This is the cover for my new book which is due out in December. I spent some time playing with a few designs, but in the end I really liked this one. Any comments?
Phil Church
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Monday 15 August 2016
Monday 21 December 2015
Sunday 15 February 2015
Forsaken - Chapter 1
Crying when you’re not upset takes planning.
You can’t expect to just turn up at a funeral and switch on
the tears. You need a memory to tap into. On the way to the Wakefield Church, I
thought about my dog that had been hit by a bus when I was six. He was an
untidy Labrador called Adam. He slept on the end of my bed and left strands of
saliva and charcoal coloured hairs on the linen sheets. One morning, he’d been
hit by the number 17 bus, after scrabbling under the trellis in pursuit of a
cat, before trying unsuccessfully to chase it across Howston Street. It was the
last time I could remember crying, so I thought about Adam with his sad eyes,
lying dead beside the kerb, and it was enough to bring the first tears.
When I stepped out of the car into the morning sunlight, my
cheeks were already wet. I stayed close to my mother, following her along the
crooked path to the church entrance, where other mourners gathered in awkward
silence. I avoided eye contact, kept my head bowed, cried softly, and waited
until people began to make their way into the church, and we shuffled into the
gloomy interior.
While the priest droned in his finest funereal tone and
gesticulated skywards, I stood to the rear of the church, holding my mum’s arm,
wiping salted tears on the back of my hand. She comforted me by stroking my
hair and rubbing my neck. It was a convincing scene, and I knew that my cover
was safe – people would see the distraught fifteen year old mourning the loss
of a friend and never suspect a vengeful boy who had murdered him in cold
blood.
I lowered my head in feigned mourning, watching ants file
past my feet in a ragged line. Fierce sunlight filtered blue and green through
stained glass windows, warming my arms, lighting slow moving streams of dust.
Despite the heat outside, the stone floors and pillars inside the church were
cool to the touch. Two great fans whirred and hummed as they rotated slowly, blowing
warm air over the bowed heads of the congregation. The priest was talking about
the next life and how Anthony was happier now. I kept wondering if he would
spend eternity with a caved in skull – just walking around in Heaven with blood
on his face and matted hair and a triangular looking head. For some reason, the
Heaven in my imagination was filled with ivory white clouds, and even when I
tried to replace them with a seemingly more realistic rainforest, intersected
by crystal streams and lit by patches of pure sunlight, the clouds kept
returning, so I gave up trying to stop them, and watched a bloodied Anthony stroll
around on a cloud beneath a perfect sky.
The priest invited Anthony’s uncle to the lectern, who stood
hunched, red-eyed and gaunt, and eulogised about the lovely boy Anthony had
been: helpful, kind, inquisitive and intelligent. It was all drivel, as Anthony
had been a spiteful thing, full of bad temper and cruel jokes. He was the
nastiest fifteen year old in school and plenty of people would take years to rebuild
their self-esteem after he had flattened it – honed in on their weakest points,
darkest fears and then prodded and probed with endless taunts and jibes. One
girl, I forget her name, had drunk a pineapple juice laced with paracetamol
after six months of him mocking her weight. Her mother had found her vomiting
blood and she had survived, if a bit damaged.
I stopped crying for a while as my eyes were sore. A
projector screen clicked and hummed as it unrolled from its mounting; first
blue, then unfocused, then finally a photograph of Anthony blowing candles out
on his eighth birthday cake. This was followed by pictures of him looking smug or
unpleasant in various locations around his home: eating heavily buttered toast
at the breakfast table, slumped on the sofa, gripping his sister in a headlock.
The pictures were accompanied by Elgar, which drowned the sobs of the
congregation, but seemed oddly discordant in the context.
As the slideshow finished, my mother gave me a comforting
hug, and whispered words of encouragement, telling me how brave and strong I
was, so I cried a little more, to keep my cover secure. She was a good
Christian woman and attended church every Sunday, sometimes accompanied by me
when I could find no reasonable excuse, and sometimes by my father when he
wasn’t abroad, like he was that day. She was petite and pretty, tanned from
gardening in the May sun. She wore black, as we all did (I was dressed in my
only suit, a shade too big, the trousers hanging low at my waist). She was a
kind mother, and I remember her being softly spoken and shy in public. When I
was younger, she made up stories filled with anthropomorphic animals, dramatic
weather and improbably cheerful endings. I remember one about a hedgehog who
was lost in the snow, was rescued by a squirrel and spent Christmas eating
acorns by the fire. At the time I was worried that hedgehogs didn’t like
acorns, but I never mentioned it.
After the slideshow the priest talked about death some more
and how it was just another part of life and how the people we had known were
still looking down on us and how they never really moved on but watched and
waited for us to join them. I looked up and wondered if Anthony was looking
down how he would be feeling. Pretty angry, I thought, having his life cut
short by a collapsed stone wall. Except, I guessed, that in the afterlife he
might get told the truth, or maybe watch it back in some Heavenly replay, and
see that the wall had not fallen by itself - I had pushed it on him. It was not
exactly a premeditated attack. I fully intended to kill Anthony at some point,
but seeing him lying there, his evil frame snoozing in the shade, taking a
break from tormenting the other kids, I had made a pretty quick decision. I saw
the loose stones in the upper layer, manoeuvred myself into position then
pushed with all my strength, sending a hefty stone directly onto his head. As
he lay there gasping and twitching, I lifted the stone as high as I could then
dropped it onto his head for a second time, just to make sure the damage was
terminal.
He would be angry, that was for sure.
Anthony’s mother screamed and sobbed and seemed close to
hysteria as the ceremony finished and the pall bearers lifted the coffin onto
their shoulders. The slow walk out seemed the most emotional bit so I cried
some more and hugged my mother just so everyone could be sure I was upset, even
though I was thinking more about an iced drink from the café opposite the
church.
Outside, the procession made its slow way to the graveyard,
but we hung back with some of the other schoolchildren and their parents,
leaving the final moments to the close family. For a boy who had caused so much
hatred there was a good turnout from our school, although most had been dragged
along by their parents, and were probably grateful their tormentor was dead. We
stood silent by the flint walls of the church, bathed in warm sunlight,
surrounded by the smell of hyacinth and roses, listening to the wailing mother
and the hum of distant traffic.
If Anthony had been there, other than as a corpse, he would
have been causing trouble; pushing someone, sneering, making whispered comments,
making lewd gestures at the girls until they cried and ran away. School would
be a better place without him. In a way, my actions had made me a hero,
although no-one would ever know, and I might not exactly fit the definition.
There was a fine line between a hero and a villain, and I had given a lot of
thought to where I stood on that front. In Greek mythology, heroes can be
arrogant and selfish, craving power and adulation. They are nothing like the
self-sacrificing heroes of the modern age. I had sacrificed my conscience to
take Anthony’s life, and the fear of capture had weighed heavily over the
previous week.
Anthony had tried to bully me just as he had the other
students. We were left alone in the school changing rooms after sport. We had
played football in the dry heat and our clothes and bodies were layered in fine
dust. I was one of the last to finish changing, and I had been pulling my jacket
on when I realised too late he was behind me with a can of heat spray, catching
me in the eyes as I spun around then kicking me in the ribs as I hunched on the
floor in agony. I tensed, waiting for the next blow, which took several seconds,
as Anthony was obviously enjoying watching me suffer. When it finally arrived,
the tip of his shoe slammed into my sternum, leaving me briefly unable to
breathe.
‘I’ll kill you for this,’ I whispered, during the next lull
‘Whatever,’ he said, giving me a final kick before he left.
But unlike most people and their empty threats, I really
meant it.
Monday 17 February 2014
Authority - The Sequel to Thrift
Taking Charge
For most of my life I had felt rather
insignificant - sidelined by my own mediocrity. I had watched many of my
friends and family follow successful careers while I had languished in the
teaching profession – noticed more for my inadequacy than any great skill or
merit. However, the events of the previous Christmas term, when I had somehow
produced a watchable school play and survived an Ofsted inspection, had landed
me in the favour of the Headmaster, who believed that I was the man to reverse
Radley Hill’s declining fortunes. After a brief and uncontested interview
process, I had been awarded the position of deputy head, which had not made me
too popular with the rest of the staff, but did mean that I had a bigger office
and far fewer lessons to teach.
Consequently, on a warm May morning, while
the rest of the staff were busy trying to teach, I sat in my office and felt
smug. My pay had almost doubled, I had a new found authority, and my office had
a splendid view of the woodland behind the school. I was looking forward to
spending many mornings in a similar fashion. The great benefit of joining the
leadership team was that there was always something I could pretend to be
doing. I could wander into the staffroom shaking my head sadly saying ‘these
data reports are jolly tricky.’ I could carry a clipboard and every now and again
stand in corridors making notes about nothing in particular. I could keep
emailing the Headmaster with stock phrases about the ‘learning journey’ and
‘metacognition’, or any other teacher speak that turned up on the TES. If there
was anyone who could make themselves appear busy while doing nothing, it was
me.
After
a few enjoyable minutes watching clouds roll across the sky, I dusted my shelves
and put my books into alphabetical order. I positioned an array of pens and
pencils next to my diary, which was open on the first week of May, and
noticeably blank. I opened my laptop so that if anyone came in I could be
concentrating hard on the screen, muttering about progress and levels. I also
used my espresso machine for the first time. It was my gift to myself after my
promotion – a De’Longhi, black, with metallic trim. It made an excellent
espresso, and I savoured the drink with my eyes closed.
My relaxation was ruined when there was a
knock on my door.
‘Come in,’ I said.
Mr Dale’s burly frame filled the doorway. He
was the school’s rugby playing geography teacher. He had a recently blackened
eye and a chilli sauce stain on his tie. He was unusually agitated.
I stared at my laptop screen and drummed my
fingers on the desk.
‘This data looks worrying,’ I said. I’m sure
we can squeeze more progress than this.’
‘There’s a bit of an emergency,’ he said,
which was disappointing, because he seemed to be ignoring my excellent portrayal
of a busy deputy head.
‘Just a bit of an emergency?’ I said.
For some reason his arrival had reminded me
of my hidden supply of food. I searched in my biscuit drawer for a lemon cream -
one of the five superior types of biscuit I had bought in abundance.
‘Well, maybe a lot of an emergency. Mr
Winters has been taken hostage.’
The lemon creams were as excellent as I had
expected. I offered one to Mr Dale who shook his head.
‘Taken hostage by terrorists?’
‘By a student. Some boy in year 10 who claims
Mr Winters was ignoring his rights.’
‘Does this boy have a gun?’
‘A staple gun. I presume it’s loaded.’
‘Right.’
I drank some espresso. I had not expected my
first week as deputy head to include a hostage situation. Mentally, I was more
prepared to follow relaxing with a quick sleep.
‘You should alert the Headmaster,’ I said, making
an excellent decision.
‘He’s away at a conference.’
‘The police?’
‘What if they take too long?’
‘Do you think I have to deal with this?’ I
said, which was a genuine question. I was still coming to terms with what my
new role actually meant, other than less marking.
‘I think so. You are in charge.’
I smiled, despite my internal anguish.
‘Lead the way,’ I said, and put two lemon
creams into my pocket in case the situation turned into a lengthy affair.
I followed Mr Dale through the long corridor
that led to the art rooms. We passed the toilets that smelt of smoke and
hastily applied deodorant. Two year nine boys were leaning on the wall looking
suspicious.
‘No smoking in school,’ I said.
‘Soz,’ said one boy.
Paintings of varying quality lined the walls
of the art corridor. Several members of staff were gathered by an oil painting
of a blue horse standing on a purple cloud. Its legs were disproportionate, but
it was infinitely preferable to the hellish portrait of student’s cat that
looked as though it had been reanimated some months after its death.
‘Thank goodness you are here,’ said Miss
Waters, who looked overwhelmed by the situation.
‘Indeed,’ I said.
The staff looked hopefully at me as I
observed the closed door that led to Mr Winter’s classroom. Their silent
expectation was awkward to say the least, and I waited unsuccessfully for one
of them to suggest something useful.
‘We need a plan of action,’ I said,
considering at what point any act of heroism would result in personal danger.
There was the potential to appear a dedicated professional by diffusing the
situation brilliantly with some well-chosen phrases and tactful humour. There
was also the potential to take a staple through the eye which was far less
appealing.
‘Maybe you should all move back,’ I said,
deciding to take the professional approach. ‘I will deal with this.’
I approached the door and listened carefully.
There was silence within.
‘Hello,’ I said.
‘Alright,’ said a boy, whose voice seemed
familiar.
‘Is that Harry?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Is everything ok in there?’
‘Not really. Mr Winters said my painting was
poor.’
‘Was it?’
‘I guess. I tried to paint my house but I
forgot what it looked like.’
‘The house you live in now?’
‘Yeah. I only saw it this morning but it’s
hard to remember stuff when you get to school. I got stressed and it ended up
all wonky and the wrong colour.’
‘I see.’
‘He still should be praising me though. It’s
good for my esteem.’
This was a fair point.
‘Well I’m sure we can find a solution,’ I
said. ‘Mr Winters?’
‘Yes,’ he said, somewhat muffled.
‘Are you prepared to give this boy some
positive feedback so we can resolve this crisis?’
‘Absolutely,’ he said, sounding more cheerful
than expected given the circumstances.
‘Harry,’ I said. ‘I propose we make a truce.’
‘A what?’ said Harry.
‘A truce. We all agree to be friends and
everyone gets to go about their business as usual. Mr Winters will say
something nice to you, you will say sorry then I will go back to my office and
carry on analysing some very tricky and important spreadsheets.’
I looked at the staff during my final
comment, making sure they had heard how busy and important I was.
‘Fine,’ said Harry.
Mr Winters cleared his throat.
‘Well done for trying to draw your house. It
can be very hard to remember what your own house looks like, but you did a
great job.’
‘Sorry for ruining the lesson and threatening
you with this stapler gun,’ said Harry.
A click and a scream followed.
‘So,’ said the Headmaster. ‘It seems that on
your first day as deputy head a member of staff was admitted to casualty with a
facial wound.’
Although it was difficult to be certain, he
did not look happy. The situation had not worked out as I would have hoped. Mr
Winters had received a staple through the lip after Harry had lost
concentration during his apology and somehow managed to pull the trigger. He
had been rather roughly escorted to our detainment room by Mr Dale where he had
claimed that his behaviour had been caused by an eighteen hour gaming session fuelled
by energy drinks the previous night and been booked in for some regular
counselling.
‘Would you like a lemon biscuit?’ I said,
reaching into my pocket. This would have definitely worked on Mr Stevens, our
absent deputy head, who was easily swayed by anything containing sugar.
The Headmaster was made of sterner stuff. He
was dressed immaculately in a pale grey suit with a white shirt and burgundy
tie. His office was a reflection of himself – everything was beautifully
arranged and symmetrical. There was a scent of coffee infused faintly with
lavender room freshener. The only hint of a weakness in his façade came from
the tiredness around his eyes; no doubt a product of trying to raise our
failing school out of the depths of incompetency before Ofsted returned and
closed us forever. The previous Ofsted report had given notice to improve. This
was unlikely given high levels of incompetency displayed by the teaching staff
and students alike.
‘No,’ he said.
I put the biscuit back in my pocket and
studied the carpet.
‘You and I are the ones who are going to
change this school. We are on a journey together, a journey to a better place,
where our students can attain grades that are nearly national average. We are
on a journey to a place where our students can leave this school with their
heads held high as esteemed members of the community. We may have been through
stormy seas, battered by strong winds, lashed by fierce rains, but we are
unflinching in our duty to this school and its students.’
I dared to look up at the Headmaster. His
face was flushed with the passion of his speech. I wondered if technically he
was insane. It seemed possibly. His speeches were terrifyingly dictatorial. It
seemed appropriate for me to respond in some way.
‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘I will fix
everything.’
‘You will,’ said the Headmaster.
Sitting alone in my office several minutes
later even an espresso and opening a second packet of biscuits (triple
chocolate) could not raise me from my gloom. I had expected being deputy head
to bring some responsibility, but I had not thought it would include being
instructed to fix the entire school. I wasted some time checking my emails. I
found the usual nonsense: complaints from parents, adverts for pointless
teaching conferences and some more data and tracking sheets that I would not be
reading.
After a few more minutes of procrastination I
took a notebook (black, leather-bound and bought with my new deputy head budget)
from my drawer and stepped out into the corridors of the school to start
designing my plan that was somehow going to change the lives of the seven
hundred people who attended Radley Hill every day.
‘Whattup, sir?’ said a small boy with floppy
hair who lounged against the wall outside of my office.
‘Is that a real word?’ I said.
‘Eh?’
‘Never mind. Should you be in some kind of
lesson?’ I checked my watch. It was 12 o’clock, midway through the second
session of the day.
‘S’pose.’
‘Which lesson should you be in?’
‘Maths.’
‘Does that generally take place in a
classroom?’
‘Yeh.’
‘So should you be in that classroom during
your maths lesson? Doing maths?’
‘Yeh. It’s long though.’
‘Long?’
‘Long. Like boring.’
‘Right. Follow me,’ I said. ‘There should be
no standing in corridors during lessons. Back to maths.’
I made a note in my book:
1.
Prevent students from standing in corridors during lessons.
It took us several minutes to make the long
walk to the maths department. I tried to ignore the shouting and general
anarchy that was taking place in many of the classrooms we passed. My approach
to improving the school was going to be organised and systematic. My first
priority was to return the boy, who told me his name was Mike, to his lesson.
‘Mrs Mutton,’ I said, opening the door to her
classroom, ‘I have found a student who is missing your lesson.’
Unfortunately it transpired Mrs Mutton was
also missing.
The collection of year ten students in the
room paused their card game and looked up. There was a distinct smell of
cigarettes in the room. Most of them had loosened their ties and removed their
blazers. Someone had written ‘Mrs Mutton is a well good teacher’ on the
whiteboard.
‘Where’s your teacher?’ I said.
‘She left, sir,’ said a girl who was eating
her lunch on her maths book. She had sandwiches, crisps and chocolate biscuits
spread across both pages.
‘Did she say where she was going?’
‘Hard to say, sir,’ said a boy with his tie
wrapped around his head.
‘Why?’
‘She was crying a lot when she went, sir. She
said something about a zoo. Then she sobbed and went.’
‘I see.’
‘She’s not the first teacher to leave in the
middle of the lesson but it’s normally because we’ve thrown stuff at them or tied
tying them up. Must’ve been upset about something else, I guess.’
I looked at the absolute apathy and
negativity that slumped before me. I had seen many classes like this before,
and I knew that Mrs Mutton, who was one of our more dedicated members of staff,
had broken under the pressure of trying to motivate through the indifference.
‘Perhaps we should all do some maths?’ I
said.
Mrs Mutton had written ‘Algebra’ at the top
of the whiteboard in large, green letters. I assumed that was the topic of the
day. Most of the students looked at me with at least a vague interest.
‘Algebra,’ I said, ‘is like maths but with
letters not numbers. It’s a kind of pretend maths.’
‘Then why are we doing it?’ said a girl, who
might have been called Emily, and looked like she had fallen into a bucket of orange
food dye.
‘Because it’s the kind of maths that really
clever people use – like astronauts and physicists.’
‘Astronauts aren’t real,’ said Emily. ‘My mum
said the Americans made them up to win World War II.’
The lunch bell rang, and algebra was
forgotten as the students abandoned their books and headed out of the room in a
shambolic fashion.
That evening I sat in the lounge and read
back through my notebook. I had collected several ideas for improving the
school. After my initial observation that students should be made to stay in
their lessons, I had added the following:
2. Teachers should stay in their classrooms
during lesson time.
3. Students should avoid gambling and
smoking, especially during lesson time.
4. English teachers should not attempt to
teach maths.
5. Teachers should avoid throwing things at
students, even if they have been exceptionally annoying all day.
I had added the last point after an afternoon
incident during which Mrs White, a history teacher, had thrown a board rubber
at a student who had loudly explained that he thought the Nazis sounded cool
and he would have definitely joined them. Luckily it had been a sponger board
rubber, not one of the old style wooden ones, and it had harmlessly bounced off
the student’s forehead. Also, it had not taken long for me to convince him that
if he went home and told his mother about the incident I would inform the
government about his Nazism and he would be trialled as a war criminal.
‘I think school might be in an even more
hopeless state than I thought,’ I said to Malcolm. ‘I am not sure I have the
skills or resources to fix it.’
Malcolm was my housemate. We lived together
in a small village in an untidy cottage. It had taken me some time to forgive
him after he had told the police we had been accidentally responsible for the
death of an old woman. After a few frosty evenings, and the police dropping all
charges, we had returned to our usual habits of watching bad television or
drinking in the local pub, where Malcolm still worked as the barman.
At that moment he was watching Jaws and eating jam with a spoon.
‘Fix what?’ he said.
‘The school. Remember what I’ve been saying?
The school is failing horribly and the headmaster wants me to turn everything
around. He said so this afternoon.’
‘Get better teachers.’
‘It’s not that simple.’
‘Or students. Switch them for ones that do
work.’
‘I don’t think you’re helping.’
And that was the end of the conversation.
Malcolm clearly found the shark more engaging than me.
I sat with my own thoughts and my notebook.
Outside it was still light. I could hear the distant shouts and cheers of the
village cricket team practising. It was possible that spring was in the air,
but the smell would never have competed with the stale odour of Indian food and
damp that hung around our cottage.
I ran back through my notes from the day.
There was nothing particularly inspiring. Radley Hill had dipped for so many
reasons. Many of the teachers, myself included, were ineffectual and tired. The
students had low expectations of themselves. The parents were indifferent.
Funding for new facilities was non-existent. The outlook was bleak.
‘Pub?’ said Malcolm, as onscreen the shark
exploded.
‘I guess,’ I said, and left my thinking for
the following day.
‘And what solutions have you created?’ said
the Headmaster, as I sat in his office the next morning. He looked tired and
pale. I noticed his top button was undone. This was a bad sign from a man so
terrifyingly fastidious.
‘Well,’ I said, and opened my notebook. At
that point I wished that I had declined Malcolm’s offer of a trip to the pub
and done some more work. I spent a few seconds trying to read my own writing.
‘Well what?’
‘What we need is to improve the school.’
‘I know that. How?’
‘We need to create a learning environment
where our students actually make some progress.’
‘Yes.’
The Headmaster was not looking impressed with
my analysis of the situation so far. His face seemed to be changing from a pale
grey to pink and I assumed possibly to red if I did not manage to come up with
some kind of solution. The high-esteem he had held me in after my triumphant
Shakespearian production the previous Christmas seemed to have been forgotten
after my promotion to deputy head and the problems the school had found itself
in.
‘I think,’ I said, ‘that we need an expert.
We need to hire ourselves a behaviour expert who can turn these kids around and
get them learning.’
Silence.
‘Well don’t just sit there. Get one.’
‘Yes, sir,’ I said, and left before he asked
any difficult questions.
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