Thursday 7 December 2017

What goes around, comes around...

Further on from the previous post, I thought it would be self-satisfying to create a seminal post which will be on the internet forever, and therefore make a couple of points available for everyone to see forever.

Here's a pic of a certain Miss Sutton. She's the one with glasses. The other teacher was Miss Austin, and apart from having a hairy bum, because, when we were naughty, we had to sit in front of her desk, and of course, the view wasn't that magnificent... But she wasn't a bad lady, and we all thought she was OK.




Not Miss Sutton. She had a reputation.

She thought the world of her two favourite boys (three of us - except me) in her classs, but only two got the attention.

I'd been in hospital for six weeks with a leg re-structure. It was an infantile problem, and while it was not pleasant, I still managed to play rugby a few years afterwards, so thank you Mr Bintkin (Royal East Sussex Hospital, Hastings)  - you were a grand surgeon back then! (Why did that third stitch go so wonky...;0)

When I eventually got back to my school, there were just the three chaps in my class with many more lovely girls, but Miss Sutton just left me alone, ignored me and concentrated on her two favourites. Derek and Richard - both good friends of mine back then. At one of her evil lessons, I easily remember her taking them both to one side and giving them some plaster of Paris to make plates out of. I'd spent six weeks in the bloody white, hard stuff, and knew what hell it was with the itching, the unease, and the pain when it all came off, so that bitch could have at least acknowledged the fact, but no, she chose to ignore my cry.

What an absolute bitch! I hope she died in hell like many other enemies, but why on earth should a nine-year-old have to put up with that sort of shit?

'Bye MISS sutton. You hated me for some god-for-saken reason, and so here's your legacy; Scrobs still remembers how unkind you were, and its written down forever, here, in Michael's very own blog!


10 comments:

rvi said...

(Copied from the previous thread as the comment seems to fit in here much better)


rvi said...

Please go ahead boss!

That also reminds me of my infant school days. My class mistress (why are these types always women?) had a surname very similar to mine, just 2 letters difference. Even way back then I noticed that when she spoke to every other child in that class, and there were about 30 of us, she invariably used his/her Christian name - except for me who was always addressed by my surname. Funny how I now recall that blatant discrimination 70 years later!

8 December 2017 at 10:38

Other than her, the only other teacher I can recall from that time when I was about 10 was Mr Thomas. He was Welsh and - per Donald and Michael, they all sing far too loud, far too often and flat - and he of course ran the school choir. As it happened my voice had broken very early, before I actually progressed into junior school (probably caused by shouting myself hoarse at Highbury!).

One morning he asked us all to sing something, accompanied by a teacher playing the piano. He went round the class putting his ear to our voices to choose those who would be suitable candidates for the choir. It took him about 3 seconds of my croaking to inform me that I should shut up and never sing again. A couple of years later I was the leading bass voice in my grammar school choir. So rhubarb tiddley om pom pom to him!!

A K Haart said...

Apart from the hair she looks a little like John Christie.

Goosegirl said...

AK - so she does. Good job she wasn't in the Chemistry department with all that gas and rubber tubing! Who knows how many people could have been "inspired" to release their inner insane natures! Apart from a cookery teacher who responded to me when I flourished a newly-baked Victoria sponge fresh from the oven by saying "Ah Jackweleeinee, I think it's a little bit toooo brown" (no way, it was just as my mum taught me) but on the whole my teachers were ok. During my career I've met two that were such unbelievable bitches to me. Because I didn't know how to handle it I had a burn-out, was off work for three months then came back - ha-ha! Later on, one left under a cloud having had an affair with another lab worker and the other one left to get married. How things changed when they left! From me being made to feel incapable of doing my job (??) I got promoted to Head of Department! I am not someone who likes harbouring hate in my heart so the only way I could get rid of it was to write a poem. Here it is but I still have the scars.

ICARUS RE-BORN

She thought I was the clown because she had the designer top and a breakfast bar.
She wore the best mascara, but it clumped on her greedy green eyes.
“Been there, had that, did that, got it” and wanted all to know it.
Thought she was better than the rest when she stepped up the social ladder to
Look down on the others with a dizzy mind.
Lured by the promise of a yacht, she gave up the best years she ever had.
Shame the shoes and T-shirt didn’t fit.
She ended up the loser because I partied and she went home alone.
Not my fault.

One day, this clown heard the rustling of foxed papers. Dried leaves. Long kept.
Precious tissue-paper wrapping sullied memories in her worm-wooded book.
See the black forked tongue licking pages. Salivating.
Wait! Wait! The right time and the perfect moment will come.
The day arrived to flush the long-held constipation out of her cat’s bottom mouth,
She struck. I was a rabbit caught in the headlights.
Never saw it coming, but the pain of lost friendship hurt far more.
She left her prey with a box of broken years.
It was mended by others who knew me better.
Not my fault.

I was the clown who worked in a big top.
It wasn’t the best but it was all I had.
I wore it with pride but didn’t reckon on the times that
Sometimes made it wet with tears or bore the stains of others on its shoulders.
When I learnt how to mend the hole in the back and washed out the detritus,
This clown became light as air and rose up the ladder to the top of my being.
It still fitted me and out-lasted them.
Not my fault.

Thud said...

No beating about the bush here then!

Scrobs. said...

The Welsh can be like that, Reevers. I remember two guys being kicked out withdays of their voice breaking in my school down there!

We did 'The Pirates of Penzance' one year, and the treble - Mabel - actually broke half way though the dress rehearsal, much to the consternation of the Direcor of Music, who probably threw something at him, or beat him senseless...

Scrobs. said...

Bloody Hell, Mr H - you have it in such a short senntence, it leaves me all a-shudder...

At least Christie had the decency to hide the victims, Miss S. ate them...

Scrobs. said...

Never was your/our fault, Goosers...

By coincidence, the Headmistress's husband was in the Lewisham train crash, which happened about now in 1957, and was sadly killed. She was stoic, upright, hid her grief, and carried on. We only vaguely knew what had happened.

On the other hand Miss S. still hurt so many. Lots of locals still remember her, as does my dear sister, who endured the same acid tongue, lashing everyone with venom.

Great poem, you really need to put them all together in a blog, and we'll all come along and chat with you! You do all the talking while I pour the drinks..;0)

Email me when you like and we'll get you organised!

Goosegirl said...

I'm trying to post on Haarts site re- chess and can't get it published like I can on here - BUM. This was my answer: Aren't hunches the same as a gut instinct? If so, that could imply an entwining of previous experiences and knowledge together with one's innate persona that would far outweigh any computer because they work on rationality, whereas we work on a different level. As Sam Vega said, many men have achieved things that any computerised system could not have done e.g. Alexander Fleming and his discovery of Penicillin because his lab had been left in an untidy state. I do the Graudian cryptic crosswords to keep my brain fit, and there are times when I instinctively know the answer but can't get it from the clue until I see it the following week; even then I sometimes can't fathom it out. Anyway, I'll email you soon and I'll get some sort of blog going.

Scrobs. said...

Goosey, I'll copy this and paste it on Mr H's site for you if you like?

Let me know, preferably by a personal visit and then a bottle of something-or-other can be opened and celebrated accordingly...

Goosegirl said...

That would be great - thanks! Of course I would fluff my wings out and immediately fly over to you but unfortunately I can't at the moment because I have many more corner-cleaning and de-cobwebbing jobs still to do, plus even more copper and brass items to polish so am feeling rather brassed-off at the moment. I've just had some fruit of the vine and am now unable to negotiate my way around the various items Mr Gander has left on the floor for me to trip over, and am currently waiting for some decent snow so I can create the perfect snowman with my OH posing somewhere inside with a carrot strategically inserted then firmly attached with Gorilla Glue.