A long long time ago in the late 80s/early 90s many teachers at boarding school prided themselves on their eccentricity. The effects of being massively and voluntarily institutionalised were front and centre for all to see. The situation was exacerbated with a strange game of batshit one-upmanship between the male faculty. Whether it was the French teacher who would ride his bike down the corridors of the school bellowing warnings for boys to get out of his way or the maths teacher who kept a supply of paper clips on the nose bridge of his glasses (“always there when I need them!”) we were surrounded by mildly deranged authority figures. It was almost part of their scholastic image. The head of music for example had full on crazy Beethoven hair. He would also fly into (and then out of) a snap explosion of volcanic rage if someone played the wrong note which we all knew was an act because he was a lovely bloke. He even adopted a fake Germanic accent as part of his brand image. Knew his subject, decent teacher, wasn’t a paedophile (three big ticks from us boys) but let himself down with the Sideshow Bob, General Von Klinkerhofen routine.
The little-bit-racist Geography teacher was interesting. He gave nicknames to everyone in his class. This little game could get tricky even if he wasn’t a little-bit-racist but because he was – Wow! He renamed a boy of Sri Lankan heritage “Vindaloo”. I’m sure there’s rules against that sort of thing now but back then, all good! He once gave the same boy 10/10 on a test and commented underneath “Hot Stuff Vindaloo!”. The same teacher taught rugby. We had a very quick half Japanese boy who played on the wing (some of you may be getting ahead of me). “Isn’t he nippy!” the very pleased with himself little-bit-racist Geography teacher would say at least once a week. I think the same well worn joke even made it into the school report of the team’s season. Again though, knew his subject, decent teacher, wasn’t a paedophile so we let him off the little-bit-of-racism.
The South African Physics teacher who was a slave to hyperbole kept us amused. An absolute fascist of punctuality he would get up and slam (and I mean SLAM, often with a run up) the classroom door on the very second of the hour starting even if a 7 year old boy was half way through it. Some poor lad would have been sent flying back into the corridor and would then have to, pick himself up, knock on the door only to be asked “Whar ah yu so laite?”
“I’m six seconds late Sir and five off them have been spent picking myself up from the door you just hit me with”
He would give out punishments of a magnitude that he hadn’t quite thought through. He was famed for his 100,000 lines punishment.
“Wrart art one hundred tharsan tarms ar mast not be so laite”
“Did you say 100,000 Sir? 33 lines on a page so that’s over 3,000 sides of A4. Even if don’t sleep it’s going to take months – how about 60 lines, 10 for every second I was late?”
Knew his stuff, decent teacher and wasn’t a paedophile so we let him off the door assaults and Dante inspired punishments.
We had a horrendously institutionalised maths teacher who was in his 70s. He had taught at the school since leaving university and was a pupil there before that. He’d basically had a 3 year gap in between being 8 and 70 and had spent the other 59 years at this school. That’s 8 more years than Myra Hindley served. He taught my class for a term and told us to colour in graph paper while he stared out of the window silently. It got weird after a few weeks of this but he knew his subject and wasn’t a paedophile and two out of three ain’t bad.
Then there was the Chaplain whom you might remember from the previous story. Knew his subject, decent teacher, oh…. He had the unenviable task of trying to teach us religious studies. God was properly omnipresent at our school. Chapel every morning. Grace every time we ate. Prayers before we went to sleep. We were Godding all the time. Funny thing though. If you mandate that kind of thing to kids you run the risk of them seeing if there are any flaws in the concept. As such we were pretty unconvinced. In one lesson the chaplain did a fantastic job of reinforcing atheism in his flock by glossing over the story of the feeding of the five thousand without acknowledging that it was a tad silly.
“How Sir?” asked Wiggins (I forget his real name)
“How what Wiggins?”
“Well how did five thousand people eat five loaves of bread and two fishes?”
“What do you mean Wiggins?”
“Well even at ten slices a loaf, that’s one slice per hundred people (Wiggins had just come from a maths class where he’d learnt more than how to colour in graph paper). We have two loaves per table at breakfast Sir and there are ten boys on a table and often that’s not enough even though comparatively that is 200 times the amount of bread as the Israelites in question Sir and… we get Shreddies too”.
Wiggins had a point. However he also managed to expose a very odd behaviour trait in the chaplain (in addition to the acute paedophilia of course) and that was that boys who didn’t believe in God made him cry. He would actually get emotional and at times have to leave the room if any of us questioned how likely any of these stories really were. Obviously this was an absolute gift so we did everything we could to set him off.
“Do you really believe the Earth was created in 6 days Sir – in spite of the mountains of evidence to the contrary?”
Quivering lip, off you fuck. Let’s play cricket.
Poor chap – he was trying to teach a room full of 11 year old Richard Dawkinses that he was secretly attracted to. No wonder he was always in tears.
One teacher who wasn’t mad taught pottery but given how timid he was and the relative importance of his subject we did bring him close to a nervous breakdown. The school couldn’t give a shit if we learned how to fashion some crockery any more than we could so this poor bastard tried to keep order while we destroyed each other’s creations and moved towards the inevitable clay fight. He was also in a new relationship with a female history teacher which was perfect fuel to embarrass him.
“Did you get laid Sir?”
“What?”
“Did you get the clay Sir?”
“Erm oh yes”
“Well done mate!”
“What?”
“I said that’s a well done plate Sir – some of your best work”.
You get the idea. Seemed to know his subject, ok teacher (I have a wonky ashtray that started out as a bowl to prove it) but definitely not a paedophile so we let him off the fact that we could easily reduce him to thoughts of ending it all in his own kiln.
So whether we were learning how to colour in an ox-bow lake from Little Bit Racist, our circle of fifths from Ludwig Van Actually-From-Surrey or absolutely fuck all from a catatonic maths teacher, we weren’t sure if we should go along with it or petition matron to change the schedule so we could watch the World Series.
That’s all folks.
Diaries of Boarding School 