Shock Tactics

One of the joys of living and working in a small village community is being able to walk to and from work.  I’m lucky to live about a mile away from the school where I have worked for over thirty years. It’s an uphill journey each morning and in the winter months given the chilly weather I admit to being very grateful for the occasional lift. In the summer months however it’s very different and the journey is certainly no hardship. Each day I pass an Edwardian terrace with their immaculate cottage gardens then a pair of tall, Victorian villas clad in Wisteria. Next I walk alongside a newly planted copse and a couple of farms before crossing the road for a short walk alongside crumbling stone walls. After that it is through a tunnel of trees which mark the boundaries of the school estate. It’s not your standard school but a Victorian country house converted into a special school some 50 years ago. The Hall itself is little changed, it still has original mullioned sash windows and steeply- pitched, Swithland slate roofs.  The purpose-built school buildings are nothing remarkable, most are of the pre-fabricated variety dating from the 1980s. However, the grounds still boast a lot of the original outbuildings from the days of the farm estate. There is a kitchen block fronting a double courtyard. At one end is the blacksmith’s forge now converted into a workshop whilst at the other the laundry building and servants’ pantry have been transformed into a library and small museum area. The crowning glory is the recently restored turret clock that rises up from the roof of the boiler house surmounted by a bell under a lead cupola. In earlier times this was employed to notify the folk out in the estate fields when it was time for lunch or to knock off at the end of a long days work. A few of the old  farm buildings have survived like the pigsty and apple-store which are now used classrooms and the stable block which serves as a canoe and outdoor pursuit’s store.

We are in fact a special school for students with special educational needs with a unit catering for students on the autistic spectrum. Still a local authority school we have survived several changes of local government and national policy by the skin of our teeth. Why? well I like to think because we do a damn good job but that’s not what I want to talk about. I simply wish to set the scene for a tale of plotting and counter-plotting, of intrigue and of sweet revenge…

     “You don’t have to be mad to work here but it certainly helps.” I can’t tell you how often I cringed as my old head trotted out that line to visitors and new staff. He ran a disciplined and happy ship, in spite being a closet Morris dancer with some rather eccentric ideas. He advocated shoe-cleaning every Friday and the use of fish knives whenever the school canteen served up plaice. Nevertheless he had a heart of gold and a mischievous sense of humour, not quite “Carry on Matron” more like “Summer Wine”, but it still infected students and staff alike. In the 1980s, being a school with boarders as well as day students, the teachers were expected to fulfil regular evening duties alongside the care staff.  It made for good social relationships but there was nevertheless a conspicuous, friendly rivalry between the two staffs that surfaced during sporting events like the “It’s a Knockout” afternoon and the annual skittles evening. Both groups were constantly vying to score points over each other with an array of pranks; all on the understanding that you didn’t involve the students in any of the stunts. It’s hard remembering now all the shenanigans that went on but I recall the night we scared one of the house-mother’s (indeed that’s what they were called) witless by placing the bonfire guy in her bathroom; so that when she returned to her flat there, in the shadows, (we’d removed the light bulb), was this tramp-like figure sat on the lavatory. The same house-mother lost her lime-green Fiat Uno the night we put it in the kitchen garden disguised as a small haystack with bales we had ‘borrowed’ from our farmer neighbour.

The teachers didn’t have it all their own way, on occasions the care staff came up trumps with some A1 mischief of their own. There was the time we received a phone-call, purporting to come from our neighbour, that he’d spotted a snowy owl in a tree overhanging our chicken pen and that he’d already lost several hens to the same predator. We spent ages outside before discovering the owl was in fact a plastic bag flapping wildly in the branches where it had become entangled. The care-staff were nearly wetting themselves with laughter by the time the rest of us returned red-faced to the staff room.

In only my third year of teaching one particular housemother skilfully concocted a letter purporting to come from County Hall stating that the Director of Education himself had heard great things about my use of dramatic role-play in assemblies and wanted to observe me in action. I was so naïve at the time that I spent more hours than most people do in a pre-Ofsted frenzy getting my assembly technique perfected only to discover the ruse as the entire staff filed for my “performance.”  I should have been on my guard after this but only a few weeks later I was caught out by this selfsame joker in another rather childish prank.  

The boys had had iced buns for supper and there was one left over, which I reserved for myself when I came off duty after lights out at 9:30. The housemother decided it would be a wheeze to fill some of the buns with English mustard. Unfortunately one of the senior boys sent down to the laundry just before bedtime sneaked into the servery and pinched the contaminated bun intended for me. His loud protestation on tasting the added ingredient could be heard throughout the building. He was admonished for his deed and so was the housemother when the matron (yes we also had a matron) found out what had occurred.  Our pranks were curtailed for several weeks after the bun incident.

But the truce between that housemother and I didn’t last for long. One morning she and her husband had spotted me walking up the road from the village towards the school. They normally parked their rusty Volvo estate by the verge outside their cottage, about 100 yards below the school gates. As I approached the school I crossed the road below their cottage and was forced to skirt around their parked car. What I didn’t realise was that they had already spotted me whilst I was still a way off and had reclined their seats in order to lay flat and conceal themselves from view . As I drew alongside their vehicle they both shot to an upright position yelling like banshees, causing me to scream like a schoolgirl and throw the entire contents of my briefcase and lunch box into the adjacent ditch.

Now I don’t think I am vindictive sort of chap but needless to say these events served to focus my mind on the sweet notion of revenge. I didn’t have to wait long. Three weeks later crossing the kitchen-yard playground I spied the purple Volvo belonging to my colleague, pulled up outside the back entrance to the school. There, sat in the passenger seat, was the house-mother in question wearing her familiar brown duffel coat, seemingly nodding off in the warm spring sunshine, oblivious to the rude awakening that was about to rouse her. I crept forward furtively, like the cat Sylvester after Tweetie Pie, and then rose stealthily up the side of the passenger door. With a deafening shriek I presented my best gurning face to the car’s side window as the startled hooded figure spun round. Imagine my shock as the face that confronted me was not my work-colleague but that of a young woman who I’d never seen before! She screamed back at me, understandable in the circumstances I suppose, and I reacted by screaming at her a second time. It was like something out of a teenage horror flick. I tried to make my apologies but my attempts at an explanation did not seem to help. She wouldn’t unwind the window to allow me to apologise so what could I do? What made matters worse was that I later discovered the young lady , who turned out to be called Naomi, had come to the school for the first time that day to attend interview for a job as night-sleeping staff. She had been spotted by my colleague walking up from the bus-stop in the village and given a lift the rest of the way. Arriving at school a good ten minutes early she had chosen to wait in the car to collect her thoughts before going in for her appointment with the head of care. If this wasn’t all bad enough I also discovered, weeks later I might add, that she had only recently recovered from a nervous breakdown after leaving her previous job as a dental hygienist. Needless to say, she didn’t get the job but personally I don’t think she would have coped well with everyday challenges that school would have thrown up!