Risky:The Road to Voicelessness

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/risky/

Writing this is risky. Every day, another woman finds herself being silenced. Why? Because she has attracted the attentions of an emotional abuser.

They sat in the crowded auditorium, watching local children performing in ‘Oliver!’ Madeleine’s humour was poked and then unleashed by the brilliant acting skills of Paul, who was playing Fagin.

Laughter bubbled, erupted. Rare, it was, these days – and unease was felt because Jason, to her left, was po-faced, grim.

In a moment, his right thigh had crashed into her left, the red-velveteen-covered seats rocking and creaking from the force of the collision. A glare. A hissed, ‘Be quiet. You’re embarrassing me…’ and the bubbles of laughter had subsided into scared silence.

As she blinked back tears – ‘Mustn’t cry. Mustn’t cry…’ a drought in the eyes’ ready pools – Madeleine’s thoughts returned to Scotland, two years previously. Staying with musical relatives, who had encouraged her to bring her flute for jamming purposes, they had gone, with the rest of the family, into town, having heard of street musicians in the offing.

Maddy had prevaricated for ages: Should she? No, no. Not a good idea. Leave the flute case behind. That was safest and easiest. But a little worm of rebellion had whispered in her ear – and her beloved instrument sat in a shopping bag, concealed.

Morris dancers and folk musicians brightened the dull October air and sweetened the grey road with their ancient and spritely melodies. Maddy’s feet began to tap, her hands to clench in their fight between music and terror.

The notes sparkling invisible in the air won. Out came the case. Flute assembled in a trice, Maddy turned to Jason.

‘I’m just going to join that band over there, Jase. Won’t be long…’

The rage filled his face before she had finished.

‘If you play in public and embarrass me, I will NOT be staying,’ he spat at her. ‘The kids and I will go and wait in the car…’

‘But…’ she began.

‘No,’ he said, throwing a large stone upon her exuberant hopes. ‘You don’t get your own way on this. If you insist on playing, you do it alone…’

Mind back in the narrow seat, Fagin’s song a recent memory still resounding to claps and cheers, Madeleine recalled the wounding horror of the most recent musical skirmish, this mere days previously.

For, between Scotland and the musical show, she had found a little group of Irish music-playing musicians to join and, flute exchanged for tin whistle, had been having a wonderful time rehearsing for a Ceilidh to be held in nearby Boscastle.

Hesitantly, she had asked Jason if he wanted her to reserve a seat in the pub for him, so that he wouldn’t have to stand at the bar or lurk in the doorway. He had delayed his answer with a series of, ‘Not now, I’m busy…’ and ‘Ask me some other time,’ excuses.

The night of the gig arrived. Maddy felt she needed to walk the eggshell route one more time, lest Jason accuse her later of not including him.

He whirled upon her this time, anger clear in his clenched jaw and narrowed eyes.

‘No,’ he spat. ‘I will not be coming. You are not very good on the tin whistle, even worse on the flute, and it would humiliate and embarrass me to watch you…’

Sitting there, watching children she knew being applauded by their proud parents – and quite rightly so – she swallowed and swallowed and swallowed trying, in vain, to keep the tears at bay. But, this time, she could not force them back – and a silent deluge of salty water flooded down her face, drips landing on the dress she was wearing.

Silenced. Again. A long way down the road to voicelessness.

The Corset: A (Fictional) Whale of a Tale…

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/ordinary/

Have you noticed how something deemed ordinary in one century is seen as exotic in another? Here we have a tale of the ordinary Victorian corset turned on its head by twenty-first century Young Things!

So there I was, having always believed that whale-bone looked better in a whale, struggling home from the local shop of ill-repute, a bag of corsetry under one arm. Embarrassing doesn’t begin to cover it! I was little more than a child, in my early twenties, and had been unable to resist the hilarious lure of the sex shop that had suddenly sprung up in the town in which I was then living. Besides, my boy-friend, with whom I had a wonderfully humorous and variegated under-the-duvet life, had suggested, one gin-soaked evening, that a corset would be great fun to try out.

Always game for a laugh, and roused by the sheer naughtiness of the whole endeavour, I put foot to asphalt (this being the days before I could drive) and, slinking nippily into the aforesaid emporium, had a good old gander at the merchandise.

Well! My gob was immediately smacked by the diversity, the neon colours, the out-and-proud nature of the whole place. I have never seen so many dildos in my life! There were butterfly-shaped objects which looked as if they could be jolly useful when it came to cutting pastry. There were handcuffs and whips and chocolate genitalia – and costumes, a pleasing plethora of clothes for the soon-to-be-unclothed!

Like the proverbial excited child in a sweet shop, eyes bigger than Gobstoppers, I wanted it all, NOW!

Twenty heavenly minutes later, I emerged, my purchase duly wrapped in the obligatory plain brown paper, and made my way back to the flat. My expectation was that I’d be into the corset and duvet-diving within two squeaks of a greased weasel’s ball sack. After all, I’d been getting dressed (and undressed) for over twenty years, hadn’t I? What could possibly be difficult about that?

Ripping open the package, and letting my laughter ring un-stifled around the room, I took the thing out – and turned it over in my hands. The first doubt assailed me. It looked well-nigh impregnable, like trying to climb into a castle with archers dense along the battlements and boiling oil a very real next experience. The picture provided was unhelpful in the extreme – and it looked as if I’d need to call upon the local Tug-of-War team in order to get the laces tight enough.

It also looked, if I may be so vulgar, as if the devoutly-desired wasp waist (which all Victorian women aspired to) would cause my baps to burst their moorings and end up perched on my shoulders. I dreaded to think what the pinching in would do to my internal organs – and confidently expected them to join me and my lover on the bed shortly.

But, I was young, lithe, adventurous and, prepared to try anything once (even Morris Dancing), unfurled the accursed garment and looked at the instructions. Frankly, I have seen more sense on the pre-translated Rosetta Stone. These words of wisdom – which gave every appearance of having been written in Braille for a double upper limb amputee – availed me not. Twisting and turning every which way, like a pig in a burlap sack, I grunted and groaned most unattractively, rivers of sweat pouring down my body, as I tried to squirm into tart gear.

I could’ve done with a gallon of engine oil and a can of WD40 quite honestly, that or a catapult. Boyfriend did suggest getting the slab of lard from the kitchen, but I felt that the smell would probably affect his prowess.

Eventually, finally, I was in. Breathing appeared to be an optional extra. I was convinced that I could feel my spleen inching its way up my throat – and was terrified that the man in my life might meet my descending liver when Rivet A finally met Hole B (if it ever did!).

Here we encountered an unexpected problem. The Man was sprawled on the bed, guffawing so much that he was in imminent danger of a hernia; laughing, in fact, so hysterically that he was a spent force when it came to the dreaded laces. I had vile visions of my having to do the job with my teeth and ending up toothless at the end of it all.

Fortunately, a stern word (along the lines that he wouldn’t even be getting to First Base if he didn’t get me into the bloody corset) did the trick – and, bracing himself, hands on the laces as if I were a wild horse, he pulled for dear life.

I looked warily around the room, just to make sure, you understand, that it wasn’t awash with squoze-out abdominal organs – and, reassured, if somewhat light-headed, turned to look at myself in the cracked mirror.

The Man’s stertorous breathing and whimpered, ‘Cor!’ told me all I needed to know and, with an exultant, ‘Chocks Away!’ he leaped upon me.

As Fanny Hill is rumoured to have said, ‘There’s always room for another trollop!’

We had a whale(bone) of a time!

Ruminate on this: Long-Leggety Chaos in the Classroom

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/ruminate/

Ruminate on this, Brethren and Sistren!

Although my comic school-based novel ‘Long-Leggety Beasties‘ is predominantly outrageous, exaggerated and funny, I did, I now realise, write an honest, realistic and easy-to-relate-to portrait of my own early struggles to control classes – and, taking the broader view, that experienced by thousands upon thousands of young (and not-so-young) teachers.

The teething problems I am experiencing as a supply teacher have reminded me, at times forcibly, of the anxiety, fear and sense of failure which was such a strong part of that first five years in the job. I am very glad, in retrospect, that I wrote about that part of the whole because it was a sharp reminder that my, at the time, very good discipline had been hard won and that I could never take it for granted. Prescient! Very! Humbling too: A great reminder that behind every moderately good teacher (which, by the end, I was) lies an ocean of tears and hundreds, if not thousands, of unruly, rude, even threatening adolescents.

Back to ‘LLB’, as I have come to call it: My protagonist, Geraldine, arrives at St Thelma’s, in the fictional Cornish town of Port Tossack, as a very new, very green, very idealistic twenty-three year old. So did I, in a very different setting!

There she is given, as I was, two very challenging groups, in amongst other easier ones: A bottom set year nine and a bottom set year eleven. She has no classroom of her own – and spends too much of her timetable, as did I, attempting to teach these horrors in dining rooms, often with a full Greek Chorus of menopausal dinner ladies discussing their latest symptoms in pitiless detail and at full volume. I still shudder at my memory of this particular misery. These lovely ladies were nothing if not frank and the kids found it hilarious, understandably, and much more entertaining than their blushing, stammering, inexperienced teacher.

But these dining room lessons did, undoubtedly, have a raucously funny side – and, the older I got, the more I came to appreciate the bawdy comments and scatalogical wit of the Goddesses of the Kitchen!

I created, therefore, a lively quintet of dinner ladies, led by Bristolian Rital, a drama queen par excellence with a talent for cooking and a murder of malapropisms ready to annihilate the unwary and amuse the old guard!

I had huge fun with the dinner ladies en masse – and their behaviour gets ever-more peculiar and over-the-top as the novel progresses!

The other main group of characters, the Archers, were inspired by some of the best teachers, best laughs and most original thinkers I ever experienced as a teacher: The Craft department (now Technology), all men, all bearded, all anarchic in their own way and several great, and enduring, friends of mine.

There really was a Craft Orchestra (and I took part in it), though inside the school as opposed to out by the moat of a castle on a snowy day!

The Archers are nothing like their actual counterparts – and yet they are as well. I think in Jasper, Bilbo et al I have recreated something of the maverick spirit, the fun, the laughter and the dislike of pointless authority which abounded, not just in my own Craft Department but in most of the very best teachers I have met over the past four decades. The characterisation of these men is a loving tribute. I doubt we’ll see their like again – at least not in the short term.

The two Art teachers are based, in looks though not in personality, on the duet of art educators at my own grammar school. They were both eccentric. You were allowed to be until fairly recently. They both appeared to be off with the fairies much of the time. I always felt, with both of them, that we were inhabiting parallel universes and that they graciously stopped at mine (that of a child useless at Art, basically) and alighted for a brief moment of baffled and bemused agitation before gliding off once again!

Peter Dixon, Geraldine’s nemesis in that first year, really existed – but in several forms and both genders. We all meet them, I am afraid: Kids who know their rights and who possess the spoilt child’s sense of absolute entitlement; kids whose parents back them up rather than the school; parents who, on occasions, use their own influence on Governing Boards and similar to belittle, threaten and punish the teacher who has dared to criticise their beloved offspring for poor behaviour or lack of work!

Kevin and Nivek Pendoggett were also based on real people, though not ones I ever met. A friend and fellow teacher told me of two brothers. The parents had liked the name ‘Derek’ so much that they’d named his brother ‘Kered’. Thus were Kevin and Nivek born. I also met many Mrs Pendoggetts as a teacher. Loved them for the most part too: Totally unpretentious, salt-of-the-earth types, ready to, ‘…ground the little sod…’ if their child stepped out of line.

Headteachers! Ah! They are worth a whole novel by themselves – and, in my time as a teacher, I have experienced the full gamut of the Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Having said that, I think it is true that power can both corrupt and distance – and some heads are too busy hiding in their own Ivory Towers, and, in my view, concentrating on trivia, to actually take a firm stand and be an authoritative presence at the sharp end.

The Head at St Thelma’s is, therefore, an amalgam of the worst traits of the breed.

There is a great deal of truth, and common sense, and real-life experience hidden behind the humour. This is not a novel about a successful, fast-track teacher. It is one which deals with the reality of a newbie who struggles, at times mightily, who loses control of classes regularly, who is laughed at, tested, even treated with aggression – and who does not prevail with ease – or at all!

It is the true story of a woman who was able, twenty-five years later, to laugh, to see the funny side, to appreciate the colourful diversity of colleagues she met and children she taught.

It is me. It is Geraldine. It is every colleague, whether known or unknown, who has ever found control difficult and adolescents confronting!

So, if you think you are alone going through the early horrors of being ignored, cheeked, reviled and laughed at, be assured that you are not! I have been there. I am still there!

Book Promotion 1: Long-Leggety Beasties…

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/flow/

Today, I want to see my first published book flow back into the mainstream consciousness. It has been dammed for far too long.

‘Long -Leggety Beasties’ is a thinly-disguised autobiographical account of my first two terms as an English teacher. Now, okay, it is highly exaggerated, even surreal, at times – and some of the incidents (the poisoning by Mead; the Archery Competition; the gender-transitioning Educational Psychologist; the two mothers fighting over a pair of goat’s testicles) are clearly figments of my rich and bawdy imagination.

But some are not. I really did have a horrendous bottom set year eleven class in my first year as a teacher – and they did run riot regularly. I was totally unable to control them. Baptism of fire or what?!

Many of the teachers in my novel are based (fondly) upon people I have actually known and taught with.

In part, the book is a glorious celebration of a species of teacher now sadly threatened with extinction: The Maverick. I was one. Most of my fictional colleagues in the book come into that lovable category. I lament their passing. So should you. They added much richness and colour to education. The system is inestimably the poorer without them.

But the book is also a very graphic and honest account of the myriad difficulties (and occasional triumphs) real teachers face, particularly when they are young and inexperienced, trying to inspire the reluctant, discipline the unruly and give confidence to the shy and low in self-esteem.

It is not, in any way, a ‘God, I was such an amazing teacher!’ novel. I wasn’t. Not then. Frankly, I was crap initially – and it took me many years to learn how to deal with difficult, bottom set groups.

It is a story of struggle, of humour, of children and their parents, of teachers both mad and sane, effective and useless.

I am proud of it. It still makes me laugh, and wince and indulge in bouts of nostalgia.

Available both as an ebook and a paperback, it can be found by clicking this link to Amazon:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Long-Leggety-Beasties-teachers-lot-easy/dp/1505831431/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1457685956&sr=1-1&keywords=long-leggety+beasties

Oh, and, to the best of my knowledge, it is the only book which starts with the word ‘Buttocks!’