Dispatches From a Dilettante Read Online Free PDF

same every morning. As I finished the word ‘Anderson’, Cathy aged fifteen, would pout in Marilyn Monroe style and emit a long simpering ‘Yes Suuuur’. Before she was half way through the second syllable I knew that the whole class was aware of my blushing visage. The blushing got worse when Dorothy Begley emitted a whispering and breathless version of the word ‘sir’ adding a sexually knowing flick of the head for emphasis. Ribald comments could not be quelled by my increasingly despairing calls for quiet.
    After a couple of weeks of this and against all regulations I gave in and got the two girls to do the register for me. A week later I was buttonholed by the head in the corridor. He congratulated me on the increased accuracy and tidiness of the register and of course I accepted the only praise I ever got from him with appropriate modesty.
    As the term progressed and autumn days became shorter and darker, so the attrition rate among the staff increased. The music teacher stormed into the staff room one dank overcast afternoon and threw a pile of exercise books onto the table, dramatically announcing her immediate resignation to no one in particular. As she turned to exit, sobbing violently, I noticed the spittle on her back of her cardigan.
    Pete Higgins the rotund PE teacher not noted for hard work, and known to the kids as ‘Piggy’, mentioned one day in the morning staff briefing that 4C had gone missing the previous afternoon. “All of them?” queried the head Mr Taylor, with a remarkable degree of sangfroid. What Mr Higgins omitted to say in his account was that the whole form had absconded from their weekly PE lesson for the last four weeks. In case the situation could be misconstrued they had kindly left a note, discovered by another staff member pinned to the PE notice board, which read “Piggy you fat bastard we’ve gone to Huyton.” When this note was read out a sizable minority of the staff audibly expressed their pleasure that the note contained no spelling errors and a reasonable stab at punctuation.
    Two boys were sent to stand outside the head’s office for fighting. As I was walking towards the office their disagreement reignited and punches were being thrown. Before I could get to there the head bounded out of his office and tried to spit them up. The larger of the boys turned to him and with no particular venom said quietly, truthfully and with terminal consequences, “Fuck off…..this has got fuck all to do with you.” The words were uttered in perfect synchronicity with the blows now being simultaneously aimed at the head’s head so to speak.
    A group of regional captains of industry were due to be shown round the school as part of the local authority’s attempt to engage business. The head was not enthusiastic and persuaded the local infants’ school across the way to host the visit, with me in charge of liaison. The suits arrived on the appointed morning and we tiptoed into the back of the hall. A class of five year olds were sitting on the floor at the front, enrapt at the story being told about the Three Little Pigs and the Big Bad Wolf. As we sat uncomfortably on chairs designed for small people, the kids were oblivious to our existence. In total concentration their eyes gazed upwards to the stool on which the teacher perched in front of them. She was commendably putting everything into the telling of the tale and their mouths were wide open. At the climax of the story she paused and then in appropriately dramatic tone said “And finally the big bad horrible wolf went to the house of the little piggy that was made of straw. I’m going to huff and puff and blow your house down roared the nasty wolf”. There was a collective intake of breath and a silent pause, followed by a five year old saying with feeling and in a loud voice “The bastard.”
    Even as an ill prepared immature and less than wholly committed teacher I could spot the weaknesses of what would now be called at