It's a carrot!

The ‘lovely’ teacher of one of my CM1 classes who once told me my handwriting was illegible and who argues with virtually everything I say was away today. She’s doing some training (though not, I imagine, in good manners). And I have to admit I breathed a sigh of relief when I found out she wasn’t around.

However, that sigh came before I realised that rather than being replaced by the mild-mannered substitute chap that stood in for her last lesson, it was the headmistress who would be holding the fort today. And mild-mannered is something this Madam is most certainly NOT.

She’s a rather large lady. Not fat – but hefty and muscular with broad shoulders and manly looking arms that could crush anyone much more quickly and effectively that a boa constrictor. She always dresses in pink flowery clothes and wafty peachy twin sets. Perhaps she does this to soften her appearance. But really this juxtaposition of meat and frill just makes her look like a bulldog in a fancy dress competition.

And not only does she look scary... she really IS scary too. Just to donne an example – one time BC (that's 'Before Car' by the way) when I was passing some of my interminable lunch break in the computer room, this formidable fortress of (femininity...?) came in and started screeching at the teachers in there that they were all using the wrong computers - I hadn’t noticed before but each computer has a sticky label on it saying a teacher’s name. Fair enough you might say. Labels are important and should be respected. But when the Trunchbull started going around the room smacking her colleagues over the head with a newspaper as punishment for their mal-comportment, I decided it was time to make a hasty exit so I quickly shut down my machine and slipped out of a side door to hide in the toilets until the next class.

If she were just shouty and cross I think I could cope with that. But the thing that most disturbs me about her is the simpering ‘niceness’ that always follows the raging storm. Like today during my class only moments after she EXPLODED with fury, launching into a two minute tirade at ten thousand decibels when a boy was fiddling with his book instead of listening to what I was saying, she turned to me with a very sickly smile and said, “I’m sooooo sorry for interrupting you. Pleeeease, do continue”. I mean... how does one follow that kind of an outburst...?

Today we did ‘Pets’. The kids had a lot of trouble with ‘horse’ – it’s that pesky ‘H’ again! But they seemed to love saying ‘parrot’ - although one boy insisted on saying ‘carrot’ which was quite amusing. It’s still not as good as Courtney’s story today though. A kid in her class spelled the word ‘house’ ‘ARSE’. Oh, how did she keep a straight face??