May 16th, 1987A gaggle of schoolgirls at the bus stop took a dim view of an essay they had been given on surviving a power strike
WHEN I was a teacher, before I had learned to lip-read and before I had seen so much of the world, I used to think that the girls loved interesting homework and were glad of the chance to do unexpected essays on topical events in their lives. Then I grew up a bit.
The dozen schoolgirls waiting for the bus could have been my pupils 20 years ago. It was the same kind of grouping. Two or three leaders, two or three mice, and everyone else sort of in between. They were sitting on their schoolbags with an agility I envied, I was lolling against the bus stop trying not to fall into the arms of a man with a suspicious bottle in the pocket of his overcoat, who was lolling against the other side of it. But the schoolgirls had rightly no interest in two pathetic adults who found it exhausting to remain upright. The children were discussing a particularly evil teacher who had enraged them all to the point of madness by giving them an essay to write on How I survived the power strike.
“She’s too old to be allowed to teach,” one of them complained. I suppose the teacher was probably into her 30s by now. “I heard she’s an alcoholic,” said another. It’s hard teaching. One parent of one child sees you having a social drink on one occasion and you’re obviously between bouts of being dried out. “And she’s been to loads of schools. Even Africa. She must have been sacked from them all.” There’s often not much thanks for having had an adventurous and open outlook on the world. “She leads a nun’s life, just scuttles off to school and back again to her flat correcting copies all night.”
This meant that they had no hard evidence on her private life. If anyone had seen her at the theatre she would have been a groupie; out having a meal she would have been a compulsive eater.
And shes never been out with a fellow, you’d know that for a fact.” She had not been seen in any male company, which was probably to her advantage. If she had been, it would have been a case of her being a pathetic nymphomaniac who should have had more sense at her age.
“She’s been wearing the same pair of shoes all term.” Which is pretty disgraceful, since on a teacher’s salary she should have been expected to have given them a display of what was newest and best. And if she had, it would have been a question of shoe fetishism or being a spendthrift.
“WHAT DOES she mean, ‘survived’? Shows you how exciting her life is if she has to talk about surviving a power strike,” they said.
Well, to be fair, whoever she was, her life must have been marginally more exciting than theirs. At least she didn’t have to wear school uniform, and she didn’t have to write essays at someone else’s command.
They decided what to put in their essays. “She wants all kinds of big, long words that will impress people,” said a mutinous leader-type girl. “She’d hate it if we wrote what it was really like,” said another.
What was it really like? They revealed that it was as dull as ditchwater. If life was like that all the time it literally wouldn’t be worth living. No television, batteries running out on the Walkman, and no charger to boost them, no proper tea – only awful cold ham and awful milk with a skin on it.
Their parents driving them mad wondering were they in Zone A or Zone B. Then ringing up other people to ask them what it was like for them. The shop charging 25 pence each for desperate old candles that you couldn’t even light. Their mother giving out and saying they should have kept the gas, their father saying that’s what he had said all along but nobody had listened to him. The house being cold and draughty.
“She wouldn’t want any of that stuff,” one of the leader girls said authoritatively. “What would she like?” asked one of the mouse girls, who was probably onlv a mouse at school. She could turn out to be a captain of industry or the head of a semi-State body by not having revealed her hand too early.
“Oh , she’ll want things like ‘yesterday’s luxuries are today’s necessities’. That’s the kind of thing she loves,” said the leader scornfully.
They were glum as they sat on their schoolbags and thought about it.
Then one of the leaders had a great idea: “Do you remember in America there was a power strike and nobody knew what to do, so they went to bed with everyone else?”
“That wouldn’t work nowadays. Not with Aids,” said another girl rather primly in what looked like the Clash of the Leaders.
But it was too good a theme to lose. They could all write their essays on different versions of the same theme, implying that everyone in their homes who was old enough and legally entitled to had all gone to marital couches and there would be a huge rush of unexpected power-cut pregnancies.
They were going to give their essays titles like February Babies and Little Surprises and even Thank you Mr ESB. “She’ll never guess we made it up; she’s as dim as a 25 watt bulb.”
The bus came then. And I know she’ll see through it. And she’s not dim at all, whoever she is. But there is such a thing as solidarity in the trade. Teaching is very wearying and takes quite a toll on the sense of humour.
I thought she should be forewarned.