Anyone coming to the Bull's Head?

We all have experiences in life that we would prefer to forget or at least draw a veil over whilst they have the potential to cause us some embarrassment. I was recently reminded of an occasion when I was guilty of committing a faux-pas that for months afterwards caused me such discomfort that friends only had to ask the question, “Anyone coming to the Bulls Head?” and I would flush pink. Now, some fifteen years after the event, the time seems right to enter the confessional.

  Working in a residential special school in the centre of the county there has always been an emphasis on practical activities as preparation for adult life. In those far off days, before ‘domestic science’ was repackaged as ‘food technology,’ and long before things were complicated by the national curriculum, I found myself teaching cookery. I was charged with helping the kids prepare a range of basic recipes drawing on straightforward ingredients they could find in every store-cupboard. Nothing fancy or cordon bleu; we were simply making cakes, biscuits, pastries and a range of easy meals. Once in a while I introduced a few recipes from my own childhood, raspberry buns savoury pinwheels, cheese and bacon pie, sausage rolls and a fruity flapjack called Tyzan. In the days before learning support assistants apart from the occasional student on work experience, sent in for a taster session, I was on my own. I learnt from my own mistakes and experiences as a single man cooking for myself. Then one of the school governors, in fact the chair of governors, offered to come in and help out for a couple of hours once a fortnight. Things went well. We became more adventurous extending our range of foods and trying out recipes from other countries.

I was a little nervous however when we heard that we were going to have a local authority inspection. The governor, Sara, normally dropped in on a Friday for the period between morning break and lunch. However, a fortnight before the inspection was due Sara mentioned that she may not be able to come in the following Friday as she was probably having to attend the local magistrates court where she periodically sat on the bench. Instead she said she would try to pop in sometime earlier in the week if she could find the time. I thought little more of this until the following week when having just started a lesson with my own tutor group I spotted Sara through the window walking across the playground towards the cookery room. The children and I greeted her and, not having time to chat beforehand, started handing out the aprons and doling out the equipment to make cheese and parsley scones. The lesson ended and as we were washing-up I asked Sara if she could possibly give me a lift down to the local village as I needed to pop in home. I arranged to meet her in 5 minutes time by her car parked which I knew was just inside the iron gates to the school. After locking up my room it wasn’t long before we were both travelling back into the village. Although I asked her to drop me near the turning to my cul-de-sac she insisted on taking me right to my door and waiting for me. I explained I just needed to pick up my wallet before meeting up with colleagues for a bite of lunch at the Bulls head , the nearest pub, before returning to school for the afternoon session. She said she might as well take me down to the pub car-park as it was virtually on her way home. Having thanked her I entered the pub, ordered a half pint and sat in down in our usual corner by the fire. After waiting some 15 minutes or so I realised my colleagues must have got delayed or had been called into some impromptu meeting that had arisen back at school.

I therefore finished my drink, left the pub and walked briskly back to my house to grab a sandwich in lieu of the pub lunch I had missed. It was then that I happened to spy the kitchen clock…

I expected the time to be somewhere in the region of 1:00 but instead the clock was showing 11:45. Funny, must have stopped I thought until I noticed a similar time on the oven-clock. I grabbed my jacket and fairly sprinted the 3/4 mile back up the hill to the school, arriving in the playground as the bell rang for the 12:00 lesson changeover. I ran to my classroom meeting a mesmerised group of year 7 students standing by the door.

How I got through the next lesson I’ll never know. It gradually dawned on me what I had done. With Sara turning up on a different day and at a different time to help with cooking, I had completely forgotten what day it was. She’d come at 9:15 on a Thursday instead of her usual 11:00 a.m. visit on a Friday. When the lesson finished at break time (10:30) I had assumed it was the 12:30 lunch break. To make matters worse I had persuaded the school governor, a week prior to a school inspection, to take me down to the local pub midway through a school morning. Luckily I hadn’t been missed at school as I luckily had a free period between break and the final lesson on a Thursday morning.

 I ought to have left things at that but I was young, naïve and didn’t know any better so, when lunch time arrived, I compounded the situation by going down to the pub with my colleagues as originally planned. I might have known. I was greeted by the landlord with the words, “what are you doing here again?” Accordingly I found myself recounting what had happened to my colleagues and the effect was immediate. They started rolling about, tears streaming down their faces almost choking on their ham cobs. Needless to say by the end of the school day everyone in the staff-room, including the Head, had heard about my mid-morning foray down to the Bull’s head with the Chair of Governors. I did try to spit out some feeble explanation of my behaviour when I met up with Sara a few days later and but she claimed that she hadn’t noticed -bless!