and a new guy took over. Despite my disappointment I had to warmly applaud the appointment of Mr Bryant. He was an excellent boss and always made me feel valued and credited me with areas of responsibility. He asked for advice and listened. We became unlikely friends. It was no surprise when he was promoted to Deputy Head after four or so years.

Again, my hopes soared and again were dashed as a new HOD was appointed over me. This time it was someone who became known as Maj, short for ‘Her Majesty’. She was a megalomaniac and a liar.

One of her first decisions was to lock all the storerooms. If you wanted a set of books – text or readers, you had to queue humbly outside the door and await Her Maj’s arrival. She would count out the books, write the number in an exercise book and would reverse the process at the end of the lesson. This had a catastrophic effect on her relationship with her staff and I suspect her own classes’ progress as their lessons began anything up to 15 minutes after everyone else’s.

Maj consulted me on English Department matters, usually ten minutes before a Department meeting. I was astonished to hear my words airily coming from her mouth with no acknowledgement as to their source. The downward spiral began. The average teacher has never left school. After Sixth form then University they return to teach. S/He has never experienced the rough and tumble of the real workplace in the wider world. We were totally unprepared for adult liars. Of course, we expected kids to lie especially about missing homework but failed to grasp that Maj could look us in the face and glibly lie.

It took us maybe two years and one Extra-ordinary General Meeting to suss it out. The meeting was called by Mrs Yates, one of the most intelligent women it has been my pleasure to work with. It was extra-ordinary in that the Head of Faculty was not invited! There were maybe eight specialist English teachers who, by this time, had been together many years. During Maj’s reign, relationships had deteriorated to the point of almost open hostility.

During the course of this meeting we discovered Maj had operated a divide and conquer policy. We all put our cards on the table and discovered the full extent of her deceit. The verdict was either Maj was mad or we had been part of a psychological experiment. She had lost our love, our support. In football manager’s jargon, she had lost the dressing room. There was only one option open to her: leave.

Chapter 36

‘Oh frabjous day!’ The jabberwocky applied for and was granted (with alacrity) a year’s leave of absence to acquire a qualification as an Educational Psychologist. Our suppositions were confirmed – we had been experimented upon. Even more joy was to follow. I was promoted to become the Acting (some said Over-acting) Head of Faculty. It meant more money but above all it meant I’d got my beloved department back after more than ten years.

My first decision was to throw open the stockroom doors – no more demeaning queues; classes were taught the full duration of lessons. We solemnly pledged to say it how it was; no more lies. Gradually the wounds healed; we became a team again.

Though I was now in my middle forties I was transported back to the heady days of my late twenties when I first became a Head of English. Though I knew the position was only temporary, I was determined to show Senior Management what they had been missing by appointing others in my stead. I was galvanized; euphoric; on speed.

I reached my zenith with the production of ‘Inkspot.’ School newspapers had been tried before. There had even been a staff newspaper called ‘Sin-Bin’ which appeared every month and contained all the scandal and gossip circulating around the staffroom. The Head of Maths was the prime mover; modesty prohibits me from naming the other co-author. Only one copy was produced each month – it was hand-written - but there was always a queue to peruse it. In comparison, my second venture into school journalism was to the tune of over 50,000 copies.

The idea began simply enough – a school newspaper containing the usual menu of poems from students; interviews with teachers; stories; school news. In fact, the more I thought about it the more it resembled the local paper called The Rossendale Free Press. My adrenaline-fuelled brain then took it further; why not ask the editor/owner to print ours within theirs. He/they readily agreed on one important condition – we had to pay for each page of print by securing advertising.

I can’t remember how much each page cost to print but quarter page/half page ads looked horrendously expensive. I could not believe that local hard-headed businessmen would fork out to appear in a school newspaper. I had not counted on pupil power.

I was supported by Senior Management who gave my salespersons leave to absent themselves from lessons once appointments had been made with Big Business Bosses. Little 13 or 14 year olds were going boldly into the Inner Sanctums of firms such as ASDA and the like. They were coming away with promises of big money! My original modest intention had been to produce a modest four-page pull-out supplement. In the event the one edition of ‘Inkspot’ ran to an amazing sixteen pages – all paid for by our own efforts.

On P – for – Print Day the whole team of writers and salespersons went to watch ‘Inkspot’ come literally hot off the press. I know how mothers feel when they hold their babies for the first time after so much Labour and pain. I became a legend in my own mind. I fancied School Governors began to recognize me. A Pulitzer prize was whispered about. I practiced my modest face each morning to no avail. I walked about like a pop-star who had just made number one in the charts.

Of course, over all this sunshine a dark cloud hovered on the horizon – Maj’s year was nearly up and so was mine. Inexplicably her year’s course was extended to fifteen months. We pondered the possible reasons: perhaps she wasn’t bright enough to complete the course in the given time; perhaps one of her experiments had gone wrong; maybe a lie had been found out? We accepted the stay of execution gladly and then came the glorious day when we found out it had become officially permanent.

The general rejoicing was not without a touch of concern as to her replacement. I had already shown I was crap at interviews and so didn’t hold out any hope in a third interview. I did not expect what happened next. The acting Headmaster put an intriguing problem to me; if I could produce a timetable that covered all English classes with the existing staff, there would be no need to advertise this job nationally but a new Head of Faculty could be appointed from within; nudge, nudge, wink, wink; ME!

I set to with a will. There were nine classes in each of the first three, year groups; there were ten classes in the two GCSE years. Forty-seven classes plus four more in the VIth form. There was no computer help in those days; like the constipated Mathematician it was worked out with a pencil and copious quantities of paper. But work it out I did and so finally one day in June I was officially given back my department on a permanent basis. Some of ‘my’ staff I’d already worked with for over fifteen years and they remained with me for a further fifteen years.

As one Senior member of staff put it, ‘that is your pension secured.’ It was, but I wasn’t ready for retirement yet. Oh no, I had things to do before I finally hung up my chalk.

Chapter 37

My other great achievement in the field of Education had nothing to do with Academia but everything to do with sport. I’d blundered into teaching after my beloved Manchester United marked me down as a mercurial and inspirational teacher of English rather than my preferred position of midfield dynamo. I’d begun to move into soccer management at my first school where I took over the 3rd year/year 9 fourteen year olds. I believed in the adage ‘no pain, no gain.’ My teams were always the fittest, strongest, and most combative in the local leagues.

When I took on extra work at night as a Youf Worker, it seemed a natural thing to manage the Under 18 team. This was more complicated than schoolboy soccer. It sometimes involved going into pubs and dragging our centre back out physically before driving him to the game. Sometimes I had to force the entire defence to vomit the contents of their stomachs before kick-off. My methods seemed to work and that first season we won the coveted Vernon cup.

One of the highlights of the youth league season for me was the final match. The fixture was a dead rubber with nothing for either team to play for. We were a player missing so I asked my opposite number if I could play to make up the numbers. He readily agreed when I pointed out that, having no football boots with me, I would be playing in wellington boots!

After the game, (which we won) I had changed into my civilian clothes; put my glasses back on and was changing my shoes when a stranger walked into the dressing room. He introduced himself as a scout for Rochdale and sought permission to invite a few of our team to a training session mid-week. He had been particularly impressed with our right back who had shown ‘considerable maturity despite playing in wellies.’

When I explained, he immediately withdrew his offer despite my willingness to turn out for Rochdale on the following Saturday. My mind raced on from there to meeting Manchester United in the FA cup where I would at last impress; my transfer demands would be modest as I was in my thirties. The scout was obdurate so my big chance washed away like so much mud off my wellies.

When Age caught up with Youth in that most of the team would be over eighteen next season, we had a choice to make: disband the team or enter an open age league. We chose the latter. Bearing in mind that as most of the team was now legally old enough to drink, I signed myself on just in case our centre-forward forgot what day it was.

Sure enough our first match coincided with a family wedding leaving us two brothers short of a full team. I had to become a player-manager. At the end of the game I reached the following conclusions: firstly, a modest assessment of the team’s performance suggested I was the third best player and was justified in playing each week; secondly the average eighteen-year-old was nowhere near as fit as the average thirty-eight-year-old.

Alongside my career as a player manager of the local youth team, I was beginning to create a parallel course at school. I had started a tradition of Staff matches at my first school in Middleton. It proved great fun and allowed the boys a chance to kick lumps out of their favourite teachers. I remember one team we faced had an England schoolboy International in it. I was detailed to mark him out of the game. I never got within five yards of him!

As I moved up through the ranks and changed schools, I brought this staff match tradition with me. We even organized games against other adult institutions like other schools. Perhaps my finest game was against a team of Giants – the local Police force. During the warm up our centre half, Head of Science, a burly guy, got injured and had to go in goal. I was drafted in to replace him. I was not looking forward to the encounter. The police centre forward looked roughly nine feet tall. Without my glasses I feared for my ability to compete with him at corners. We won 2 nil. At the final whistle, he headed directly for me. Whilst I inwardly debated how undignified it would look for the Head of English to bolt from the field, he held out the hand of friendship. ‘I never got a kick,’ he said, ‘you were too fast for me.’

On the team that day -- Connor Hillen; Steve Holt; Graham Ashworth; Roland Gee - Haslingden's equivalent to Franz Beckenbauer; Les Billington; Basher Bashir; Haworth; Hill; Steve Edmondsen: fond memories.

Now the purpose of the story was partly to get a brag in about how well I played in my forties, it was also there to introduce a remarkable record. By this time, I had already played and scored goals for my staff teams in my twenties, thirties and forties. Fewer goals followed in my fifties as students began to accelerate past me at walking pace, but there were still goals; free-kicks; scrambles; corners. By the time I had handed in my notice to retire from teaching I was sixty-two. A member of staff, my buddy Alan Kitts, pointed out that were I to turn out one last time for the staff team and score, I would have managed to score in each of my last five decades.

So, it was agreed that I was to take any penalties, free-kicks, in fact anything that might result in a goal. The referee, a parent, was let in on my record-breaking attempt. He told me to go down in the penalty area and he would gladly award any/all dubious penalty appeals. He lied. I spent forty-five minutes hurling myself to the floor, uttering shrieks of agony and writhing at the pain of his refusal. In the second half I no longer had the oxygen to appeal; I became a pathetic, peripheral figure goal-hanging in the opposition’s half.

Then came my big moment. A real penalty was awarded. It had nothing to do with me and my amateur dramatics. A defender unfairly tackled one of the teachers in the area. My time had come. I’d spent the past hour mentally visualizing stroking home my last goal ever. Selling the goalkeeper, a perfect dummy; dinking it over his falling body with my left foot; all scenarios ended in glory until I seized the heavy ball avidly and placed it on the spot. I realized the previous hour had taken a terrible toll on my aging body. Oxygen burned redly in the back of my throat as I faced a very long run-up/stagger-up. As I struck the ball, I fell over and never saw it strike the underside of the crossbar and go in. Nobody caught it on video. Nobody brought an oxygen tank on to the field but euphoria kept me upright. I’d done it – five decades of contributing to my various schools and I had the goals to prove it.

Chapter 38

Besides welding the English Faculty into a successful and happy force, I found time to further contribute to school through athletics. After retiring from Youf Club football, I had all this excess energy surging about in my body with no outlet. Perhaps connected, I began suffering from depression. I was in my mid-forties; my career was going nowhere thanks to being spurned each time my job was advertised and now I was without regular football.

Small wonder I sought medical advice. As soon as I walked into the doctor’s surgery I knew I’d made a mistake. It was not my regular doctor (even though I saw him only once a year when he pumped me full of long-acting steroids for my sniveling nose), I never remembered him as being black. The conversation went something like this;

‘I’ve been feeling rather depressed lately and wondered if you could prescribe me some happy pills.’

‘You’re depressed look at me. I used to be head of Uganda’s entire health programme and now I can’t even get a permanent position as a stand-in doctor.’

‘That is depressing, doctor, how did that happen?’

‘Well it all began when Idi Amin …..’

I must have blanked out for an hour or so as when I next tuned in he was addressing my minor problem. His advice was for me to take up a form of exercise at which I could make regular gains daily and this activity would help my self-esteem and confidence. He had arrived at my own self-diagnosis/treatment. We were both thinking ‘jogging’.

I began my treatment a few days later; fully kitted out down to a jogger’s diary and stop-watch to record my distances and times or PBs (Personal Bests as they are known in running circles.) To begin with I figured I’d just run a mile and branch out from there. Not a chance! Rossendale is cursed with more than its fair share of hills and my chosen route out of Ramsbottom climbed steadily for three hundred yards then banked steeply for a further four hundred until it flattened out. Before it did, I was shot. This was not doing anything for my self-esteem. I took mental note of where I’d got to and turned ignominiously for home.

The next night I ran the same distance plus one extra lamppost. Soon I was doing a mile and more and faster. Within the month I was ready for my first race (or so I thought). My teenage son and I set off one Sunday morning in the car en route for our first ten kilometer race in Bury. About four miles from the start line, we passed a little old guy tottering along on sparrow-thin legs and joked about him being last year’s winner.

When we got there we found it was a junior school and people had paid money to enter. Pause for thought.

Just before the start gun, the sparrow-legged guy tottered up and took his place among the starters. I found out later his name was Ben Crooks. He passed me for the first time about two kilometers into the race. I redoubled my efforts and re-took the lead; well not exactly the lead overall but definitely the lead over the old man. That lasted maybe another kilometer. That was the last I saw of Ben till I collapsed over the finish line and received the first of many hundreds of plastic medals.

I talked to Ben after the race and he told me he was over 70. (I was in my mid-forties.) I saw him at many races after that but it took me a couple of years before I eventually beat him. Shortly after he told me he’d double-booked himself and offered me his number in next week’s Rochdale half marathon. I gladly accepted and thought nothing more of it. I completed the course in a personal best of one hour fifteen minutes.

At the following week’s race Ben came to me all perturbed. He’d had reporters camping on his doorstep to interview him after he had supposedly broken the British All-comers record for a Super-Vet!

Perhaps the ultimate goal of all runners is to complete a marathon and so I set my sights. There were four of us from our school all running for various charities. (Mine was The School.) Naturally there was a sweepstake amongst the staff who would bet on two flies crawling up a window. The favourite was Bren, a tall athletic runner who was thirty. I was 47 but some smart money was on me. My training schedule was lifted from The Sunday Times and was strictly adhered to. In the week leading up to the London Marathon, I ran 66 miles at 8 minutes a mile. My target time was, therefore, three hours, thirty minutes.

I began to slip back against the clock as my companion had a weak bladder. We had been warned against dehydration but Bren took it too far and guzzled salty drinks at every station. I ran on the spot each time he was forced to relieve himself. Eventually, I took off and told him to catch me up. He never did. I made sure of that.

Another thing us virgin marathoners had been warned about was The Hill. At some stage perhaps eighteen miles out was this brutal hill that had destroyed many a runner’s time. At each mile marker I enquired of experienced athletes when we would reach the dreaded HILL. Having done all my training in the foothills of the Pennines, I don’t know why I worried. The last time I asked I was told we’d passed it a mile back and I hadn’t even noticed.

With four miles to go, the crowds were gathered and I found myself bounding along. There were tears running down my face at the atmosphere and I had to physically rein myself in with thirty minutes still to do. I passed thousands of runners in the last half-hour and finished dead on three and half hours. My first (and last) marathon was successfully completed. I also raised over four hundred pounds for the school fund.

And so we returned to school the next day to find out who’d bet on me.

Chapter 39

I proposed to Senior Management that we held our own fun run to raise funds for the School funds. They debated the idea for a nano-second before agreeing. My idea was for a bit more than a Run. I marked out a circular course of four and a quarter miles. I enlisted the help of Uncle Eddie Roberts, the local historian on the staff. He produced a stunning treasure map with copious hand-written notes of points of interest. Mr Birtwell provided his trademark cartoons. This was not just a fun-run but a family-walk too observing points of interest en route.

Starting on Broadway where the buses usually park, the first mile marker was at Eskimo Frozen Foods; the second was at the Robin Hood, my local pub. Then the murderous part where the course climbed up towards the finishing line on Greens Lane. My personal best was 26 minutes 37 seconds, verified by Mr Grimes who did a fantastic job of tracking and publishing the runners' positions and times. He and I were bamboozled only once; by Mr Lord. We'd had a private bet - he was faster than me over short distances but I reckoned I could run the legs out of him over four miles. That day I ran well and was sure Mr Lord was behind me, yet when I crossed the line his grinning mug was there to greet me. I learned later he had taken a short cut reducing the course by half!

I circularized all the local running clubs and got our course accepted on the Grand Prix circuit. It is with great pride that I say during my ‘running’ years, the numbers of entrants rarely fell below a thousand. I had a special spot in Year Assemblies to sell the Run to everybody. I offered incentives like a money-back scheme for any student who managed to beat Mr. Bell – (there were not many in the early years!) One year Steve Cram – a UK Olympic gold medal winner fired the starting pistol. Another year the school's own international, David Lewis, performed this honour. I reckon the school benefited to the tune of at least 10,000 pounds over the years. It could be argued that I paid for my own promotion.

One of the teachers put forward a master plan for special projects to improve the day-to-day life of the students using this fund. The grandest scheme was for a Quadrangle like they had at posh schools and Chariots of Fire Universities. So I found myself once more in wellies with my team of diggers. We installed a herring-bone series of drainage pipes to dry out the patch of glutinous mud dividing the old and new buildings. We bought shrubs and flowers; the woodwork department constructed benches for the pupils to sun themselves on during the one day of Rossendale summer that we could depend on alternate years. A rockery was the centre spot.

It was known affectionately as Bell’s Memorial Gardens. Hopefully it's still going strong?

Chapter 40

If I am remembered for anything it will be for my Dog lesson. I taught it at least four times a year to different classes and age groups for possibly thirty years. I don’t know where School Inspectors would put it in a National Curriculum.

I remember one Christmas when a group of teachers agreed to meet up at a local pub. For some reason I got there about fifteen minutes early. There was only one other person in the place; an old git mumbling into his pint. He sat up when I came in and began to recall a previous meeting. Something like this:

‘It’s you, isn’t it?

‘It is indeed. What’s your name?’

‘Johnson. You’re the dog man aren’t you?’

Excessive alcohol had eroded most of the memory cells containing his school years but my dog lesson had remained with him for over twenty years. The lesson pre-dates and may even have helped in the introduction of some of the laws cracking down on dogs running free and defecating willy-nilly. I am indebted to The Guardian newspaper that first published some of the figures below and to which I added over the years to cover inflation. The lesson went exactly like this -

‘Tonight’s homework essay is entitled ‘Dogs – a Man’s Best Friend?’ I am going to give you my very one-sided view of dogs. In your essay you are free to totally agree with me; totally disagree or tread a middle road. You will need to take some notes of the points I make.

Now put your hands up if you admit to owning a dog. Keep your hands up if your house has more than one so I can get an accurate picture of dog ownership in this class. As we all know the school is divided into three broad ability bands. The figures I’ve just collected conform to a pattern that has remained remarkably constant over the years I have been teaching this lesson. Dog ownership in top band classes averages 46%. In middle ability classes, this rises to 68%. Band three or bottom band classes usually have over 90%. What can you deduce from those figures?

That’s right, the thicker you are, the more likely you are to own a dog!

This is a school of about 1,500 pupils or roughly 850 dogs. That is a lot of dogshit – I’m sorry to use such language but there’s no other word for it except when you’re writing an English homework essay. Someone once worked out (don’t ask me how) that six hundred tons of dog dirt are excreted on to our streets and parks every year. We laugh at the idea of Elizabethans emptying their chamber pots out of their bedroom windows then wonder at their low life expectancy. In 400 years time more civilized people will be horrified that dogs were allowed to defecate in public. (This was in the days before the invention of poop-scooping laws – which are widely ignored even today by selfish dog-owners.)

We know many dogs are infected with Toxycara Canis. Worms of this are found in excreta which can cause total blindness in children if they handle this dirt. On average twelve children are affected each year. It gives a new slant to Dogs for the Blind, doesn’t it?

We’ve all had ‘stomach upsets’. A group of Cambridge doctors decided to keep statistics of this common occurrence. They found 65% of such patients had been in close proximity to a dog prior to becoming sick. It’s not hard to see how when you see dogs sniffing other dogs’ bottoms and pooh then they come slobbering round your face just prior to your eating your evening meal. Of course, you always wash your hands before eating, don’t you?

The most terrifying disease spread by dogs is rabies. It is prevalent in third world countries. There is no cure. Death is a horrible one with madness and a fear of water as part of the symptoms. To guard against this our islands, have strict quarantine laws where dogs are put into kennels for three months to ensure they do not have rabies. It has been calculated that a fond dog owner will holiday in Europe, probably in a caravan taking their beloved pet with them. There it will most likely mate/fight with an infected animal and so bring the disease back to the UK.

Rossendale is predominantly a sheep farming community. Each year there are attacks – often in the lambing season- when a couple of playful dogs can maul to death almost an entire flock. Often the ewes give birth to still-born lambs if worried in this way. (I often showed gory photos of sheep thus attacked given to me by a local farmer’s son. The last two pictures were the most satisfying – the corpses of the culprits shot by the sheep farmer.) The price of English lamb is higher because of dogs.

There have been many accounts of motor accidents caused by roaming stray dogs. I have a blemish free record except when I swerved to avoid a dog and hit the only lamppost for a hundred yards. One more serious case was of a bus-driver who, veered violently left to avoid a dog and ploughed into a bus-queue of children. The price of motor insurance is higher because of dogs.

Hardly a month goes by without a dog attack on humans. There are many lurid pictures of scarred and disfigured people (often children) in our newspapers. The most infamous was of a twelve-year-old girl walking two dogs in a Scottish wood. They attacked her and ultimately tore her head off. In almost every case the dog owner protested their dogs would never do such a thing – right until it did. I expect all you owners who put up your hands at the start of the lesson have the proper insurance. If it can be proved your dog was responsible for any of the above then you can be sued for damages by the farmer; a floored motorbike driver or the mother of a dead child. I’m not sure what the going rate is for a disfigured baby.’

[At this point I turn to the weekly/annual cost of keeping a dog. Enormous sums are volunteered by proud owners which they lavished on Pedigree Chum; Vets bills; leads/collars; clothes! toys! We eventually settle on a modest sum averaging out at 400 -500 UKP annually. I am at this point keeping a careful eye on the clock as it ticks towards the last minute of the lesson.]

‘Last year we, as a school, managed to raise 1,500 pounds on Red Nose Day. It sounds an impressive sum until we average it out over 1,500 students. Once alternate years we give one pound each to send food to starving black babies on the other side of the world. Yet at home we spend 500 pounds on a muck-making, protein guzzling, disease spreading, accident causing, oxygen thief. What kind of people are you?’

The bell rings exactly on cue. The class leave seething or salivating at the night’s coming essay.

Years before, I had introduced something called CRIT which all pupils had to write under their assignments. In it they commented on what they liked or disliked about the way their essay had turned out. I am gratified to report that many a parent joined in the discussion sometimes running into pages. Most comments, I am happy to say, were from rabid dog-owners and as we have seen from the above statistics on intelligence were easily out-argued.

Chapter 41

It was the worst of times and the best of times. At the last count I had served with nine Head teachers; (a couple of them were temporary appointments due to the most amazing circumstances involving forgery/corruption/sex scandals – have I got your attention?) Only one of the nine was a woman and she it was at the centre of all the illegality. Let’s call her Rumba to protect the guilty after all she led us a merry dance.

She came highly qualified as an Assistant Headteacher – the nameplate on her office door proclaimed her to be Dr Rumba. In a few short years she was duly installed as the school’s first female Head. What a mistake that was! It is difficult to put things delicately in these days of Political Correctness – perhaps the words of our Senior Mistress best sums it up – ‘The bloody school’s being run depending on what time of the month it is,’

I fell foul of her almost immediately. I had thought my cheerful personality and charming smile would be enough to win her over – to no avail. At first I thought she just didn’t like me. Again trying to put this delicately, I later found out she did not like men generally.

She embarked on a policy of ‘suite-ing’. This latest Educational buzz-word in theory had a lot going for it. Subject areas were grouped in classrooms geographically. It meant you were surrounded by staff teaching your own subject. Your Head of Faculty was always close at hand. Your text books were in close proximity. Unless you drew the short straw – the dinner rooms.

The school, despite extensive new building during the Comprehensivisation and ROSLA fiascos, never saw fit to build a dining hall. Instead they built a huge kitchen with two serving hatches surrounded by four classrooms. Guess where our dancing queen decided to suite her most academic Faculty!

When I heard her plans, I am not ashamed to admit there were tears in my eyes when I pleaded long and hard to be spared this attack on the most successful subject in terms of GCSE results. I pointed out that noisy preparations for dinner would disrupt the final half of the lesson before lunch. I pointed out that the smell of cooking food would disturb students’ concentration as their bellies craved satisfaction. I pointed out that the smell of cooked food would linger well into the lessons after lunch. I pointed out the tables were never thoroughly cleaned and many books, both text and exercise books would be disfigured by slops on the desks.

She pointedly ignored my pointings out. My team was expected to move from new classrooms with electrically operated Venetian blinds to pig-sties. Thousands of text books had to be trundled from one building to the next. What a waste of man hours and education time! I don’t want to cast aspersions but the Chairperson of our Governing body was an ex-dinner lady whose son had fallen foul of my ire on account of him being a lazy, good-for-nothing arse. Head and Chair were good friends. Remember this last sentence.

To rub salt into my wounds, it was rumoured that the Head had successfully asked said Chair for a rise. Remember this last sentence.

Everything Educational was set to one side as we were given the news of an impending School Inspection. The word impending is a misnomer. We had the best part of a year to set aside teaching and make policies and create Faculty Handbooks and prepare Policies on Health and Safety; policies on Teaching and Learning styles; Homework Policies; all on a variety of things we had been doing successfully for years without carving them into tablets of stone.

After all the months of pressure building from the top down, you would think the actual Inspection would be a light relief. Not a bit of it. The most nerve-wracking thing was to have an actual Inspector in your classroom or maybe it was just the prospect of one as you never knew who was getting ‘done’ beforehand. Every shadowy figure going past your door during the 1st part of the lesson sent your pulse racing; dried the inside of your mouth and caused your tongue to swell to three times its normal size.

I appealed to the humanity of our English guy and explained our nervousness. Unbelievably he understood and told me every two lessons where he would be and who he would see. I relayed this information so we were all prepared. The object of this ordeal was to secure a grading of ‘Excellent’, ‘Very Good’ or ‘Should Consider Joining the Army.’ At the end of the week these scores were aggregated across each Faculty and a report was delivered to each subject Head explaining our strengths and weaknesses.

Senior Management was also subjected to this ordeal. One last sentence that must be remembered was ‘The school has sound financial management.’ Is the suspense killing you? Oh all right then.

Chapter 42

Since last week there have been many guesses about the identity of the durbious headteacher. Of course I would not want to embarrass her simply because she confined me to the dining rooms so I couldn't possibly comment.

Rumours began to circulate. One of the secretaries was less than discreet after a couple of gin and tonics. Apparently Miss Rumbar, before sending the salary structure to the Inspection team, had asked the afore-mentioned alcoholic secretary to make a change or two – specifically to the Head’s salary scale. Another Deputy Head discovered this; questions were asked; brows were furrowed.

The Dinner lady in her capacity as Chair of the Governors had agreed a salary rise for the dancing queen but had foolishly signed a blank cheque for Miss Rumbar to complete. A simple mistake had been made obviously, which no one had picked up on until the Head herself had the salary scale altered back to what it should have been. Surely it could not be deliberate embezzlement? Surely our first female Head could not have made such an error? A police investigation was begun.

Suddenly all my dinner room problems shrank to tiny proportions. Suddenly I could not wait to throw petrol on the flames sweeping the staff room. Irregularities in Miss Rumba’s qualifications were discovered in that she was no more a Doctor than I was a Professional footballer. She had left her previous school under something of a cloud. A check of the school’s telephone bill revealed long conversations during school time with her lover. Expense claims were examined. A trip by plane to a conference in London was found to have been ‘unnecessary’ as the conference was cancelled due to a fire. Miss Rumbar still went. A date for a trial was set.

Once, whilst driving my first car; a three-wheeler Robin Reliant, I was adjudged to have broken the speed limit in Shuttleworth, Edenfield. The policeman, whilst struggling to keep a straight face, told me I was doing 46 mph in a 30 area. I had heard there was a statuary fine plus a pound per mile over the limit. I elected to go to court and fight my alleged speed. The night before I rehearsed my opening plea in front of some helpful Youf Club members who offered copious words of advice most of which cannot be printed here.

A friend on Senior Management who was due to testify in court the following day employed me to listen to his evidence and encouraged me to grill him as Miss Rumbar’s expensive barrister would. What fun we had as, in my interrogation of him, I had to refer to the lady who had jailed me in the dining rooms as ‘The Accused.’

In the event, despite it being great fun, it became unnecessary as our esteemed Head pleaded guilty thus avoiding the whole stack of evidence being paraded in public and before an electrified staff room. Throwing herself on the mercy of the court worked in that jail time was avoided. Resignation meant she was not sacked and goodness knows what happened to her pension. Last heard of she was managing a clubhouse bar on a golf course. I wonder what qualifications she needed for that job?

Chapter 43

As a footnote on Inspections there were occasional victories. Nowadays, a school is no longer served with many months notice to sweat and fret over – less than a month’s notice is about standard now. The other victory was when I was forced to use violence on an Inspector!

Security in schools is tight nowadays. We’ve not got to the American level of using metal detectors on students but strangers/visitors are required to attend the office where they are given an official badge. On the above Inspection we were told all Inspectors would be wearing a badge from the office.

On the first day I was on corridor duty supervising students as they entered the building. Coming towards me was an obvious Inspector wearing an expensive suit and that ‘I’m important’ face. I stopped him with a hand on his chest. ‘Excuse me sir, where do you think you are going?’

‘I am one of Her Majesty’s Inspectors and I am about to attend Registration in room 6.’

‘I see, and have you any proof that you are who you say you are? The whole staff have been told that Inspectors would be wearing official name badges. Could I see yours, sir?’ A lifetime of being addressed as ‘sir’ had prepared me to deliver the word in such a way as to mean ‘paedo’ ‘terrorist’ or ‘mere scumbag.’

He bristled visibly, whilst I kept my hand on his chest. ‘I’m sorry; I was in a rush to get here quickly and forgot to pick it up at the office this morning.’ He pushed ever so slightly against my hand.

‘I can’t let you into the school without your badge, sir. There was a case recently where a loonie got into a school and caused problems. Let me escort you to the office where you can pick up your badge, sir.’ I pushed him back.

‘For goodness sake, I am part of Mr. Knowall’s team. I need to make it to room 6 before 9am.’

‘Even if you are part of the Inspectorate team, this could be a test of the school’s security routine. You are not entering the building.’ Another push in the chest caused him to take a step back. ‘I’ll escort you to the office and we’ll pick up your badge together, shall we?’ He began to retrace his steps with me two paces behind.

At the office he announced his name to the secretary who handed him a name badge. (I was relieved it wasn’t the English Inspector’s name.) Pinning his badge on, he turned to me triumphantly. ‘Now I’d like to know your name so I can discuss your treatment of me with your Head teacher.’ I knew he’d get all the support he wanted from Miss Rumba.

‘I have a better idea,’ I countered. ‘Let’s go and see the Chief Inspector himself and we can explain to him how you were late on your first day; failed to pick up your ID badge and then tried to intimidate the Head of English into circumventing the school’s security policy.’

I left off the ‘sir’ this time.

He declined.

Chapter 44

After forty four chapters and a similar number of years teaching, I guess it’s a good place to sum up the whole world of Education in Britain. Over the years there have been movements which have failed – some of which looked good on paper but failed in practice.

One such was Special Needs. It was supposed to encompass both bright and not so bright. Students were examined by members of what used to be called the Remedial Department. Originally it was for students who were not clever or academic – they were familiarly known as thickies’. I know this is not particularly PC but that’s how it was. A small group of students each year were given Special help with English and Maths by a dedicated group of teachers. After years of failing at school, some of these students naturally developed behavioural problems – they were difficult to teach.

Because I had the biggest biceps in the Department (85% of whom were women), I often volunteered to serve my time. Teaching the ninth stream in any year group is no bed of roses but there was scope for fun. I had one such group for their two final exam years before they left (none went into the VIth Form.)

One of their (and my) favourite lessons was the Handwriting Exercise. Each week a proud member of the class got to choose a page from our class reader. Everyone would then diligently copy it out into their exercise book and I would diligently take it home and mark it the same night. Each student began with twenty out of twenty but lost a mark for each mistake: a missing comma; a mis-spelling; a difficult to read letter. I occasionally awarded full marks to a proud and diligent pupil.

Another fun lesson was the Spelling test. It had been decreed by Know-alls running Education that regular homework had to be set across the full ability range. No account was taken of the fact that these students forgot a whole day’s schooling during their ten minute walk home. They also forgot text books that staff had foolishly entrusted to them; naturally they always forgot any homework.

At the start of the year my 'remedials' got to rip out all blank pages from old exercise books. Each week they would carefully copy from my blackboard twenty words on to this scrap paper and carefully carry it home or as far as the nearest toilet. I would carefully enter this homework in a journal to prove I was obeying Government decrees.

The next day came the test. Out would come their exercise books. I would announce the title by pointing to the board on which were written the words. With a straight face I would read them out one by one. In all the years I did this, nobody ever got full marks despite the answers staring them in the face from the board.

They loved me to ridicule their efforts in a fun way. I used to say I had taught intelligent apes to spell better than they and I would pull a face which I fondly imagined was my monkey face. The kids labeled it (again not PC) my ’Mong’ face. If anyone displayed a particularly low level of intelligence, they would chorus ‘Give him the Mong face, sir.’ At the end of the year, the proud student who was voted the thickest was given a Mong Gong.

Occasionally this familiarity had disastrous consequences. They loved to hear stories about my life and frequently asked questions of an incredibly personal nature. Last lesson in the afternoon was their favourite time: they were tired; so was I. This particular year I was renovating a cottage. We would often put diagrams of the floor plans and work out how many square yards of floorboards I would need or what size reinforced steel joist (RSJ) would be required over a window in a stone wall. There were some remarkably prescient answers.

The job that fateful afternoon was a floorboard one; but these were a special size. New tongue and groove would not do as the rest of the floor was done in old inch thick planks. The question of where to get them was best answered by Higgins. He reckoned a demolition site where rows of old terraced houses in Haslingden were being pulled down, was my best bet. I concurred. There was a site near his house where they were just burning hundreds of feet of this timber. If I wanted he could get me the required quantity set aside. That would be brilliant and if he was successful I’d come round to his house with my trailer.

Then I made my big mistake; I said I’d pay him or the foreman for such boards. I then promptly forgot all about it as I’d heard such wild tales before.

A few days later I got a telephone call from the local police station asking me to call in on my way home. The desk sergeant said one of my pupils was in trouble and had given my name as his get-out-of-jail-free card. Of course I agreed to help.

The next hour was the most stressful of my previous twenty five years. I have always maintained that there is a strange relationship between police and teachers. Speaking for myself, I have always respected them as a bastion against the anarchy that bubbled close to the surface. Had I been tall enough I would have joined when I was eighteen. I got the impression that day that the police viewed teachers as left-wing activists whose sole purpose was to undermine society.

I found myself in a room helping the police with their enquiries in the same way Crippen and the Black Panther had. I was viewed as a latter-day Fagin who had encouraged Higgins and other accomplices to break into houses and rip up floors because their English teacher had said he would pay them. I was subjected to the equivalent of water-boarding as the good cop/bad cop routine played out. The questions were of an intimate probing nature asking about my sexual relations as if that were pertinent to the price of floorboards. Eventually I was permitted to leave with no charges to be brought against me. For good measure they had phoned school and alerted my head teacher.

The following morning I was subjected to another interview at least as stressful as the police one as a senior manager scented blood and saw a chance to rid the profession of such a bothersome thorn in its flesh. As each barbed shaft struck home between my shoulder blades; as he feverishly scribbled notes in his ‘report to the Governors’ I realized, with a blinding flash of intuition that this was his revenge for his failure as a father. Years ago I had taught his son, an extremely intelligent and capricious student. On his report card I gave him what was probably the only E grade of his entire school life. It was for (lack of) Effort. I countered it with an A for attainment. This was payback time. He had complained vociferously at Parents Night saying it was victimization. (Incidentally I had exactly the same experience with my own son. I congratulated the teacher on his boldness.)

I returned to the staffroom and broke down into a flood of shuddering sobs. Uncle Eddie was on hand to re-construct me. He had spent a life-time teaching these remedials. He knew how their minds worked and took it upon himself to relay this information to Senior management, in particular my interrogator with the parenting problems.

Chapter 45

So was born The Special Needs Statement. A student with a learning problem or a pushy mother was given a statement of the child’s special educational needs. Each statement was to be included into a teacher’s lesson plan; each need had to be met. To ensure this was done, an army of ‘classroom assistants’ was recruited and attached to a child or two and would follow them around all day into every lesson.

Shortly after becoming Head of Faculty I was awarded a new building. With the money saved from over-paying a dishonest Head teacher and as compensation for the years spent in unsavoury dining rooms, we were to have a purpose built block of six new classrooms; a big office and new storerooms. It was immediately christened Bell’s End.

When I say ‘purpose-built’ it was not built for the purpose of teaching in optimum surroundings. Presumably County architects have never visited a school since they left their own VIth form. In their heads all school children are tiny and so a mythical figure is calculated for a child and a desk. This is then multiplied by thirty as that was how many students were in a class when they went to school. The room is built to that size. There is no input from the poor sods who were crammed in there.

So imagine a room built to house thirty dainty bodies sitting in perfect silence. Then turn them into hulking sixteen year olds; then add a further five or six (we frequently taught classes of 35.) Now blend in the Support staff! It was not uncommon to have four students with Special Needs AND their private tutors. What about that most basic special need – oxygen? With windows shut against the harsh British winters and even harsher Rossendale summers, the classrooms became the second most toxic environment after Chernobyl.

Individually I had nothing against any of the Support staff who found their way into my lessons – except I liked being silly with children and found myself inhibited in their presence and a worse teacher for it.

There was one qualified teacher who loved having a certain support teacher in his lessons – she was a better disciplinarian than he was and he found he could teach better. My view is different. I often used to say I was the funniest man I knew. I used to listen to me teach and really enjoy what I heard, until the alien invasion. In my classroom usually the only sound was of my voice or the occasional answer from a student. With the advent of ‘translators’, there was a constant low level murmuring of four other adult voices explaining what I’d just said to their individual needy ones. I suspect the UN conferences were like this before the introduction of headphones!

The Support staff themselves varied enormously. Some would do all the children’s assignments themselves with no input from the child. (I always gave A* s here so the exam grade would come as a complete shock to their system.) Others, I think, failed to understand the lesson completely so the needy student’s response was useless. There were some whose ambition needed reward; so was born the scheme whereby QTS (Qualified Teacher Status) could be attained by serving an apprenticeship. It was a cheap (to the Government) way to put more bodies in the classroom as desire to enter the profession declined in proportion to the salaries earned in Industry.

Chapter 46

What other taboos can be broken here in this irreverent view of Education. I know, Muslims – that should raise a few hackles. Before the invasion of various Middle Eastern countries and Islamic terrorism, the main problem with ‘them’ was their diet. There was about a 10% Immigrant population in my school of 1,500. A few of these arrived at various times mid-term; some with little English. They were placed in a classroom that was rapidly christened ‘The Curry room.’ Over time the exhalations of so many students was absorbed into the very fabric of the walls. It was impossible to spend thirty minutes in there without coming out hungry.

In many ways they were a joy to teach. The early immigrants were pathetically grateful for Education. They respected their teachers (partly because they had been soundly beaten in their previous schools); were determined to succeed in this foreign world. There were no discipline problems and the language shortfall was quickly made up.

The girls were very shy and their shalwah kameez helped hide their emotions and embarrassment. I remember two in particular who took ‘A’ level English with me. Halfway through the course the more intelligent of the two disappeared. Her friend told me she had been sent back to the motherland for an arranged marriage. I’m not sure if it was arranged for the groom to come to UK, I only know he was 52 and she was 17..

After a generation or two some of the boys began to adopt a new identity. They were black but noted blacks in Hollywood films were treated well, even idolized. So was born the Muslim rappers. They took to wearing caps back to front; cultivated an American speech pattern and made me an honorary Muslim. I was given a new name; I learned to chant Allahu Akbar before it became an infamous prelude to suicide and attempted murder. I was taught to salaam alaikum casually – it means ‘peace be upon you’ and the reply Alaikum Salaam means ‘likewise I’m sure’. I never saw anything sinister in it. The Jews have almost the exact same greeting and answer - Shalom Aleichem and Aleichem shalom.

I hope some of my encouragement was responsible for Asian parents attending Parents Nights (complete with their son/daughter acting as interpreter). I had no way of knowing, of course, that when I said, ‘Your son is a lazy good-for-nothing idiot who would benefit from a daily beating with a bunch of willow sticks,’ if it was translated as, ‘I am extremely pleased with his attitude to study and expect him to become a highly qualified Doctor in years to come.’

In time we had Asian Governors; Asian teachers; Asian friends. Where did it all go wrong? We had our first race riots. In my schooldays as a pupil, gangs of boys met for fights; sometimes individual on the back pitch; sometimes against a gang from a rival school. Our weapons were our folded up school caps in the school colours. I maintain to this day that our race riot had nothing to do with race only colour. One gang was black and the other navy blue. The papers saw it differently – lurid stories were printed in the National press; interviews were sought from some of the combatants (lots of interviewees had words put into their mouths from reporters who wished to sensationalise the reasons behind it.) My own private conversations revealed it to be a quarrel over a girl dumping a white boyfriend and taking a black one. It was rumoured that Enoch Powell was to be our next Head teacher!

Chapter 47

As students gained more rights and schools gradually lost the power to enforce them to honour their responsibilities, my retirement grew ever nearer. I actually decided to go two years earlier than I eventually did. I had fallen foul of my latest and final headmaster and decided I could afford to do without this daily angst. As I wrote that last sentence, I got déjà-vu all over again. Presumably earlier in these memoirs I had said something similar, so I totted up the Heads with whom I served and examined my relationship with them.

The first one who lives on in my memory was Tricky-Dicky. This nickname suggests a likeable rogue when in fact he was the stuff of nightmares. He ran the school with an iron rod. He had no fear of public confrontation and would challenge adults or students for the tiniest things. He could browbeat and belittle any who were unfortunate to fall within his sphere of office. I was terrified of him. I was a student teacher in his school for only six weeks yet it seemed an eternity. His one and only appearance in my classroom reduced me to an incoherent mumbling wreck.

My first proper head was the most beloved; Ross the Boss. He ran a happy school; staff and students responded positively to his endearing ways – sing-a-longs in assemblies or extended breaks, he was a joy to work with. He might not have known ‘owt about education’ but his school was a joy to teach in.

I have already rated Nat highly; a listener; a prompter; urbane and articulate. His successor was less so. Pacman knew he was a stopgap. He performed that way too. His school was already under sentence of Comprehensivisation when he arrived; he was only keeping the seat warm for the Grammar school head until the new building work was finished. I suspect this was why most staff didn’t take him seriously, least of all himself. We crossed swords seriously only once. I wrote a smart-arse comment on a lazy boy’s report. ‘He merely occupies space.’ I refused Pacman’s order to rewrite it. He wrote another version in which, never having taught the boy, nevertheless sought to imaginatively hide the student’s idleness. I refused to sign it. I also taught his son for which I was never forgiven.

The head of the new behemoth Comprehensive school was the former Grammar school. He was a gracious, polite and charming man. His main fault, as far as I was concerned, came each month on pay-day. Perhaps in an attempt to learn all our names, (his school had just had an influx of maybe fifty new staff,) he introduced the rather demeaning idea, popular among Victorian mill-owners, of giving us our cheques personally. During break on payday, we would form a queue and shuffle forward, state our names and he would rummage through the seventy or so envelopes and hand us our monthly stipend. I always wanted to touch my cap to him on receiving my envelope, I desisted however because I obviously had a very forgettable face. He persisted in giving me another colleague’s envelope. After two or three months Mr. Hall no longer needed any name-prompting and handed me my cheque. I would tug my forelock and seek out my alter-ego then we would solemnly exchange envelopes. It was flattering in a way as the recipient of my cheque was much younger than I (though he was also paid much less.)

After Mr. Hall retired (he was turned 65), there was a spate of short-lived reigns: a lesbian tea-leaf and a number of temporary acting heads. A teacher’s pension was calculated on the average of the final three years salary. It was advantageous, therefore to get a year’s worth of an acting head’s salary which massively increased your final pension then plan for a retirement three years down the line.

Eventually came my final head. The wheel turned full circle in that almost everyone was terrified of him. Mr. Hurt was big on systems and management, not so good with people management; he was a bully. When I began this list I revealed my terror at my first head teacher; I was twenty-two then. Almost forty years had elapsed since, during which time I had become a much-loved institution (well that’s how I saw me); had experienced a number of varied heads and, most importantly, retirement was flickering on the near horizon. I did not fear this last one.

We had a few tussles, enough to convince him that my retirement ought to be as early as possible. My first tentative venture was at 58 but the bursar helpfully explained that every year before sixty, reduced my pension by 5% pa. I could not afford a 10% cut in my half pay, so I bided my time.

My next venture was made at the start of the school year directly to Mr. Hurt who could barely contain his elation but tried anyway. He wanted my letter of resignation in early January so he could begin the impossible task of finding a replacement for me well before the annual stampede began at Easter. I agreed on condition he promoted my second I/C to Head of the English Faculty. He refused so I settled in for another year of skirmishing.

He began negotiations early the next academic year and I knew I had him. He began to explain he could not guarantee my preferred candidate would make it through the selection process. I countered by saying he was talking nonsense.

Usually a short list of candidates (usually about six) is drawn up from the total number of applicants possibly as many as forty if the job was a plum one. I did once hear of a Head who once had over sixty applicants. He quickly whittled it down to more manageable numbers by throwing twenty envelope with a second class stamp on, in the bin. ‘They didn’t want it enough.’

Mr. Hurt’s tactic had been honed over years and repeatedly discussed by interested staff over the years. He would often have a favourite candidate; the grapevine often came up with recommendations; or they were from a previous school. I have no qualms with this. He was senior management and should be allowed to manage. (I once phoned my favoured candidate the night before the interview and read out all the questions to be asked the next day. I will deny this, of course, if challenged as mere poetic license. It backfired, if it ever happened, as she left my faculty a year later to teach History in the same school.)

Mr. Hurt’s main tactic was to compile a weak short list. First would come ‘the chosen one’ then another five odds and sods. The successful one would shine like a candle in a darkened room; ‘a good deed in a naughty world.’ Gossip had centered round the exclusion of several good candidates known personally to members of staff who never made the final list. I explained this to mein führer and he was aghast to have been rumbled and quickly acceded to my plan.

So the deed was done; my letter of resignation written; (received with great cheer by some members of SMT – Senior Management Team as another thorn was removed.) To his credit Mr. Hurt kept his part of the bargain and appointed my chosen candidate. He gave a lovely speech on my final day and even made it sound as if he regretted my future absence. His speech was far better than mine as I struggled to hold back the tears at the thought of losing my friends and colleagues in some cases dating back over thirty years. I also wept inwardly at the pang of losing my classroom audience. Even today, fifteen years on, I yearn for the buzz I got when I faced my favourite classes, especially sixth forms.

Chapter 48

Before I left, I had a major educational experience which was to shape my future for the next few years: I became a pupil! Apparently many retirees did not make the transition from teacher to pensioner easily. Accordingly there was an initiative put into place called ‘Preparing for Retirement.’ I was urged to choose a course which might benefit me in my twilight years.

Having already been to Night School to learn how to type when computers got small enough to fit into my office and in the absence of a course called ‘How to turn your pension into millions’ I elected to become a bricklayer and signed on at Blackburn College to begin my education in a new field.

Winston Churchill swore by bricklaying as a form of stress relief and the simple mathematics was stimulating and thus helped him save the country. My motive was less altruistic. At fourteen hundred bricks a day, a good brickie could earn a lot of money and leave a lasting testament to his skill for generations to admire. I was more interested in the former reason.

So it was that each Thursday I drove to college where I was introduced to an amazing invention; non-setting cement! It looked, felt and behaved like ordinary cement except that at the end of the session, we students scraped it back into a container where it stayed until the next set of apprentices arrived.

I learned the dimensions of a normal house brick; the different patterns known as bonds – English; Flemish; I memorised them all. I learned how to use a trowel; a spirit level; a pointing trowel; string to keep your courses in a straight line. It was tremendous fun and it was paid for by a grateful County Education Committee. (It was not exactly free as I ran a red light and was dinged by post, but the skills I learned paid for the fine many times over.)

In my pathetic final day speech I advertised a new company that was just starting up; the alliteratively named Bell’s Builders of Burnley. (Otherwise known as Mr. Bodgit’s.) I had 500 business cards printed (free off the internet) listing the Managing Director as Michael Bell. The cards did not explain that the Managing Director was also chief labourer and sole employee. I began work almost immediately I finished teaching. Little did I know it was an interim job before I returned to the classroom albeit in another country. (Wait till the next chapter.)

Initially the jobs were small but my fame grew. I liked to think it was the quality of my workmanship that grew my reputation but on reflection, it was probably my pricing. I argued that as I was being paid half my salary as a teacher, I could afford to work for a nominal seven pounds an hour. In my conversations with prospective clients I made the following stipulations: I was to be paid in cash, (I was paying enough tax on my pension!); having endured school run traffic for nearly forty years I would not start work till after 9.30 am when all doting mums were off the road; I would work until I was bored or tired whichever came the sooner and return the next day. I was swamped with customers willing to adhere to the above conditions!

After the hustle and bustle of the classroom, working alone and in silence was particularly gratifying. The variety of jobs was interesting too. Woodwork; electrics; a bit of plumbing; the only thing I wouldn’t attempt was plastering. One day I had a phone-call from a housewife who wanted to surprise her husband by changing four doors on the landing before he came home from work.

Another time a lady wanted her old metal bath removed. For this job I had a partner. The bath came out easily enough but there was no way it would go down the stairs in her tiny stone terraced cottage. My partner and I sat and puzzled, working on the principle that what goes up must come down. Eventually the lady did confess that she had had new stairs put in after the bath had gone up the old ones. The only solution was to cut it into two pieces.

I had a call from a former colleague who said his widowed mother had decided her house needed revamping and would I go and check out what needed doing. What an amazing lady! When I arrived, the lady had already compiled two lists. In an accent that in that area was dubbed posh, she explained, ‘The two lists are divided into outside and inside jobs. Whatever the weather there will always be something for you to do.’

She graciously accepted my working hours but dug her heels in over my hourly rate. I was embarrassed; she was the first customer to balk at seven pounds an hour. ‘That rate is preposterous, Mr. Bell. I pay my gardener ten pounds an hour and you are far more skilled than he.’ She wanted to pay me more than her gardener but, as I pointed out, there were so many jobs on her list that it might be cheaper to demolish the house and re-build it from scratch. We agreed on ten pounds.

Some days, she had to go to hospital for dialysis and never knew what time she would be back. Accordingly, she provided me with a key and left an envelope containing a hundred pounds behind the clock. Each day I would work my hours; abstract my money (carefully rounding down to the last hour) and leave. I probably worked off and on there for three months. We never called each other anything other than Mr. Bell and Mrs. Fortescue-Blythe (not her real name.)

Hers was the last house I worked on before I left to work in another country, (wait till the next chapter). She approached me one day with a project not on her original list. She wanted a vast patio laying outside her French windows (presumably it would mean the gardener got a pay cut!)

We discussed the likely cost and I managed to talk her out of having it done in Yorkshire stone which was hellishly expensive. She said she had set aside 2,000 pounds for the job. I asked how she had arrived at that figure. The previous year she had had the front drive paved for that figure. It had taken two men two days. The materials I guestimated at 400 pounds which meant each man had earned 400 pounds a day! I showed her some catalogues and we went for flagstones the same creamy colour as Yorkshire stone at a fraction of the cost.

The hardest part was when all the materials arrived. There was no direct route to the back garden so the delivery men parked everything on the new, expensive front drive. I had to barrow everything through the garage and off-load it at the back; there were over 400 paving flags plus sand and cement and gravel to level the site.

Partway through the job, I began to panic. My plane tickets for my new teaching job in another country (see next chapter) were already booked and the date was looming large in my consciousness. I finally finished the day before my expatriation. There were gentle steps down from the French windows. The creamy colour of the patio reflected light into the back room. We sat outside and gazed about. We both sighed simultaneously at a job well done. It had cost in total nine hundred pounds including drainage pipes round the garage. Then I left to finishing packing.

Chapter 49

On the first day of school following my retirement, in early September, I flew off to Thailand to visit my son who, for some strange reason also wanted to teach, but decided to teach in Thailand. He’d set out to do his Karate black belt in Japan but got no farther than Bangkok. Following his accreditation of a TESLA certificate (Teaching English as a Second Language) he was posted to Hat Yai in Southern Thailand. I joined him there for my first holiday as a retiree.

I immediately re-christened the place Rat Yai; during my sixty-two years in England I had seen precisely ONE rat despite arcane calculations explaining we were never more than ten feet from the nearest rat. It was as if the Pied Piper had led a procession from Hamelin directly here. They were everywhere, obviously darting about amid the refuse of dark alleys but could also be seen sitting under what laughingly passed for restaurants locally.

It was a dreadful place. Empty during the week, it filled up with Malay men at weekend. I assumed it was an agricultural thing as my son said they were here for their oats. My son’s greatest pleasure on our walkabouts was jumping on the many huge cockroaches that infested the place. Keeping score it was easy to top fifty each night. I resolved to move on as quickly as politeness would allow.

[I did have one pleasant experience there. As my son was teaching during the day, I was often bored and alone. He advised me to go for a traditional Thai massage on my aching back – a result of a three-plane journey at the age of sixty plus. He gave me careful instructions on getting to the right place lest I receive a different type of traditional Thai massage!

I duly presented my afflicted parts and was spread-eagled in just my boxers on to a thin mattress. My wrinkled masseuse had no English so every instruction was delivered by me imitating her movements when she patted me. It was billed as a two-hour massage. I thought there’s not very much of me how will she make it last that long? I needn’t have worried she spent seemingly half an hour on my left arm. The high spot was when she finally got to my back.

I’d carefully mimed my pain and urged extra care. I knelt upright as instructed secure in the knowledge that such a tiny lady could not do any lasting damage to a hulk like me. She placed her knees right on the spot and linked arms. Before I could protest she jerked me backwards over her knees. My roar of shock and, yes, pain sent her into paroxysms of chuckles. Two hours later, I walked out cured; not a twinge; not an ache. With tip it had cost me less than two pounds.]

I explained to my son that I wanted to see the world now I was retired.

I had a friend, former colleague and ex-pupil who had moved on to richer pastures in Brunei; (there, the secret is out). By the miracle that is email, I asked if I could seek sanctuary from the rats at his home. He readily agreed and was waiting for me at 3 am when I finally arrived from Kuala Lumpur after an overnight bus from Hat Yai.

I stayed at his four-bed roomed house provided by the school and was invited to see how the other half lived. Accordingly, I went into his International school in Bandar Seri Begawan. It catered for children from the age of five to eighteen so was infinitely more comprehensive than the school I had just left: except for one thing – the fees.

All the students were from Brunei families who could afford it or the offspring of the truly international staff who taught there. In Brunei, a strictly Muslim community, alcohol was forbidden. It is a universally accepted fact that teaching is a hard job but impossible without a certain unspecified amount of daily/weekly alcohol. The social life of these ex-pats therefore consisted of weekend parties fuelled by regular trips across the border into Sarawak or Sabah on the island of Borneo to buy duty-free sustenance.

I found it strange that everyone who brought a bottle to the party took the remnants home with them at the end of the night. At one of these gatherings I met Miss Prim. There is nothing significant about the name, it was just the aura she gave off during our conversation. She taught junior English and invited me to guest star in one of her classes the following day.

I had never taught seven-year olds before and wondered how I would cope. I prepared assiduously the next chapter of Roald Dahl’s ‘George’s Marvellous Medicine’ in the hour before the lesson. I had been out of the classroom for precisely eight weeks; the longest time in the previous thirty-eight years. I needn’t have worried; it was a riot. Both the class and I laughed so much it hurt. I remembered how things used to be in my classrooms during the sixties and seventies. I did all the silly voices; all the gurning faces; the kids loved it.

The class and I parted reluctantly and I returned to drink coffee in the staffroom and awaited my friend’s final lesson. Counting back, I worked out that twenty-two minutes had elapsed after leaving the classroom before the Headmaster offered me a permanent job. Naturally I turned it down: I had plane tickets home and a building business to run. In the pink afterglow of my Marvellous lesson, I was tempted. One of the deciding factors was, strangely, gin and tonic. It is a drink I love, particularly in hot climates. It was possible to have one in Brunei but there was a rigmarole to it.

You go into a restaurant for a meal. The waiters will not sell you alcohol but will bring you a tonic, ice and a slice. They will turn their backs when you bring out a bottle of Gordon’s and add the requisite amount before hiding the bottle back under the table. So, I returned to England.

STOP PRESS

There's been some Facebook activity this week concerning the site. Apparently my entries were viewed as spam/malicious/duplicitous. Some discussion about my blockbusting non-seller. 'POW/USA' is also a film script. The proposed heroine would be about Emily Aston's age. Anyone still in contact with her, draw her attention to this chapter please.

A former student on the love Haslingden reminded me (this week) that whilst Alder Grange had Jane Horrocks (Ab/Fab fame) we, HHS had celebrities too, most of them named Aston. Both Emily, Thomas and Sam appeared on Corrie regularly and for several seasons.

I knew of Emily’s fame even before she arrived at the High School. I watched the movie ‘Oranges are not the Only Fruit’, entranced by the red-headed heroine as an eight year old. I was agog when I heard she’d begun school and activelysought her out. We met on the corridor near the changing rooms. I was star-struck and asked her for her autograph! We became firm friends as she progressed through the school.

By this time Mr Guppy and I were involved in making scenery for the school productions. I graduated from playing Widow Twankey in the Sixth Form Pantomimes to more serious roles opposite Emily.

She was mischievous and frequently got me into trouble with The-Powers-That-Be. I was notoriously poor at remembering lines and took to writing them on various props which I could hold or see on stage. She stole or moved them at every opportunity. One time she asked me to rehearse with her behind some scenery whilst the drama unfolded before a live audience. We were caught high and dry in full view at the end of the scene when the scenery was changed.

During ‘West Side Story’ I played the racist Detective Shrank and we had a scene where I had to interview Maria (AKA Emily.) I was confident about my lines in this scene as I’d written them down in my ‘police’ notebook and could consult them openly when it was my turn to speak. Whether by accident or design, Emily forgot her lines and began answering my questions with the wrong answers. ‘What is your name?’ ‘Three months’. ‘

How long have you known Tony?’ ‘At the dance in the gym.’

It was obvious to everyone in the audience that I didn’t belong on the same stage as this professional.

Even after she left and turned professional I saw most of everything she did (so long as it was at The Octagon or The Exchange. She always knew when I was in the audience at the final curtain; my piercing whistle earned me a smile and a wave.

STOP PRESS

Thanks to Mark Alston for downloading a Kindle copy of my blockbusting non-seller POW/USA. A love story set behind the barbed wire of POW camps in America. He's also written this lovely review - 'Just finished POW/USA. Fantastic read. Mike's writing style is compulsive and the story itself weaves the characters' lives into a historic context that I knew nothing of (obviously Mr Birtwell's failing). Not to mention lessons on genetics and musical history... something for everyone😀. As an avid reader of all genres I can wholeheartedly recommend POW. Buy it!'

STOP PRESS

Once again by popular demand, I have been rebuked for failing to give Mr Heavens a mention. When I first went to Ryefield he quickly became my best buddy on account of his sense of humour. We shared authorship of the staffroom mag (The Sin Bin) produced once a month. The one copy was much sought after and many a member was pilloried for his sins. When the music teacher was promoted to another school, his farewell speech to the staff was quoted verbatim; ‘You’re nothing but a set of piss-taking sods.’ The abbreviation PTS was adopted into the staff vernacular.

All too soon it was Dave’s turn to leave and move up the ladder to another local school. We stayed in touch and one day I had occasion to visit his school and called in on his class just before the last bell of the day.

(I was reminded of this occasion by Katie Wolstenholme. During the lock-down I have been re-watching ‘Game of Thrones’ and wondered if the Dothraki language was scripted or ad-libbed. She wrote, I’ve never seen GoT but I do know about linguistics 😀. Dothraki is a very convincing ConLang (constructed language) created by a professional linguist, not just foreign sounding. )

Well Dave and I had a routine we called Dobra verchi. We reserved it for when there was someone new in the staffroom (usually a young lady.) One of us would begin with the greeting Dobra verchi. There would then follow a totally made-up conversation in a totally made-up language between the two of us where we would jabber away loudly and with many suggestive gestures until someone debunked us.

So when I wandered into his classroom he immediately launched into this routine. He introduced me to his class as a Romanian teacher who had very little English. He constructed a question and answer session where his Rossendale students asked me questions about schools in Romania. I would jabber back and he would translate my ‘answers’ to the class. How I kept my face straight at some of the preposterous answers I allegedly gave, I’ll never know. In the last minute I lapsed into Rossendalian English and the class realized they’d been had.

Sadly Dave is no longer with us.

Chapter 50

When I first started teaching, I used to joke about the perks of the job. ‘£46 a month and all the chalk you can eat.’ As I gained seniority, I learned that you could arrange your own perks. Of course, as an assistant teacher, I’d taken pupils camping in Grassington and sat shivering round a campfire, eating cold beans and determined to enjoy myself as it was free. Then I had my first foreign holiday ‘on the house’.

My friend Al had already signed up for the annual trip to Switzerland and I sat in the staffroom, secretly envying him and the other three teachers who were going on this freebie. Then a marvellous thing happened; one of the staff got pregnant. They sought a replacement female teacher. Staff/pupil ratios decreed four staff for forty students, two of each sex. As none of the other female staff were willing or able to give up their pre-arranged holidays, I became an honorary woman. There was none of this political correctness or Health and Safety regime in the good old days.

Al and I were on one of our non-smoking jags at the time but we agreed to smoke abroad, after all it’s practically compulsory in France and half the price. Thus, it was as the coach pulled away from Ryefield Avenue, tearful students waved goodbye to relieved parents, Al produced a ten packet of Nelsons. Flying through the night en route for Dover, we worked our way steadily through the packet.

On board ship it was time for breakfast. Whilst I contemplated the price of a full English, Al decided on a beer! It was 6am. Not being a prude, I forewent breakfast in favour of a cognac and coffee. They were very more-ish. When we climbed aboard the coach in France all three male teachers were drunk in charge of forty students. We slept till lunch.

Being an ‘educational’ trip, the students were given ten francs to buy their own lunch. Al and I found a quiet bistro where we ate bread and cheese, pain et fromage accompanied by a litre carafe of vin rouge. Our alcohol levels topped up, we slept till Rheims where we were to spend the night at a pre-booked hotel. Al and I shared room 16, seize in French.

After dinner, Al, myself and Mick the coach driver hit the town. Al and I decided we would not be having any alcohol. We found ourselves in a lively bar where many young French were ordering something called diable menthe. I translated this as Devil Mint. We liked the sound of it and ordered a round. They were green and very refreshing. After four drinks, we fell in love with the bar maid. Her name was Giselle. She was very French, a coquette and readily agreed to come to our hotel room when she finished her shift.

Once back in room 16, a squabble broke out about who was to have the bed nearest the door through which Giselle would come. I won the toss and we both lay back in feverish anticipation. Soon the Devil Mint worked its magic and the last coherent thought that flashed through my addled brain was the certainty that in my schoolboy French, I had told Giselle chambre treize, not seize. Room 13 might prove lucky for some one. I imagined her walking unannounced into the married teachers’ room.

Over breakfast Al and I sniped irritably at each other. Only the arrival of Mick brought a halt to our wrangling. Fat and cheerful he tucked into his breakfast with gusto, swallowing each mouthful of food down with thick French coffee. I eyed him uncomfortably, a suspicion growing like toothache. ‘Did you sleep alright?’ I asked.

‘Like a top, mate,’ he answered cheerily. Not once throughout the meal did he ask about our planned night of passion with Giselle.

‘What room were you in?’ I was struggling to keep my voice steady.

‘Just down from you, mate. Room 13 numero treize.’ I stared hard at his inscrutable cockney face but discerned nothing.

Chapter 51

We put Giselle behind us and started to climb the Alps. We had been assured that we had only one travel sick patient; Anderson and he assured us he had taken his tablet at the required time. As we swerved round hairpin bends, always climbing, my admiration for Mick returned, replacing my jealous suspicions. Gazing through the windows at alternately blank rock faces or dizzying drops, there were more than a few green faces.

Finally, we pulled up outside the Semi Ramis Hotel and immediately cancelled the football match. We had contacted the local school and arranged to play a friendly between two teams of teachers and pupils from each school. As we fought for oxygen carrying our cases from coach to reception, we realised we wouldn’t last ten minutes.

Our host was an ebullient Swiss French named Henri. He was ebullient as each of the four English teachers presented him with a bottle of whiskey as pre-arranged. He gave us the Duty-Free price in Swiss francs then proceeded to sell it back to us over the next six days at the equivalent of £60 a bottle. We had a serious talk with him about serving alcohol to our students, none of whom were older than sixteen. We had a plan: Beer X.

First night after dinner which had been roundly condemned by many as ‘foreign muck’, some of our older lads sidled furtively up to the bar. Checking to see no teachers were watching, Henri winked and served them. All that first night the lads poured copious quantities of non-alcoholic beer down their necks. Some even managed to get drunk, slurring their words and walking unsteadily to the toilet. Autosuggestion is a powerful thing.

Henri meant well but he had the Sadim touch. Like a backward Midas, everything he touched turned to dross. There was the torchlight parade where every student was issued with a living flame torch and ordered to walk around the village under the low-hanging wooden eaves of the mainly wooden buildings. The first six or seven students were fine but as yet another flaming torch was applied to an already smouldering timber, the alarm was raised, the torches confiscated, the parade cancelled and back we went for another night of Beer X.

His piece de resistance was the Treasure Hunt. Valuable prizes had been secreted about the hotel and grounds. Bits of paper were issued with clues on them. No teacher was allowed to take part on account of their supposed greater intellect. We sat and watched forty hysterical children rush about madly and in vain. All afternoon we watched them get redder and more and more frustrated as despite seeming to follow the instructions no one had actually found one of the ‘valuable prizes. It seems that Henri’s spoken English was fine but when writing in English he got ‘right’ and ‘left’ confused.

We spent a very pleasant week in Switzerland though I don’t remember doing any thing ‘educational’ with the students. We took a ski-lift up a further 3000 feet. I remember being unable to keep a cigarette burning so scarce was the oxygen. But all too soon it was time to go home.

Henri waved us a tearful goodbye; no more customers for his whiskey rip-off. Mick started the engine; Anderson immediately deposited his breakfast in the handy vomit bag. He handed it to me; I passed it smartly to Al who handed it to the female teacher just as the soggy bottom split open. The coach stank of sick all the way back to Haslingden.

Chapter 52

Once this precedent of a free holiday had been set, I began to avail myself of it every year. I love camping yet all the family holidays in England under canvas were disasters. I can remember digging a drainage ditch round the tent on Anglesey to avoid the family home floating away. In Cornwall I remember employing a team of children to each pick up a leg of the tent and carry it to higher ground. Even crossing the sea to the Channel Islands didn’t bring any better luck – we chose the year of The Fastnet Gale!

A free holiday in the South of France was, therefore, impossible to resist. Each year we would be driven 23 hours on a coach in search of sun. For most of the passengers it was not only their first trip out of England but their first trip out of town! Their eyes were big with wonder and so ripe for some merciless ribbing from the staff.

We convinced one set of nervous students that the coach driver hadn’t passed his test and that was the reason he drove all through France on the wrong side of the road. Our best pranks were reserved, however, for the camp site. It was a PGL Water sports holiday. Nobody knew what PGL stood for so we told them it was short for Parents Get Lost.

J K Rowling’s latest money-printing machine is entitled ‘Fantastic Beasts and Where to find them.’ I’ve got news for her; we did it first. The humble scorpion is not that fantastic, nor does it live anywhere near our French campsite, yet ask any of our gullible students and they will solemnly relate how they suffered a plague of them.

The first job on alighting from our coach into the sunshine of France was to allocate tents. This had all been pre-planned to avoid too many troublesome boys in the same tent. After their luggage had been stowed each tent was issued with a Scorpion kit. The staff explained that the scorpion’s sting was not usually fatal but certain precautions were necessary. A plastic bag was issued to each tent and the students were given fifteen minutes to follow the instructions printed on (scanned) headed PGL notepaper to scorpion-proof their tent.

The bag contained two lolly sticks (unused) and a piece of string. By tying the string tautly between the two sticks at a precise height of two inches from the floor, the tent’s occupants were protected. We painted a mental picture of the scorpion headed in determined fashion towards the door of the tent – its sting already raised menacingly. As it tried to scuttle under the string, it was swung vertically in a complete circle until it faced the other way. No matter how many times it tried to enter, the string swivelled it away until it gave up and tottered dizzily away. Every year we listened to stories of numerous sightings or tent invasions because the string wasn’t tight enough.

(Incidentally there were no scorpions and looking at the Geometry the string would not swivel the mystical beast away!)

Next week The Mythical Gummy Shark.

Chapter 53

The most fantastic beast however was the infamous gummy shark. This invention had initially served a serious purpose. A ring of buoys across our bay indicated a safe area beyond which naughty boys must not venture. ‘Pour encourager les autres’, as the French say, the gummy shark was invented. It lived outside the ring of buoys which allegedly supported a shark net. As the name suggests this particular breed of shark had no teeth but it could give you a right good gumming.

Every succeeding year there were constant ‘sightings’ of the gummies by highly imaginative students. With no TV in the evenings, some students were invited to describe their shark encounters for the amusement of the staff. This was all very hilarious until I had my own encounter!

My partner and I were in a small sailing boat supervising pairs of students in similar craft. At the extreme edge of the ‘shark net’, a couple of girls had capsized and couldn't right their boat. My colleague and I sailed expertly over and rescued the girls and sent them on their way. In doing so we managed to overturn our own boat. We were expert in the technique of righting capsized craft. We took up our positions on opposite sides, one to pull down, the other to push up and began our exertions. It was then the shark struck.

My leg was seized between two cold and clammy jaws. Despite being present when we invented this fantastic creature, I knew instinctively what it was. I roared in fright and gasped to my partner that I was being gummed by a shark. I could feel the two jaws rubbing and gnawing at my calf and thigh. The more I thrashed about the tighter the jaws clamped on my leg. It was only when my partner managed to quiet my terrified roars that she managed to convince me that it was her legs I could feel under the boat and not some ravening beast. What a tale I had to tell round the campfire that night.

Chapter 54

Going to France wasn’t just to create a freebie for impoverished teachers. It was intended to broaden the mind; assist in the acquisition of French customs and the French language. On early trips before the Euro rip-off, we would reimburse the students with a ten franc note and they would be encouraged to buy their own lunch. Nobody taught me what a kilo of jambon/ham looks like. It took me three days to finish it by which time it was a bit green round the edges.

One of the most popular trips was to a French Water Park. Here we would dutifully queue in an orderly fashion till one minute before opening time when a surge of French customers swept aside any civility and it became a free-for-all. As we fought our way in everyone was issued with a ticket which the French promptly threw away. Our students however had been primed as to its importance. On the journey there we had told horror stories of how, without the ticket, it was impossible to get out. Children had been imprisoned for days living off left-over ham till the fine could be raised.

Some brighter students pointed out carrying a valuable paper ticket on to water slides might result in the valued item disintegrating. Cue the following French lesson over the coach loudspeaker.

‘As we have pointed out you must keep this ticket from getting wet. Over the years we have found the best way of doing this is to place it in a plastic bag and carry it with you everywhere you go. We teachers can’t issue plastic bags as it’s a Health and Safety issue. Don’t worry however; all the rides have French Life guards at the entrance who will issue you with one on request. Who knows the French for plastic bag? No? What on earth do French teachers do in your lessons! Don’t laugh; the word you require sounds rude in English but it’s perfectly polite in French. When you meet the lifeguard you must say, ‘Avez-vous un condom?’

We have countless photos of lifeguards falling about in hysterics as fifteen-year-old English girls asked them the above question. The plus side was we never had any cases of pregnancy during the ten years I attended.

Chapter 55

One year a group of, mainly boys, approached us with a request which was hard to refuse. It was 1 September 2001 – a date that will live long in the memory of English football fans. England were playing Germany and the match was being shown live at a bar near to the camp site. Normally we operated a strict policy of all students were to be confined to camp during the hours of darkness.

As this was a special occasion we held an impromptu staff meeting of the five teachers on duty; three male; two female. A democratic vote by 3-2 decided that the students would be allowed out accompanied by the three male teachers, whilst the two ladies stayed in camp.

We filled the café and took all the best seats by placing towels on them and relegating the few German tourists to the back. Their discomfort was increased when a party of girls accompanied by one of the afore-mentioned female teachers, having taken a vote between the two of them, decided girls might be interested too, so our numbers swelled by a further dozen. As each English goal went in a round of drinks was ordered – five in all. The French proprietor could not believe his luck and bought a boat to be moored at Monte Carlo on the proceeds.

The toast that rang out loud and clear, was ‘Michael Owen’. None of the German tourists joined in!

Chapter 56

If you hold a party in your house, you have to be prepared for it to splinter into two. All the females of both sexes gather in the front room and dance to the music chosen by a self-appointed DJ from your miserable collection of Beatle LP’s. Meanwhile the real party takes place in the kitchen where proper men gather close to the drink. The conversation begins innocuously enough. School stuff, the latest political scandal, moving through to Football until enough drink has been poured down every one’s neck and all inhibitions are lost; then, and only then, does the talk turn to ‘Great Vomits I have known’.

I have to tell you that there’s only one thing that makes me sick. I have been in gales on the North Sea, long car journeys; I even survived my own 21st birthday party without regurgitating a single drop of the 20 different shorts I had consumed. The one thing that induces vomit from me is other people’s vomit. The sight of IT; the smell of IT; starts me retching immediately.

As a teacher you were surrounded by would-be vomiters. You learned to spot the signs: the green face; the clasped stomach; watery eyes, you dispatched them all to another place; known appropriately enough as the Sick Room. There was even an optimum time for it and optimum weather too. First lesson after lunch on a warm, sunny day was dangerous. The students had gobbled their food down then run madly about the playground playing chasing games. We are talking boys here. Girls didn’t run about shouting and swearing. They stood in groups chatting and looking at running boys. Indeed, some Educational research has put this forward as a reason why girls tend to outscore boys in language-based subjects.

My first tangle with vomit came after over ten years of teaching. I prided myself on spotting the signs and weeding out the up-chuckers before they could pollute my classroom. It was a hot summer day and the students were arriving red-faced and sweating. I scrutinised them carefully as they filed past me for registration. I sent one suspect to the toilets ostensibly for a wash but in reality, to keep him out of my room.

I swiftly called the register and then a boy put his hand up. ‘Please sir, my leg hurts.’ Being a dutiful form-teacher, I hastened over and knelt down to massage a muscle strain. And he vomited on me! I felt liquid warmth begin to soak through my shirt and turned and inhaled at the same time. I immediately vomited on him. Talk about getting your own back! We were both dripping and heaving. Simultaneously we headed for the washrooms where we peeled off our shirts and began throwing water over each other. What an officer investigating me for paedophilia would have made of it I don’t know. We were both given time off to go home and change. I was back within the hour; the vomiter had two days off whilst his school uniform was washed, dried and ironed.

So we come back to Switzerland, and our only travel-sick student. The four teachers were sat on the front two rows. Anderson sat immediately behind me. Mick started the engine and Anderson began to vomit. To his credit most of it went into a brown paper bag which he handed to me as I turned round. When some one gives you something you take it without wondering.

As I realised what it was I passed it to Al sitting on the coach aisle. He, just as smoothly, passed it across the aisle to the leader of the party who in turn gave it to his wife. Then the music stopped on this bizarre game of pass-the-parcel and the soggy bag’s bottom fell out! Despite Mick’s clean-up operations; despite opening all windows with pure Alpine air scouring through the coach; I smelled vomit for the next two days as we journeyed back to England.

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