Quince bush!

I detest most meetings. They tend to encourage the sanctimonious, self-important and slitheringly upwardly-mobile to grab any available space for tedious dramatic monologues and sleep-inducing soliloquies! Many such speakers need – with a fair degree of urgency – to learn two important skills: The Art of Summary and the Craft of Grabbing an Audience by the Balls!

When bored, lectured at or sanctimoned (new word!), I tend towards disruption – and can, at times, be outspoken, crude, vulgar, inappropriate and, I am sure, murderously* politically incorrect (*as in, those in my proximity would dearly like to gralloch me by hand and explore the contents at their leisure!).

Staff Meetings (akin to the Peace of God: Passeth all Understanding and Endureth for Ever!) and English Departmental (with the emphasis on the ‘mental’) ones were a particular bane of my life: Even my favourite Head of Department (a like-minded soul and a post-teaching friend) was not able to do much against the sheer turgidity of the syllabus, the oleaginous creeping of colleagues on the make and the endless bloody initiatives heaped upon us by the government.

One meeting stands out: We were discussing poetry and Ted Hughes came into the conversation. Now, I had seen – and lusted after – said Easter Island Style of Good Looks man back in my university days – and said so, in no uncertain terms, possibly along the, ‘Wouldn’t chuck him out from under the yurt…’ lines.

A colleague (whom I won’t name and shame!) inadvertently tossed me a splendid ball to play with when he/she said, ‘But Ted Hughes is dead, Ali…’

‘Doesn’t bother me!’ quoth I. ‘Dig the bugger up and have my wicked way with him!’

Having thus forced the assembled decrepitude into decidedly murky, not to say Cathy and Heathcliff, territory, I sat back, mentally doing a High Five and happy that I had managed, albeit briefly, to derail the train of tiresome twittering.

Thing is this: I totally understand why kids get pissed-off and behave badly in lessons: Teachers can Bore for England (and many of them actively do). Being a PhD in one’s subject, having Mensa level IQ and a photographic memory does not have anything to do with the ability to actually teach, engage with people and get knowledge across in a vital and memorable way.

Our government (successive waves of the sods, actually) have done their best to ruin education: Bringing ever-tighter rules; weeding out all the mavericks; demoting the children to statistics whose sausage-factory-forced exam success will grab the school an Outstanding  from Ofsted; undermining the to-me-vital pastoral system under the farcical idea that all children should be emotionally resilient (seriously) – and covering over the widening cracks with jargon and impenetrable edu-bollocks.

Teachers are no longer encouraged (allowed?) to socialise at breaks and lunch times; they are working ever-longer hours and facing an increasing number of seriously troubled children. Breakdowns and alternative career choices are soaring.

Coming back to my disruption of meetings: I very much doubt I would be able to get away with such naughtiness these days; in fact, I am certain the I would be placed on a high stage of the Suspension Procedure, warned off and, basically, silenced. At least when I was a teacher, we could say, ‘God, this is boring!’ and mutter mutinously among ourselves as some jumped-up twerp in a tight suit (male or female) waxed un-lyrical about Records of Achievement (remember them?!), Pointless Initiative Number Three Million – or the reason why it was no longer deemed acceptable to call a problem a problem, when such linguistic horrors as ‘Anger Management Issues‘ could be perpetrated upon the pained public!

As for Dead Poets – and my frivolous flight of fancy concerning one of them – such levity would, I fear, be a hanging offence (with optional drawing and quartering) –  though, I suspect that the meeting in which my fate were explained to me would cause me to reach through my uvula and bring the whole digestive tract out through my swearing-bitterly-till-the-end mouth!

The photo of quince, by the way,  has been deliberately inserted in an attempt to calm myself down after this bouillabaisse of belligerent bawling!