Last Day of Term

So, there you have it. 1,095 days ago I was considering changing careers and becoming a primary school teacher and, three years on, the General Teaching Council saw fit to pass me as an English teacher at secondary level. I’ve taught in two schools, first in Peckham and then Greenwich, been on dozens of school trips both in the UK and abroad, had 18 parent’s evenings, two tutor groups, seen tears of rage, sadness and happiness – although mostly rage – and made the phrase, ‘who do you think you are?’ an almost daily mantra. But now it’s over.

I wondered how I’d feel after the final curtain dropped, and to be honest it’s a bit numb actually. The last two summers have been great, but at the back of my mind I always knew what I was going back to and did the odd lesson here and there to ensure I was prepared, but now I have nothing. OK, so the reality is that, while the last couple of summer hols did include some work, now I really have to pull my finger out (that’s metaphorical this time – thankfully). I’m officially unemployed at a time when no-one can get a job. Have I lost my fucking mind?!

Well? What’s the big idea then? I’m glad you asked. My hope is that I can take some of the stuff I’ve learned as a teacher and use it in a capacity where I’m not bullied by a bunch of 12-year-old girls every day. You know, so that the entire experience hasn’t been one colossal waste of time. I have a few ideas about this, but rather than brashly announce these to the world (9-10 people) I’m gonna work on them a bit first, in case it all comes crashing around my ears. Supply teaching, anyone?

In the meantime, I’m off to South-East Asia in late September until the new year where I intend to pretend I’m much younger than I am, exploit the hell out of the rate of exchange and learn how to play projectile ping-pong at the Chairman Miaow tittie bar. I’ll be back on the blog for this, so keep your emails and your minds open (yes, it’ll be a deep voyage of discovery) in preparation. I can’t wait to travel again and this’ll probably be the last time I get this kind of chance, so I’m taking it. Sorry, Mum.

I’m so grateful for the fact I had such a good last day, as it’ll be that which remains with me, rather than those days I felt like writing ‘shutthefuckup’ backwards on my forehead and head-butting my way out of the school gates. It began, as every other day had that year, with my tutor group and there were already tears in the morning of our final registration, as well as an unprecedented amount of farewell gifts. Apparently the girls all want me to be drunk and fat. Look at them all in the pic at the top which includes, as I understand it, a perfectly valid certificate of qualification. I will be adding this to my CV.

There was an assembly where the rest of the departing staff and I were sat at the front and told how great we were before receiving more presents. Loved it. Then I watched a film with my difficult year 9 class who, despite having me shout at them for talking throughout it, put together a home-made card with really touching messages in it. Appreciated it. Afterwards it was nearly time to go, but first I showed my tutor group the deliberately emotive film I’d made to get them all weeping, which worked like a charm. Relished it. (see it here: http://vimeo.com/26757821) And finally made a speech, got more presents and cards and achieved new levels of obscenity down the pub until the wee hours. Forgotten it.

There’s so much I haven’t told you about my time in the classroom. Deleted scenes, if you like, which never made it to the final DVD. The way the boys used to wait until a really tense moment in the lesson, where the behaviour had gotten so bad it’d driven me to scream at the top of my voice causing the whole room to go silent, before some anonymous voice would completely undermine me with the classic, ‘waa, waa, waaaaaaa’. Or when Ofsted visited, like the Dementors in Harry Potter, and everyone would be absolutely terrified except the kids, who drank it in like sweet nectar. ‘Why are you writing objectives on the board?’ they’d ask, adopting faux confusion on their face because they knew an inspector was in the room. ‘You don’t normally show us how to reach the next level’, they’d continue as teacher grinned and sweated anxiously.

No? How about sitting through an entire speaking and listening assessment where a girl debated the necessity of abortion and kept referring to foetuses as faeces? ‘Faeces have feelings too!’ Or even a classic case of confusion when a science teacher saw a couple of boys clearly pulling their trousers down and looking at each others’ bits. ‘What do you think you’re doing?!’ was justifiably bellowed across the room at the boys, to which one simply replied, ‘chill out, bruv; Jefferson just didn’t believe I had any pubes.’ Oh, that’s fine then.

It all happened and I saw it all. Well, most of it anyway. And that’s what I’ll miss the most. Not the pubes, but the unpredictability of children. Adults have to abide by rules and you very rarely see public displays of lunacy from them, but kids; well, they say and do the oddest things at times, which can be infuriating, but also incredibly funny and endearing as well.

I’ll also miss being a form tutor – the role in which I felt the most confident. Having kids confide in you and trust you completely is quite disarming and although it’s a big responsibility, I always did my best to sort out their issues. This included a wide range of problems which could be as serious as self-harm, but also as frivolous as self-tanning too much and staining the forehead.

In conclusion, I will miss a lot of things about teaching, but I’m not going to kid myself; it has been, without doubt, the most stressful thing I’ve ever done. Children are different now and prey on teachers for sport, making trying to teach them and reach targets exceptionally traumatic in a lot of lessons. How people do this job for decades is beyond me. I’m just grateful to have come out of it alive and without any pending court cases. To be honest, I’m not sure my bottom could take another one of those. Dad always told me that having a job you love was the most important thing in life – I loved lots of aspects of teaching, but it just wasn’t enough. Next chapter…

Waiting to Exhale

A little while ago my good friend and long-time reader of my blog(s) – he was even there during the ‘Andrew From The Blog’ days (www.millsdoescanada.blogspot.com) – asked me to write about the way these kids smell. There is no doubt that they are, on average, twice as smelly as what you find in your belly button after a couple of months of absent-minded fingering (my girlfriend once told me it smells like a miscarriage in there) but really it’s more about their ability to ignore the smellingly obvious and act as though their particular brand of olfactory obscenity is perfectly acceptable that’s of real interest.

After every class leaves another enters and almost without fail says something along the lines of, ‘Oh, Sir – can’ yu open a window?! Oo was dat you jus ‘ad in ‘ere?’ – at least I think those are the words they’re using, combined with the usual grunts and slavers. It seems that they’re only immune to their own specific class fragrance and react like a rival gang when they get wind of an unfamiliar waft – eyes narrowing and curling lips with suspicion, like a chimpanzee who’s bounced back into the enclosure from Chimp Camp only to find, upon inhaling luxuriously, that his favourite wanking rag has been covertly stolen and washed by the meddlesome zookeepers.

Before I began teaching I thought that a lot of these smells were exclusive to adults. However, it transpires that things like BO, cheesy willies and fishy fannies are just as prevalent among the young and, worse still, their as yet unrefined washing habits mean that you get a heady cocktail of these ingredients in most classes. It’s like walking into a wall of smell sometimes, especially if you’re on a cover lesson where the stench has been given some time to gather its strength before you arrive.

Summertime is without doubt the worst. As I can vouch for, being a smelly boy myself, boys are definitely the most pungent of the lot and at the all-boys school I used to teach at this rang true with a frightening adherence to stereotype. I can only assume that the little stinkers were made of asbestos or some other kind of heat-resistant fibre as during the sweltering summer months, where the blinding sun glared in through the patchy blinds all day long and the classrooms’ heat built like a foul-mouthed pressure cooker, they wore layers upon layers of clothes.

When the bell went to signal lunchtime they would peel off one tier, to reveal their running-around-like-a-mad-bastard clothes and then proceed to do exactly that for the entire duration of lunch. Upon returning, sweating like Rupert Murdoch at the point of realisation that he’d contacted the wrong person while trying to get in touch with a foolish Arthur from EastEnders (Silly Fowler – do you see?), the boys then simply reapplied the previous film of clothing and sat panting like a car window dog – adding shitty kid breath into the equation. On occasion I’m sure I’ve actually seen authentic comic book-style stink lines rising above them.

Smelly girls are, admittedly, a lot rarer, but equally offensive when encountered. Leaning in to help some girls is like being punched in the nostrils by an angry trout on the turn and they have a far greater ability to linger around in your hairy batcaves all day. As if their curdy genitals are not enough to be getting on with, they also buy the world’s cheapest perfumes and drench themselves in it before, during and after lesson, so that your classroom ends up smelling like a combination of a whore’s armpit and a strawberry Refresher. Sweet, but repulsive.

So there you have it. Ask and you will, eventually, receive. Thanks goes out to Al and Rob for being both repelled and elated by last week’s posting. I have to say, a lot of people liked the bum worms – to the extent of there being talk of a spin-off blog – ‘Bum Worms – A Modern Fairytale’. Well, if it’s disgusting you want, I have it by the anus-load. Last week at school and as a teacher next week, so expect nostalgia and blithering last-minute contrition in equal measure. Maybe see you then?

A Bum Deal

Readers of a nervous disposition look away now. I have to warn you that this week's subject matter is likely to make a lot of you squirm. A verb so appropriate, you can't even imagine. OK, so don't tell me I didn't warn you.

(To be sung with an inane open-mouthed expression while skipping at full speed down the dirty Streatham streets with your trousers slowly falling down) Summons came, summons came, summons came in the post today! La la-la, la la-la, going to court with the other scum! How did it come to this? Well, simply put, I was driving without any insurance, as you might remember, and finally the summons came in the post to remind me, like a big papery finger. It'd been ages since the incident - 14th March, if I remember it. My. Cocking. Birthday - and I thought there was an off-chance they'd forgotten about the whole thing and we could return to being firm friends and sharing needles together on the park bench; but sadly, no.

As the day approached there was a furious compilation of paperwork. Everything had to be meticulously arranged so that I had the best chance of presenting myself as a fine upstanding member of the community and the court would have to let me off. Paper trails were printed showing payments made throughout the period in question, while notes were taken and documents produced. It really was a work of intense personal scrutiny, for which I can take virtually no credit as it was all done by my girlfriend, who looks after me in a kind of carer's role. Feeds me, wipes me, holds me through the night terrors and such.

One thing that would be a massive boon and help our case enormously would be a letter from the insurance agency taking full responsibility for their error and for the incident completely. Now this should be an almost impossible task, but believe it or not, we found the world's thickest insurance agent who was happy to write out exactly as we dictated, so long as we let him chase torchlight on the wall every 10 minutes. Go get it! I've put one of his letters on the post to show you his childish scrawl and that he spelt 'being' incorrectly. How can you get that wrong? It's 'be' 'ing'. Jesus.

Anyway, the day was approaching and I was starting to get a little nervous. We arranged to meet up with a lawyer friend a few days before who was fantastically helpful, but pretty much assured us we didn't have a leg to stand on. This made things even more fraut for me and I started to consider cutting my losses and pulling out of the case altogether. It was around this time that, in the evening, my bottom started to feel itchy.

As the temperatures soared in our late June burst of summer, I found myself on the sofa at night constantly adjusting my pants and scratching around the bumhole, where the itching sensation was building nicely now. I was pretty sure I knew what this was as I'd had it as a child, but what the hell was I doing with it now? It wasn't until a couple of days before the case that I looked down into the bowl after delivering a couple of witch's fingers and saw the tell-tale tails. Bum worms. I hadn't had it for about 20 years and was assured that it only came from kissing cats too much (I can't help it!) but without any cats in the vicinity I can only assume I got it from the kids at school. Thanks a lot, you bastards.

Treatment is a pill that, after 24 hours, should rid you of the wriggly swines and give you feeling of awesome power when you look down at the clump of death gently swirling in the murky water. It's quite beautiful, actually. Thinking I had plenty of time, I took the pill a good 48 hours before the hearing and waited for the toilety holocaust to present itself; but sadly this wasn't to be. If anything I think it just made them angrier and more desperate so that by the morning of the case they were writhing around in there like a bait box of maggots.

The timing couldn't have been worse. While we drove towards the courthouse my mind was supposed to be on the extensive notes we'd made, the case we'd built for ourselves, the plea and the speech, but all I could think of was how insanely itchy my arsehole was. When we arrived I can still see my girlfriend trying so hard not to be utterly horrified, as I goose-stepped my way around the scorching hot waiting area, pulling and scratching at my suit trousers; a look of mania and fear etched into my contorted face. An all-time low was going into the toilet at least five times just for the simple act of plunging my finger up to the knuckle in pure, fleshy anus. The act itself was vile, but the consequential sensation was almost orgasmic. Closed-eyed and open-mouthed, my head tilted upwards as I rummaged around in my colon as though I was trying to identify the culprits one-by-one by pointing to each of them.

A wild-eyed, fixed-grin on my face meant we were finally in front of the magistrates and, God knows how, we actually pulled it off. I'd only got halfway through the first of seven pages of notes when they simply asked for copies of the bank statements and asked us to wait outside. Wait, wait, wait. Scratch, scratch, scratch. Back inside again we were informed that the charges were 'withdrawn' and almost immediately the itching stopped. All sounds a little too convenient for the purposes of this story, but it's true. The worms died with the case and I couldn't help but see the poetic symmetry of the whole sorry affair - two pains in the arse ending at once.

Well, there you go. I've often opened my heart to you, but this week it's my sphincter. Consider yourselves honoured. I'd like to say that's my happy ending, but I pranged the car a couple of days ago so the premiums should be right back to where we started again. But so the saying goes - shit happens. And sometimes there are worms in it. Goodbye.