#paraffinman

[adelearcherwrites]

You Don’t Know You’re Born!

You Don’t Know You’re Born!

I was having a conversation with somebody the other day – I don’t remember who – about growing up in the 70s. I was born in 1971. And it’s only when you really think back, or your ailing memory is jogged by something, that you start to realise how much times have changed since you were a child. Many people think bygone childhoods were an idyllic time compared with the fast-paced lives our kids…

[elisabettacormac]

B. S. Johnson: On Supply

B. S. Johnson

On Supply

WELL, I mean, anything was better than schooldinners with the crummy staff at this one.

“Oh,” she halflaughed, afterwards, each time, “a teacher, too!”

They think you’re not human if you’re a teacher, like as if you were a copper, only without the power. In the same class as coppers, that is, to be avoided if you’re not looking for bother.

Not that she wanted to avoid me once I’d been round there. She was the nearest to a nympho I’ve come—I mean, I wasn’t the only one; I’m sure she had it from the milkman in the mornings, and the paraffinman in the afternoons, as regulars, to say nothing of taking it off metermen (gas and electric) and fortuitous itinerate brush salesmen and carpetfloggers, as occasionals. I was just for a couple of weeks her dinnertime special.

It was during the dinner break that I first went round there, so’s the daughter wouldn’t be there. This was this enlightened Head’s way of enlightening his teachers.

“Go and see for yourself what sort of home conditions she lives in!” he said to me, when I’d brought this girl to him for the second time in a week for foulmouthed trouble-making. And while I’m not convinced that this approach is of much real use (all right, so the child has no love or security at home, and you are sorry for her, and sympathise with her: but how does this help you to prevent her from wrecking your lessons?), I thought it might be interesting.

Why she didn’t have her daughter home for dinner I don’t know, for she did a good nosh. Or, rather, I did get to know after the first couple of days.

“D’you want it before or after?” she’ say, meaning nosh.

Or

“D’you want it before or after?” I’d say, meaning the other.

Every time I think it was something frozen: fish fingers, or steakburgers usually, occasionally beef slices in gravy, with frozen peas. And she did the best chips I’ve ever tasted. Perhaps they came out of the cold cabinet at the supermarket, too, but I certainly can’t hold it against them. And the food was never so hot that it burned my tongue: she worked hard at her timing.

I supposed I must just have missed the Head several times before my last day. He used to walk back (from the restaurant where we had lunch) down her street, and while I’m pretty sure he didn’t see me come up the steps from her airy, he turned the corner immediately afterwards and must have suspected where I’d been.

That’s the advantage of supply: you can leave a school at a moment’s notice without explanation. The disadvantage of course, is that they can dispense with you similarly. Anyway, I thought it better not to go back, and reported to the office for another school next day.

But, well, like I said, anything was better than schooldinners with the staff at that one.