MEMORABLE TEACHER, BUT NOT IN A GOOD WAY

I looked through some old school reports this afternoon and this was definitely the worst. I still remember how much I disliked that teacher (I won't name him, but his name rhymed with 'bucket' and some other words that I didn't know at the time), and how much he disliked me. He was the one who, when I auditioned for his choir, told me I should never bother to think about singing. I was eight, for goodness sake, and the school photo was taken during that year. And I was "often 'ill'" as he complains in my PE report. Look at my absences. I'd just come back to England from a healthy outdoor couple of years in Australia, joined the school in the middle of a dysentery outbreak (!), and then through the following year went down with mumps, chickenpox, rubella and a few other things as well (pre-vaccination days). My Dad was the doctor and probably brought all the infections home with him, but we couldn't pretend with him and Mum, so we had to be really ill not to go to school! It was during that year that I fainted for the only time in my life, in school assembly when I should have been at home in bed instead. In Mr Rhymes-with-Bucket's defence, I see from the report that there were 42 children in the class (no teaching assistants then). No doubt the sudden arrival of a newcomer with an Australian accent (which morphed quite quickly into a Wiltshire one, trying to fit in), a year behind with maths, who was a bit shy and unco-operative, was pretty disruptive. The following year I had a lovely lady teacher whose name I don't recall, and had a great year until I had to move schools again, although I was still probably not interested in PE, and I think that "Fair" would still be more than generous for Needlework/Crafts.