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The English Teacher

Writer's picture: JackJack

The English Teacher by Jack Greenwood
The English Teacher by Jack Greenwood

Mrs Agnes was feared by most children. Her classroom sat at the side of the assembly hall to the left of the stage. On the opposite wall were large wooden climbing frames which could pivot out on wheels and lock into place to turn the hall into a gymnasium. Green rubber mats with browning honeycomb undersides would be thrown down, thick ropes which hung from ceiling beams would be freed from the leather straps which held them to the wall. Each day just before midday it would also be transformed into the lunch hall with the introduction of fold out tables, clattering stacks of damp crockery, plastic seated chairs and warm steel trolleys which would roll in bringing with them the ungodly stench of sloppy food.

Waiting for our lesson we would have to line up in front of the stage in a very organised and quiet manner, no slouching, no racket. I would sit casually on the stage, feet dangling, until I saw the teacher about to open the classroom door when I would slip down and into line.

There was a good reason most children feared Mrs Agnes, she took great pleasure in inflicting pain on any poor little fool who made the mistake of misbehaving in her presence. She liked to twist and pull hair in strategic sensitive areas on fledgling heads. Like most teachers in the 1980’s she was a good aim with the wooden black board eraser. She relished flicking ears, thwacking the backs of bonces and even pinching flabby flesh. If an absent-minded naughty imp let curiosity get the better of them and dared to peak under the lid of the graffiti daubed wooden flip top desks we sat at, she would sneak up and push the top down, trapping their nosy fingers inside, taking great pleasure in their painful struggle get free.

I didn’t fear her, she was very theatrical, the expression of her vocal range as she teased out a revelation, beginning with a whisper and ending in a boom was a thing of beauty, she manoeuvred  around the classroom like a deranged cartoon villain, her eyes crazed with passion, she would bellow out things like ‘Blood and sand and buckets of sharks fin soup!’ I couldn’t help but like her.

I remember one time I was in another class, woodwork I think, but it had a different name which I can’t recall. A dusty quiet teacher would give us faint directions then mainly keep to himself, tinkering with a latest project in the corner. A girl who was usually quite polite came up to me and said ‘Ha! Your Dad left your Mum.’ She was right, he had. I’d only found out the night before and this upset me a little so I replied in the only way I knew how, ‘Well, you’re fat and you stink!’ Not very nice of me I know, she was chubby and I didn’t like the words that came out of her pudgy porcelain face but she didn’t smell, I had just wanted to hurt her in return, she ran out of the classroom crying and I got sent to the Headmasters office.

The office in question was designed to create psychological distress in any unfortunate urchin that was sent there. There was a wooden bench that you had to wait on outside and directly in your line of vision was a ‘traffic’ light above the door. I would stare at the red light, dreading the moment it would go out and be replaced by the green, knowing I’d have to enter the lair of the strange, cold and angular giant hunched over his desk inside. Years later when I ‘got off’ with a girl at a party who had been two years above me in school, she recalled with amusement that the only reason she was aware of my existence was because of me always being sat outside that office.

I can’t remember specifically what occurred inside on that day, a lot of shouting and the slamming of his shovel sized palms into an old oak desk no doubt, I was probably reminded that my behaviour persistently disappointed, I imagine I would have been rhetorically asked why I never learned, ‘Why am I seeing your face again?’ he would’ve snarled with a genuine dislike of my presence. I wouldn’t have been given a chance to plead my case, zipped lips, wishing he would get to the punishment rather than bore me with an ear bashing. Fortunately for me, corporal punishment had been outlawed the same year that I joined the school, his way of admonishing me seemed like he was only just resisting the urge to cross the line into violence.

I remember the verdict; I was to report to Mrs Agnes every lunchtime for a week and she would deal with me how she saw fit. When he delivered this sentence, it seemed that he had anticipated my reaction to be a kind of quivering in fear and turning to jelly, and he appeared somewhat disappointed with my calmness, ‘Now get back to class!’

I was a little worried but more intrigued by what she had planned for me. It turned out that my punishment would be quite unusual. Mrs Agnes had decided that each lunchtime, her and I would walk the corridors of the school whilst she called me names, yes really, you read that right. I struggled to stifle a smirk when she relayed this information to me. In an unusually calm manner and without looking up from the book she was marking she said, ‘You like to call people names, let’s see how you like it!’

She followed through on her promise, only for one day though. We treaded the polished boards of the school corridors; I recalled how sweet that shiny floor felt under my gliding skateboard one time before the PE teacher had grabbed me off it and slammed my back against a wall whilst anger screeched out of the sports whistle between his teeth (sent to the headmasters again.) As we ambled back and forth, she spent forty-five minutes ‘slagging me off,’ the last fifteen was allowed for me to eat my pack lunch in a classroom alone, bliss.

‘Dimwit!... Slowcoach!... Gormless!... Ninny!... Nickenpoop!... (I’m really trying not to laugh) Batswings!... (what the?) Guttersnipe!... Toerag!... Beanpole! (that was a weird one, I thought that was for tall people and I was the shortest kid in my year) Rascal!... Numbskull!... Birdbrain!...’

She had hundreds of them, reeling them off with flamboyant articulate brilliance. Sometimes she’d take a breath, her bulging eyes rolling diagonally upwards then widening in excitement as she delivered the next ‘insult’ ‘Bonehead!’... This was by far the best lunch hour I’d ever spent at school and she sensed it, she could tell I was trying not to laugh and not only did she seem not to mind, she was enjoying herself too. Then came the finisher, she said ‘You... you.... knobhead!’ (she meant it in a doorknob antiquated insult kind of way) if I’d have had water in my mouth, it would have sprayed everywhere, instead I just kind of raspberried and keeled over, she actually started laughing saying ‘what, what?’ I told her it was a swear word and she put her hand on my shoulder, gave me a conspiratorial look and said ‘come on, we must carry on you little rapscallion.’ We became friends that day.

The rest of that week of lunchtimes with Mrs Agnes were mainly spent chatting, she’d tell me stories and read me poems. She saw the side of me which other teachers missed. I wasn’t a bad child, I just didn’t like being imprisoned in a beige classroom with a bunch of tedious humans, that’s why I was always in trouble, I was like a caged rodent without a wheel, scratching to get out. I had attention problems and was hyperactive, the only way for me to not die of boredom was to escape and the only way to do that was to behave in a way that would get me chucked out of class, pretty resourceful if you think about it. When I was stimulated however, I was calmer, walking around chatting to a wise old lady was enjoyable to me. I remember my Grandparents (who were the only people I liked growing up) used to say that I was always such a delight to have around and that I took great interest in things. Mrs Agnes was pleasantly surprised by my focussed attention and fascination in what she was saying. The whole affair was very charming and every so often funny when she remembered my punishment mid-sentence and blurted out some strange abuse at me, I’d purse my lips and raise my eyebrows in mock disgust.

This was near the end of my time at middle school and the only time I was enlivened by formal education. She often encouraged me to read parts in plays we were reciting in class and then insisted I be in the pantomime which was part of the ‘Do it yourself’ concert, (or whatever it was called.) where the pupils in their final year had to organise a production. I played an ugly sister in full drag, padded bra, make-up and everything. She coached me in my acting with good humour and panache. She discerned something about my character that others didn’t.

She also thought it would be a good idea for me to read out a poem as part of that show. It was a poem that required reading with an emotional depth above my ability and she really pushed me to be able to pull it off.

Now I can only recall the first few words.: Above we see the sky, delicate as maidenhair. Below pour a little darkness.... It seems I didn’t even remember those words right as it took me a long time of googling to find the poem.

It’s called ‘How to Paint a Perfect Christmas’ (quite fitting as I’m now painting and writing about it) by Miroslav Holub and it begins like this:

Above, you paint the sky

Delicate as maidenhair.

Below, pour a little darkness

Heated to room temperature

Or slightly more.

On the night of the assembly as an ugly sister I commanded the stage, hamming it up to the maximum. I cavorted around in heels with a learned exuberance, mimicking my quite mad mentor. The other teachers were wowed by my performance, some of them came up to me after the show with genuine warm congratulations and praise, saying words like ‘proud’, giving me attention I’d never before experienced, and I felt fuzzy.

Reading the poem was a different matter, it wasn’t an ugly sister up there centre stage, it was me, alone and naked (metaphorically), a hall of confused faces, some bored and open mouthed, others sniggering, my hands visibly shaking whilst holding the paper in front of me. Somehow, I got through it, made the correct pauses, delivered emphasis with practised passion in the right places, surviving each line until it was over. Mrs Agnes clapped the loudest and beamed at me from outside her classroom door. When I got off stage she said, ‘By Jove you nailed it!’ I felt proud. When we were tidying up after the concert, she handed me a package and said, ‘You did well boy, this is for you.’ Inside were various colourfully wrapped sweets, two ‘fun size’ mars bars, a Crunchy and a little box. I opened the box and there was a smooth metal pen laying on a silky red bed, it made me feel special.

That was the end of my education, it all went downhill fast after that and crumpled into an adolescent wreckage. I went to an abysmal upper school, a Catholic all boys school and it ruined me. The teachers were repulsive, the brainwashed, small eyed pupils were mostly bullies, I stopped attending not long after and I didn’t even turn up to sit my exams.

I never had a good teacher before or after Mrs Agnes.

I think she would be sad to learn that I received no further encouragement, but I think she would have taken consolation in the fact that I still love to read and even attempt to dabble in writing now and then despite my educational disadvantage.

As for that special smooth chrome pen she gifted me, well... well that was nicked by one of my siblings the day I took it home and I never saw it again.

I painted the picture before doing the writing and it manifested from out of a flickering image in my memory of the essence of her outwardly seeming deranged persona and now having pried these events from my brain, I feel like I haven’t done her justice.


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