Out of the Woods But Not Over the Hill (9 page)

I hate quizzes. When the family gather around the table on Christmas Day for the ritual game of Trivial Pursuit, I skulk away to my study. I hear them downstairs, discussing the questions and answers, and I am pleased to be away from it all.

My aversion to quizzes stems from when I was a teacher and I represented my school house at the annual ‘Inter-House Quiz'. Four housemasters sat on the stage, in front of the entire school, to answer a series of general knowledge questions put to us by the Head of the Lower School. The ‘Inter-House Quiz' afforded the quizmaster the perfect opportunity to get his revenge for a trick I had played upon him.

Some weeks earlier, I had amused myself with what I thought was a harmless prank. Each Friday lunchtime, the Head of the Lower School and three male colleagues would ensconce themselves in the corner of the staff room to play bridge. The four teachers took the game extremely seriously and would discuss in detail, at various times during the following week, the strategies and outcomes. These post-mortems were extremely tedious to have to listen to, so, when the fire alarm sounded one Friday lunchtime and we all had to vacate the school, I remained behind in the empty staff room with just enough time for me to swap a few of the cards around. When the game was resumed, the arguments that arose very nearly ended in violence, so I had the good grace to own up to what I had done. The four players were not best pleased.

The Head of the Lower School bided his time until he could get his own back. That time was when the ‘Inter-House Quiz' took place. I sat under the bright lights on the stage, in front of the entire school, ready and confident to field the questions.

‘Question one, for the first housemaster,' said the quizmaster, ‘is: “What is the national flower or plant of England?” '

‘The rose,' came the answer.

There was thunderous applause from those pupils in his house.

‘Question one for the second housemaster,' said the quizmaster, ‘is: “What is the national flower or plant of Scotland?” '

‘The thistle,' came the answer.

This was followed by wild clapping from the pupils in
his
house.

‘Question one for the third housemaster,' said the quizmaster, ‘is: “What is the national flower or plant of Wales?” '

‘The leek.'

Again, there was a lively response from those in
his
house.

Then it came to my turn. I had the word ‘shamrock' on the tip of my tongue.

‘Question one for the fourth housemaster,' said the quizmaster, a strange little smile playing on his lips, ‘is: “What is the national flower or plant of South Africa?” '

‘What?' I spluttered.

‘Answer the question, Mr Phinn,' the Head of the Lower School told me.

‘I've not the slightest idea,' I replied.

‘It's the Giant or King Protea,' said the quizmaster before adding, ‘I thought everyone knew that.'

There followed further humiliation as all the questions directed at the other contestants were pitifully easy and mine incredibly hard.

Question one for the first housemaster: ‘Who wrote
Treasure Island
?'

Question one for the second housemaster: ‘Who wrote
Oliver Twist
?'

Question one for the third housemaster: ‘Who wrote
Macbeth
?'

Question one for the fourth housemaster: ‘Who directed the film
A Bridge Too Far
?'

Next day, I was teaching the very bottom form in the fifth year. As I approached one of my pupils he tut-tutted, and remarked, ‘I see now, sir, why you teach
us
.'

‘Why is that, John?' I asked.

‘Why, you're as thick as we are, aren't you?' the boy replied.

A Bird of a Feather

We have a brace of pheasants in our garden. They appeared last week and have commandeered the bird table, where they peck away, oblivious to everybody and everything, before pottering between the flowerbeds. They disappear at night but return the next day for breakfast, watched hungrily by a tree full of blackbirds and starlings.

Each time I see a pheasant, I think of the ‘incident' when I was in my first week as a school inspector in North Yorkshire. It was a glorious drive from Settle to York. The sun was shining and cloud shadows chased across the undulating green of the Dales. A magpie strutted along a silvered white stone wall and a pigeon flapped across the road, just in front of the car. A fox appeared, stepping delicately across the road ahead of me, his brush down and snout up, unafraid, unconcerned. In the fields, the sheep grazed lazily; lambs would start to arrive in a month or so. This, surely, was the best of seasons. Suddenly, a large hen pheasant shot straight out in front of the car, and I heard a thud as it hit the bumper. I quickly pulled over and jumped from the vehicle to see its prone body in the middle of the road, eyes closed and legs sticking skywards. All around me was silent and still. Not a person to be seen. I picked up the bird, popped it in the boot of my car and thought of the wonderful roast game I would be having for my Sunday lunch.

At 4.30 that afternoon, I arrived at the York Teachers' Centre, where I was to direct a creative course for teachers. I opened the boot of the car to take the books and equipment into the Centre – only to find everything a complete jumble. In the very middle of the mess crouched the pheasant I had run over, and had assumed was dead. It was, to my amazement, very much alive and kicking.

The teachers began arriving for the course just in time to see something squawking and pecking and fluttering its wings madly. I had stunned the creature, not killed it; now fully recovered, it was not at all pleased to have been incarcerated in the cramped dark boot of a car for a couple of hours, bumping along, mile after mile.

‘Shoo!' I cried, trying to encourage the bird to leave the boot, but every time my hand came within pecking range, it lunged at me. ‘Shoo! Shoo!' I exclaimed again. Then, turning, I realised I had attracted a crowd of interested teachers, who stood in a half circle, watching proceedings.

‘Is it a visual aid?' asked one teacher, mischievously.

‘No, it is not!' I snapped.

‘Are we going to write bird poems,' asked another teacher, chuckling, ‘from first-hand experience?'

‘No, we are not!' came my angry reply.

‘You'd have been better off with a stuffed one,' ventured another.

 

 

‘Well, I don't want it in the Centre,' said the caretaker, who had arrived on the scene, jangling his keys and shaking his head. ‘I'm not cleaning up after that.'

‘It's not going in the Centre,' I said, getting as flustered as the bird. It made another loud, plaintive squawk, and beat its wings and thrashed its tail.

Eventually, the bird flapped forward and took off, landing on the enclosing wall. Then, with tail proudly stuck up in the air, it strutted off towards York Minster.

Needless to say, the creative wrting course was a lively affair.

The School Inspector Calls

At the first secondary school I visited after becoming a school inspector with OFSTED, I met Bianca in the library before the start of school. She was fifteen, a tall, morose-looking girl with lank hair and a long, pale, unhealthy-looking face, and was dressed in an exceptionally tight blouse, very short skirt and huge platform shoes. She looked very different from the students on the front of the glossy folder which I held in my hand.

‘So whatcha gunna be doin', then?' she asked, in a weary, apathetic tone of voice, which she had clearly cultivated over the years for use when talking to adults in authority.

‘I am going to be joining you for all today's lessons,' I explained.

‘Eh?'

‘I said, I am going to be joining you for all today's lessons. I shall observe the teaching and also be talking to the students.'

‘Wha' for?'

‘Because that's my job.'

‘Who are you, then?'

‘I'm a school inspector.'

‘A what?'

‘A school inspector,' I repeated.

‘And you just watch teachers?'

‘That's right.'

‘And sit in classrooms an' that?'

‘Yes.'

‘Don't you have a proper job then?'

Following the inspection, I met with the governing body in the school library, to give my report. The serious-faced group sat before me, all eyes trained in my direction. The chair of governors, a florid-faced man with huge ginger eyebrows which curved into question marks, eyed me suspiciously with pale watery eyes.

‘We're 'ere for the report from the school inspector,' he announced. ‘This is Mr Flynn from OFFSET.'

‘Off what?' enquired a plain-faced little woman with a pursed mouth and small black darting eyes.

‘No, no, that's the water, Doris. Mr Flynn's from OFFSET.'

‘OFSTED,' I corrected him, ‘and it's Mr Phinn.'

‘OFSTED?' he repeated. ‘Is that what it is?'

‘OFFSET is, as I remember, a machine which prints paper,' I said, smiling.

‘Oh,' said the chair of governors, addressing his colleagues. ‘Well, you get so confused these days don't you, with “off this” and “off that”? Anyhow, Mr Flynn's here to tell how we've done in the inspection.' He turned his attention, and his eyebrows, back to me. ‘And I should say, Mr Flynn, that we like things plain in Yorkshire, straight to the point. We don't put inspectors and the like on pedestals, for, as my sainted mother used to say, “they nobbut wants dustin”.'

‘Phinn,' I said. ‘It's Mr Phinn.'

‘This is all very confusing,' remarked the plain-faced little woman with a pursed mouth. ‘We've not even got to the report yet and we're having differences. We'll be here all night at this rate. Can we make a start?'

‘Well, I don't want to be too long,' said a cheerful-looking cleric. ‘I do have another meeting in a couple of hours.'

‘I'm sure it won't take that long,' said another governor, before glowering in my direction. ‘Will it?'

‘Aye,' said the chair of governors, his huge eyebrows twitching, ‘let's get on. How's our little school done then?'

The governing body leaned forward, craned their necks and fixed me with stares which would curdle milk.

I placed the thick OFSTED handbook in front of me with the various additional updates, guidance booklets, questionnaires and school documents, before arranging piles of various lists, statistics and summaries to pass around. When I looked up, I faced a sea of faces staring at the mountain of paper in disbelief.

‘Well, before I begin I would like to talk a little about the context of the inspection . . .'

I was cut short. ‘I think I was right fust time with OFFSET, Mr Flynn,' announced the chair of governors. ‘Talk about churning out paper. I reckon when you do your inspections, a forest falls.'

Eating with the Infants

I once visited an infant school in a deprived area of the town, with a very elegant education officer. I commented on the long, pale, pink scarf she wore.

‘Actually,' she said, ‘it's a pashmina.'

‘I thought that was a breed of dog,' I said mischievously.

She gave a slight smile.

Being someone who is interested in words, I did a little research at home that evening, and discovered that ‘pashmina' is a Persian word meaning ‘cashmere'. Pashminas now describe those colourful silk shawls which, for many years, have been draped elegantly over the shoulders of the richest women in the East. Now they have become very popular throughout the world, although I can't say as I have seen many women walking through Doncaster town centre with pashminas around their shoulders. When I was young, my grandma had a coloured shawl but, rather than elegantly draping it over her shoulders, she knotted it tightly around her neck like a football scarf.