8 Prison and School – June 2017

3 June 2017

A mediocre week of uninspiring drudgery surprisingly ended on a high this weekend, with not just a partial success, but an actual, real whole one!

Being somewhat rare, I may have to stick a pin through this unblemished total achievement and display it in a glass fronted case. Like people used to do with endangered species in the days when no home was complete without a stuffed Dodo in the hall. Dinner guests would be entertained by stories of how the heroic man of the house had risked life and limb to slay the vicious beast.

Early in the week a former co-worker said “That place was like being in prison”, which which stirred a memory of my own interesting past.

Between 1995 and 2001 I spent more time in prison than most. Not as a guest of her majesty you understand. I worked as a salesman for a purveyor of catering equipment and used to visit the prison a lot.

Catering officers were always happy to buy something new and always very pleased to see me. I don’t think they got many visitors. Can’t think why.

I recalled a visit to Perth prison which at the time was category A and housed the most serious of lawbreakers. I had signed in and was being escorted from one kitchen to another by a warder.

We went outside and walked down the side of a huge Victorian cell block. As we did so we were verbally harangued by the incarcerated souls. From what they said it was clear my not being locked up was sufficient to warrant abuse.

I started to veer towards the wall, my plan being to walk along side it and hide my presence from those on the upper floors. I felt this necessary as I was starting to feel a little uncomfortable at what some of them were saying, especially the comments about what my mother got up to with her dog.

“Don’t walk over there!” warder Hardy Mc’Bstrd said, “stay over here next to me”.

I immediately changed course back towards him believing his advice to be sound.

When we were parallel I asked “Why?”

“Well,” said my heavily tattooed no-nonsense companion, “There are no toilets in the cells and most are 3 or 4 to a cell, so at night, when they need to go, they shit in their socks. They usually just throw it out the window, but some like to keep it until the morning so they can throw it at whoever walks past. Gives them something to look forward to”.

I wondered if I could squeeze myself the other side of my chaperone as, exactly as he had said, a number of very full looking socks headed in our direction. All fell short I’m pleased to say.

So to be fair, while the fun factory is no holiday camp it certainly has never been much like prison. Really it isn’t.

Back to the total success. The event that caused this unexpected happening occurred when we were invited to a parents evening at the concrete and wooden edifice that is Alice’s school.

A week or two prior to the event your offspring is given a piece of paper with a blank timetable on it. Your child is charged with finding each teacher and booking you a time-slot. This results in the keenest/most pushed/most terrified of another week locked in the cellar due to under-achievement, charging about to get the best slots while the non-achievers simply do nothing.

Our own little cherub made a token effort, considering five meetings sufficient to guarantee her future success in life.

I quickly discovered state school teachers fell into two groups.

A. New, young, keen and totally committed to ensuring they extract the very best your child has to offer, no matter how disruptive or anti-social little Tarquin may be. While lovely they were somewhat naïve and had yet to comprehend that some children are just thick.

B. The old hands who – as she hadn’t actually tried to murder anyone during the preceding year – considered telling us ‘Aye. She’s fine. Talks to much but there you go’ to be more than enough information before they slipped outside for a quick smoke between parents.

As our meetings progressed several things became clear.

1. The picture of school life painted to us every night over the dinner table, that being it is nothing more than a tortuous trial of friendless misery, is clearly cobblers

2. She talks too much

3. She is late for everything. She was like that when two years old and clearly gets it from her mother.

We are pretty laid-back parents on the whole and our only concern was Maths. She was in a low group and could really do with going up a set. When we met her teacher Mr Beardy McTweed-Jacket he said if she did well in the tests scheduled for May she would move up a group, but she would have to work hard to do so.

The combination of the words ‘work’, ‘hard’ and ‘you’ did not go down well when shared with the cherished one, so we decided to offer bribes to ease the pain. Our proposal was greeted with much enthusiasm and extra sessions were held around the kitchen table with her Mother.

Test were taken. Vague, illogical feedback was received from the child. Then low and behold on Thursday she returned home to say she was moving up a group next year!

Joy and elation all round!

The only trouble is neither Alice nor ourselves could remember what the bribe was. Which is something of a win-win situation. Alice’s moves up a group and it costs me neither time or money. What they call ‘a result!’ I believe.

While Alice’s school may look like it was designed by a hippy on drugs and be shaped like an comical insult, it clearly seems to be working and she is very happy there so I can’t really complain.

My own school was little more than a glorified penal colony and at some point I will make available part a much longer story detailing the horrific experience that was my education. It was funny in the same way watching drunk people accidentally maim themselves is.

For the next four weeks I have a big job on at the fun factory. Seven hundred people to train across 11 offices in four weeks. I’ll be up north, down south and in places no reasonable person should ever be expected to go without a great big vicious dog.

Then it is away into the mountains with the caravan when for 10 days, home really will be where the trailer is parked!

Can’t wait!

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