4. Comedy...Tragic-Comedy...Tragedy... School Life

Photo: uploaded at a later stage shows me teaching the reception class at Hillary Street C of E school Pleck, Walsall in January- July 1968

Not always did I work at home with children around the kitchen table and the business men on a Sunday morning as they can’t get away during the week. I was once a real and proper teacher, high schools in Italy, elementary in Britain- I say Britain because although I spent most of my life in England, I also taught in Scotland- that was my first teaching job. There came a point in my life when I left Britain and decided to teach English as a Foreign Language in Italy. And it is at this point where, no longer in contact with the English speaking world, I lost a generation of terminology including that of electronics… and not only.

It was not until the beginning of the 1990s when I decided to return to my mother tongue country and finding a job in a school in Manchester near “Strangeways”, her Majesty’s Prisons, that I realized how out of touch I was with colloquial English. By then, of course, much had changed in schools especially by that phenomena which goes under the name of National Curriculum. The teachers were no better off than I on "Attainment Targets" and were toadying around like fishes out of water- but at least they were updated in the latest school kids jargon- a feature that was to place me at a great disadvantage.

That I was blissfully unaware of modern speech was something which did not escape me but to the extent that my ignorance on the matter amounted was not a thing I dwelt upon- and that, in itself, it would prove quite explosive, was not an object of my thoughts. It was ‘Janice’ a cheery, plump eight years old Afro-English girl in my class, that was to be the chosen instrument to send me crashing into the ‘Brave New World’ at the tail end of the last century.

One day, nearing break time Janice trots up to me sucking her milk with a straw and asked:

“Miss, are you married?”

“No…”

“Have you got any children?”

“No…”

“Have you got a boyfriend?”

“No… not at the moment,” I added so as not to appear some kind of alien from Mars. She paused and crinkled her forehead with perplexity-

“Do you do any shagging, Miss?”

“Yes… yes… of course,” I said quickly not having the foggiest idea what ‘shagging’ meant and not wanting to appear an idiot, after all, little ones expect teachers to know everything.

“Quite often,” I added so as to appear more convincing. “Do you?”

She looked at me with an air of condescendence and said, “No, not yet… I don’t, but my sister was doing it on the settee last night watching television.”

For a moment a terrible doubt crossed my mind but then I reassured myself there were a number of things one can do in front of the television, eat jelly and cream, cut toe nails…

At break I went into the staff room, and having taken drama at college, said in my usual flamboyant manner,

“Does anyone know what shagging means?”

When, after a moment of deathly silence, the teachers burst out in a titter, I knew my doubt was well founded and “shagging” had something to do with the art of procreation. Since then, if I don’t know, I  always ask before answering.

Fortunately I was not at a Catholic school, because to teach at one you have to be a practising Catholic and “shagging” is not allowed if you are not married. Auspiciously, Janice had not spread the word around that I was one who did a lot of shagging- to her presumably, it was quite an undistinguishable event, considered as daily service, I suppose… and the matter was soon dropped.