Same old story By Steve Way

 

I can’t believe it’s happened again! This time it’s even worse than before! Last time I realised it was my ‘day’ the night before… this time, just as I was thinking of noting an idea for the blog, I saw the date on my phone! If only my excuse was being stuck on the dialogue of the 1000^th page of my latest novel!

So, it’s going to have to be short one this month! I’ve been reminded of one or two events that occurred to me working in schools, so will be interested to know if you’ve had any similar experiences.

I was discussing punctuality with someone the other day and that reminded me to recount a school visit in an area I was unfamiliar with. It was in the olden days, so no sat nav. Instead, using a map of the town I’d acquired, I arrived very early, as I always tried to do.

“Here I am, looking forward to working with the children,” I declared at reception, or something of that ilk. I was greeted with blank stares. I explained that I was the author who’d been booked to do creative writing workshops. It finally occurred to someone in the office to point out that there were two schools with exactly the same name in the area! The were named, as it turned out, after some local dignitary that probably no one has heard of beyond a 10 mile radius of the town.

Inevitably I didn’t arrive punctually for this visit but the thought that predominated as I travelled from school A… to school A… was why didn’t the first school A, the one that made the booking, point that out? I can’t have been the first visitor to make that mistake! In the end though the visit went really well!

I seem to have a number of doppelgangers, including someone who visits schools, giving art workshops. I’d recently arrived in a school and was hanging around in the staffroom, hovering near the kettle when a member of staff came to hover in the informal queue behind me. I was about to introduce myself when he enthusiastically greeted me and began telling me about all the artwork his class had been doing since yesterday. He didn’t seem to notice my blank expression of confusion, wondering why he should begin this discourse about what his class had been up to, to a complete stranger. If anything, he must have begun wondering why I was showing so little interest in their activities until one of his colleagues saved the day by pointing out that I wasn’t the artist (who’d visited yesterday) but was actually the author (who was obviously visiting today).  He seemed put out that I hadn’t pointed this out myself but as I was struck dumb by his seemingly unexpected topic I didn’t know how to react.

I was similarly ignorant of how to act when visiting a local school that was often visited by a retired policeman whose wife worked in the school as a teaching assistant. He also wrote poetry and we had both presented our work at a gathering at a bookshop in the town. He was an able poet but when I arrived at the school, he insisted on reading me a poem he’d written that he was particularly excited about. As soon as he began, I could tell that it was a retelling of the old joke about someone desperately not wanting to go to school and it turning out to he the headteacher. He obviously thought his joke was original and I just didn’t have the heart to tell him otherwise but sadly I think he may have seen through my enforced enthusiasm. It’s so hard to laugh at a joke you’ve heard before!