Talking the talk in Room 101

I was listening to a wireless broadcast about the US election the other day and there was an English journalist introducing an interview like this:

‘.. I’m here with a spokes...person from the NAACP, that’s the National Association for the Advancement of Co...’

Cough! Splutter! Mumble, mumble ...

‘ ...ored People ...’ and so on. But I was lost.

‘What people?’ I spluttered back at the radio. ‘Whhhoooo?’ I strained, reaching for my hearing trumpet.

Scratching of head. Rummaging through badly eroded brain cells.

‘Oh!’ I had the revelation. ‘Coloured people! Well, why couldn’t you just say.... I don’t want people coughing and mumbling on the wireless because they don’t want to say a word...’

A harp strummed and my admonishment of the journalist faded into a distant echo, my vision became fuzzy, and when the world came back into focus I found myself in my classroom.

A recent memory.

I was sat in my swivelling chair, clutching a bunch of stapled A4 sheets, staring though the dirty windows at the clouds and traffic whizzing past like a speeded-up film in contrast to the silent stillness of the post-schoolday classroom.

One could almost hear the dust collecting on my head, the world around me rushing into the future. I reclined in the battered old chair. I had discovered myself to be anachronistic, lost and abandoned in this modern age, simply waiting to be found by the cleaners and wheeled out to be thrown on the skip.

The photocopied papers scrunched up in my fist are a school policy document listing words and expressions I have been told I must erase from the minds of the children and banish from use, lest 21st century western civilisation crumbles like a Babylonian tower should they ever be uttered again.

A careless word. An insensitive cartoon.

We have seen how easily unguarded thoughts or a few innocent strokes of pencil on paper can lead to embassies being turned into infernos, to streets being given over to the mob, baying for the blood of those who dared offend their precious beliefs.
I sit there in the empty room long into the evening, oblivious to the caretaker - ‘Locking up in ten minutes, mate’ - rising from my chair only to light a candle to see me through my night-long vigil and into the next day.

For hours I try forcing myself to read beyond the first word of the banned-expressions list. I am like a student on exam results day, holding the slip of paper but not daring to look because they know their grades will be as useful as an amputation to an athlete. I cannot persuade my eyes to look any further than the first word on the list.

‘Manning’.

It is gone forever.

‘Staff the lifeboats!’

‘The British army lost 57,000 staff on the first day of the Somme’.

I fear to contemplate what other terms could be deleted from our collective vocabulary.

Some time after sunrise children start wandering into the classroom. The ringing of bells. Soon all the seats are filled with children, the familiar mixture of the keen, the lost and confused, the criminal, the good, the bad, and the smelly.

The average form-group has 7 or so nationalities, children of all races (or visible minority ethnic groups, to use the jargon) , 10% are gay or bisexual (I am told), there are Christians, Muslims, Hindus - in fact my classroom is a Noah's Ark of religions.

This is an average form-group sitting before me. How did I ever manage to stop race wars breaking out before getting this list of words we mustn’t use? How did we previously manage to avoid Jihads and Crusades being launched across the room? Why did the girls not slaughter the boys, yet?

An Asian lad keen on his education floats around my desk and looks curious about the crumpled papers in my sweaty paws.

‘Good morning, Sir! Urgh, Sir, have you washed today?’

I break out of my trance for the first time in 10 hours.

‘Good morning and sit down. Right, listen up, little people.’ They don’t mind me calling them little people - I don't know how I survive with my patronising attitude - maybe someone should tell them to be offended.

I steel myself for the unsavoury task ahead of me, as I finally summon the courage to look at the list of forbidden words which I have to warn the children about.

‘Listen, I’ve got some new vocabulary for you to learn. Now let’s go through this list together... ’

PS. A reader wondered recently whether the surreal nature of my experiences recounted in these annals might be linked to teachers drinking something other than ordinary tea in the staffroom. Well, thank-you for that comment - and I think I've got to the bottom of the mystery.

You won't catch teachers with their pants down

Derek is lurking in the (staff) toilets again, studying his nose in the mirror.

‘You alright, Derek?’ I call from the urinal.

‘You’ve got to keep them under control… nostril hairs, I mean. Or they will notice, you know. They notice everything.’

They.

They – that is, the little people in the school - are the ubiquitous inspectors and critics of every aspect of our appearance and mannerisms.

Our children - imagine the talking mirror from Snow White inflicted with tourette’s*.

‘Socks, big nose!’

‘Flab face!’

‘Fairest of them all? You must be having a laugh! Ugly old teacher!’

'Socks, smelly old Socks!'

Well, you get the idea.

In the high-octane world of teaching it is only too easy for harried professionals to turn up at work without the most carefully chosen clothing.

I step away from the urinal, double-checking my flies are firmly done up.

‘You’re absolutely right, Derek.’

As I wash my hands and make for the exit, I find myself suddenly trapped in a flashback-loop.

The words 'They notice everything' echo around my fevered mind as I recall last Monday's horror, when I went as far as lesson 2 before realising I was wearing one normal shoe, and one slipper.

'They notice everything, you know.'

I see in my mind's eye the day a colleague came to school with a hairbrush sitting in her hair. She had apparently been distracted while brushing her hair, and had left the hairbrush stuck in mid-brushing position. She then drove to school and taught three classes before it became a hot conversation piece for staffroom fashionistas.

'Everything! Notice everything!' The room spins around me, a young man appearing before my sight. Who's this? Oh, it's you, Keith. You did your teacher training here. And you didn’t need no education - you came to your induction day wearing a t-shirt of Pink Floyd: The Wall. Well done, that man.

Everything! Everything!

Then my flashback flashes into the future - a flashforward!

There's a teacher striding through the school gates in his dressing-gown, Arthur Dent-style. It's me. Have you seen what's in the carpark? Socks drove to school in his wheelbarrow today! What an old fool!

I come back to reality with Derek's hands on my shoulders, steadying me against the wall.

'Keep it under control, Socks,' he reminds me. We stride confidently out of the bogs and onto the catwalk.

*I know this isn't a strictly accurate portrayal of tourette's syndrome - maybe coprolalia. Hmm.

99 Flakes

It was a sunny day in the Land of Socks. People swarmed into the parks. Ice cream vans sang out their siren song. Adults were enchanted like sailors crashing their vessels on unforgiving rocks. Children were enraptured as though following the Pied Piper of Hamelin.

With these diversions I seized the opportunity to celebrate the 99th Wholesome Socks post by stealing* away with 99 Cadbury’s 99 Flake ice creams and eating them with the vigour of purpose you would only expect of a hapless drugs courier swallowing packages of cocaine**, sweating at the approach of the sniffer dog of destiny.

Please raise your ice cream with me in a toast to another 99 flaky posts.

*And I mean ‘stealing away’ in the sense of withdrawing covertly, not in the legal sense of theft.
** I have never done this, either.

What schools and naughty scientists don't want your children to know

Recently I wrote about how our world, life, the universe and all of existence could have come to an end as the result of a foolish scientific experiment in Switzerland.

With the failure of the world to end as predicted (that doesn’t actually happen until 2015, by the way – but more of that in a moment) all of this begs the question of Well, How Was The World Actually Created, Then?

I am privy to a great deal of arcane knowledge, and now I will share with the world the story of how it happened that the universe was brought into existence.

112 years ago, in 1896, a divine omnipotent film director used a 1980s Philips camcorder - which he had obviously transported back in time - to create the universe.

The divine film director did this by creating a metaphysical VHS video cassette (just like the ones you had before DVDs) and on this video cassette he recorded his creation – that is, the universe and everything we experience in it.

On the video cassette tape is recorded all the world’s history, every person who has ever lived, every idea that has ever been thought, every last thing that has ever happened in human experience.

Using his divine powers, the film director started this video playing, thus creating the universe from scratch in 1896.

(It should be noted that all years before 1896 are no more than an illusion stemming from human folly and hubris. An intelligent person will realise that it is impossible for the world to have existed longer than 112 years, because before that time there would have been no films to entertain people, so how could people have existed?).

The divine film director’s creation will continue until 2015, when the tape abruptly runs out, and the world will end (albeit only temporarily).

Then the video will be re-wound. The re-winding will last for 2 of our human years, and will take us back to the start of the universe in 1896. These 2 years of re-winding will be a time of great strife, ushering in the regression of humankind to late Victorian technological and social standards.

I can tell you that not only is this re-winding of the universe inevitable, but that it has already happened. In fact, it has happened millions of times already.

Of course a VHS video cassette cannot be played and re-wound millions of times without some damage and wear to the very fabric of the tape on which the universe is recorded.

As the creases, rips, and general damage to the video tape worsen, each incarnation of the universe is subject to increasingly severe natural disasters, wars and diseases. (This is obvious to anyone reviewing world history).

Where there is only slight damage to the tape, this results in social movements such as ‘retro looks’ in fashion, and the resurgence of musical styles which had previously fallen from public favour. This is due to some parts of the tape being ‘smudged’, and historical epochs merging with each other.

The divine film maker, previously omnipotent, has since lost some of his power, and is now, unfortunately, only a little bit omnipotent and semi-retired. It will be up to humans to find ways to repair the tape that is the foundation of their existence - or face oblivion.

I would now like to call for the Philips camcorder story to be discussed in school science lessons, because some children obviously have strong family-held beliefs in the divine film director. (Family-held beliefs, of course, take precedence over their own beliefs). It is imperative that science is not allowed to pollute these children's minds without them having the chance to learn alternative truths about the nature of reality.

No amnesty for teachers

An ordinary classroom. The tables have been stacked up by the wall and the children are sitting in a big half circle. Facing them is a visitor from Amnesty International. He has come to speak to these 15 year olds about human rights issues in Britain and abroad.

Among the 15 year olds is a girl with long blonde hair in pigtails, bearing an uncanny resemblance to this poster which is reproduced in many books about the Nazi era, although the girl probably does not know this and almost certainly does not wish to associate herself with the Nazi movement.

She has at her feet a pink rucksack with a picture of My Little Pony (or some similarly girlish merchandise). Her school uniform is immaculate, in contrast to many of her classmates.

The human rights presentation has been running for 2 minutes and the kids are listening respectfully but with little real interest.

The representative from the human rights organisation is a softly spoken gentleman in his 40s who says he will be talking about torture, arms exports, political prisoners, freedom of expression.

He asks the class:

‘Right, who likes ice cream?’

I am sorry, he doesn’t ask if anyone likes ice cream, he says:

‘Right!’

He leans forward in his chair, signifying weighty words.

‘ Who here … supports having the death … penalty?’

The pigtailed girl shoots her arm into the air at an angle of about 45º, her hand grasping at the air.

She screeches:

‘Meee, meee!’

I am not sure if she looks more like someone in a montage by Nazi cinema propagandist Leni Riefenstahl, or an adoring concert goer standing by the stage where her favourite band is playing.

Lunchtime. I receive a message from His Headmastership requesting my presence in the hall.

The caretaker at our school is a wizard at carpentry. In just a few hours, the stage where generations of pupils have stood to receive awards, to perform plays, to give presentations, has been transformed forever.

‘Careful, that’s the trapdoor’, warns the caretaker as I tread across the boards. I look up at where the stage lighting had been mounted. In the shadows there now hangs a noose, woven in what looks to be the strongest hemp.

Standing in the wings is the pigtailed girl, her pink My Little Pony rucksack slung over her shoulder, the purest childish delight radiating from her face, and her small hands reached out before her, firmly clasping an enormous lever, similar to the kind of lever I believe was used on old steam railways to change the points.

‘Remind me what your name was’, I order her.

‘Albertyna’ the girl giggles.

‘Albertyna what?’ I demand with uncharacteristic impatience. Then I realise that, with a deftness of hand that only the finest craftsman can master, the caretaker has fastened the noose around my neck.

Pulling the lever with all her might, the last sound I hear is the girl's voice echoing around the old school hall, accompanied by the cruel cheering of a thousand unseen children.

‘My name… is Albertyna Pierrepoint!’

Cat-Spider Annoyance

I dreamed that I was awoken by a soot-black cat walking up my body and standing on my face, the cat then ascending to the ceiling by means of a web-like thread coming out of its back, exactly like a spider. The expression of the cat's face was of comical bemusement, as the winding mechanism could hoist it only very slowly, and I, recovering from my initial surprise at this innovation of a Cat-cum-Spider, found that with the gentlest of blowing I could cause the cat to rotate a full 360°, first clockwise, and then anti-clockwise.

This was to my immense satisfaction.

The feline intruder then fell and sprinted for the fireplace, presumably hoping to escape that way. The chimney had previously been bricked-up to deter unwanted visitors tempted to enter via that route.

I awoke (I believe, into 'reality', unless I am still asleep as I write this) basking in the warmth of the purest happiness.

The only meaningful symbolistic interpretation of this dream - so far as I can discern - is that it is high time I invented a Cat Annoyer™ to be sold as an accompaniment to Dog Annoyer™ and I must have it ready for Christmas.

I can't even trust myself

‘Your shin bones are 1/40th as thick as the width of your leg.’ Last night I dreamt someone said these exact words to me. I have never thought about the subject before, but I have since discovered the statement to be incorrect.