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Tuesday, December 17, 2002
"and I wear black on the outside because black is how I feel on the inside..."

Normally at his time of year there’s a horde of Christmas cards crowded on top of the filing cabinet in my classroom. This year, however, the only things decorating it are the various stickers which act as an odd documentation of my ‘career’ in this room. Amongst others there’s an ancient ‘Instant Tsunami’; a Number Seven Poets fingerprint; a MoWax ‘Directix’; a Bis ‘Eurodisco’; an Appliance ‘washing instructions’; a Fourteen Iced Bears; a Flare one that shows a cherub limping along supported by a crutch; a nice round 78 Records one that says ‘exercise for your ears (I have another at home with the same design that says ‘jewellery for your ears’ – 78 Records incidentally is a great online store for buying Australian releases that don’t make it to the UK, like the new Augie March album);a Spearmint jet liner; an ‘Arrogants’, an ‘Icicles’ and the most recent addition, a nice oval ‘Suicide Squeeze’. In addition there’s a couple of handmade stickers, one of which says ‘this is a present from Ella G, Becky T and Cindy B.’ That one is from too many years ago to bear thinking about, from a time when the year 11 kids seemed to care. The other handmade sticker simply says ‘hello sir, luv u, Y9 girls.’ That one appeared last year, and I have no idea who put it there. Aside from the fact that it was year 9 girls, of course…

But whatever… there are still no Christmas cards. I don’t even know why I care either. It’s not like I’m in this job to have kids LIKE me or anything. I mean, I really hate all that being the kids’ mates kind of approach. And in previous years I’ve just grumbled because I’ve had to clear them all away on the last day of term, but yeah… I guess it’s nice to think that maybe some of the kids care. Just a bit… Well, this year, apparently they don’t. Oh well.

Life goes on.

And really I don’t care at all. I don’t care about school, I just want it to be over, want to be out of there and by myself someplace. Out on my bike maybe. I’ve been neglecting my bike this past month, mostly out of necessity: being full of the cold, too much work and late evenings, rainy cold weekends and even then too much of everything else to do… Of course it’s all just excuses. Well, it’s mostly excuses. Because the rain isn’t going to kill me, and nor is the cold. And some things can wait… I’m just a wuss.




Problems With Geometry

You know, sometimes I wonder how the hell I ended up here. I guess everyone wonders that about themselves. Oh, and I don’t mean here as in my classroom, or Exeter, and I certainly don’t mean here as in the great global ‘why are we here’ deal so beloved of teenagers in drunken late night soul searching conversation, I mean… I mean… actually I think I do mean here in my classroom. I mean how the hell did I end up being a teacher? And how the hell did I end up actually enjoying it most of the time? (And hey, it’s compulsory for teachers to complain about their job, so forget the contradictions, please)

I thought about this in the car on the way to work this morning, the third to last time C and I will be driving the route together. Or more accurately she will be driving and I will be sitting there gazing at the landscape and thinking about things such as, ah… such as remembering being in the fourth year at Marr, and studying for O Grades; this kid lived across the street figured himself my great rival in school. I think I mentioned him before, about how he would watch my bedroom window and see when the light was on, figuring that if the light was on I must be studying so he must study too. Of course he didn’t know that most of the time I was just reading old Autosports and listening to Mike Read’s evening show on Radio 1, or Mark Goodier on Clyde, but whatever. So this kid, he was having some problems with some, uh, I think it was Tech Drawing. And okay, set aside your disbelief that anyone really cared about Tech Drawing, and just realise that this kid seemed to have a strange urge to beat me in EVERYthing. I guess he was just hardwired to be competitive, whereas I was hardwired to not give a shit if I ‘beat’ anyone else or not, as long as I thought I did okay… I mean, I guess I had a real fear of failure, but it was only ever on my terms. I think.

Uh yeah. Anyone still reading? No? Good.

So this kid came across the road one night and wanted me to show him how to do these Tech Drawings tasks. It was all pure geometry problems, which was about the only thing I liked about that damn subject. I mean, it was the subject I always seemed to get top marks for, even though I hardly had to try, and to be honest it kind of bored me to tears most of the time, especially when we had to do drawings of technical equipment, which was the whole point of it I suppose, only… only it was always the pure geometry I loved most. It was almost abstract; just shapes and forms in abstract views. Great fun. Even then though I took to spicing things up by introducing coloured lines and insisting on inking up my pencil work. Anything to make the lessons more enjoyable.

But this kid… this kid comes across the road and wants to know how to do these geometry problems. So I sit down with him, don’t I? I take out a drawing board (yeah, that’s how geeky I was, I had my own drawing board at home on which I used to plan out my dreams of the House of Tomorrow – understandable then that everyone thought I ought to become an Architect) and I explain the whole deal with these truncated cones in all their weird projections whose names I cant even remember now; how to figure out the points on the ellipses from various angles so you can draw the best line… the whole deal. And by the end of the evening, this kid was doing it all too. I mean, I dunno if he understood it, but what the hell, he probably didn’t even care about that, as long as he could do it, he stood a chance of beating me in Tech Drawing too, right? Not that he ever did, except maybe in the ‘Engineering’ paper of the Higher exam a year later when I walked out after the compulsory half hour to go riding on my bike in the sun, having been disinclined to make much effort on drawing stair constructions. I stayed the whole of the nest days’ session and did the Geometry paper, and still aced an ‘A’ grade, but whatever…

I remember feeling a strange sense of satisfaction when that kid left my house that night and maybe after that I was always somehow looking to recapture that sense. Which is why I eventually found myself down in Reading over a decade ago, and why I am here now.

All of which of course is complete bollocks, but it’s been good to be able to excavate another of those little snatches of memory previously lost from view. For me, at least, and maybe for the one who read this far.

Hello Sethe.