BONUS COLUMN: The Perfection of Imperfect Teachers
An extra column this week for paid subscribers, as well as a reminder for this evening's Private Hour - and boy do we have a lot to talk about! See you there...
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I had been so miserable at primary school, that by the time I got to secondary school, I fell in love with almost all of my teachers. There was Mrs Trethewy, my form teacher. She had slightly droopy eyes, like a hound dog, and curly, rectangular hair that reminded me of the woman from the Callanetics workout videos. I loved Mrs Trethewy deeply. She doubled as my English teacher and, despite the fact my writing was overwrought and under punctuated, she left kind, exclamatory comments along the margins. Excellent point! Good observation! I totally agree! One year, she threw a reading competition for the entire class, promising a prize to the winner. I won, after reading 17 books in a month- and barely digesting the story line of a single one, my prize for which was another book. It was the only time I truly hated her.
Then there was Mr Service; an unfortunate name for a man onto whom every girl in our all-girls school unburdened their sexual fantasies. He wore his hair like Elvis and had a wardrobe of short-sleeved shirts, that even at 13, I knew did his pallid arms no favours. Still, we all fancied him like mad, even if he did insist on calling us by our surnames. Jones! Smith! Samson! My maiden name was Butt, so it was doubly unsexy for me.
There were others too. Mr Bergin, who absolutely no one fancied but who was kind-eyed and fair. Mrs Buckley, who taught physics and who reminded me of a pine mouse as she darted in and out of seated students, adjusting bunsen burners and peering over shoulders to check no one was singeing off their arm hair. (A far less smelly endeavour than Immac, many of us discovered). I seem to remember there was a headteacher as well, called Miss Lawley. She was built like a Californian Redwood and wore strange, big shoes with straps; the sort of thing a toddler might wear. The rest of them sort of blend into one. Except for Miss B. Miss B was our maths teacher, a fact that should have relegated her to the realms of the long forgotten, given my hopelessness at anything to do with numbers. And yet she lives large in my memory.