Eye Of Rah

Am I the enemy at the school gates?

Up to 10,000 schools in England and Wales expect to be affected by today’s union walk-out in protest over changes to public-sector pension schemes. Even public schools such as Eton and Cheltenham Ladies’ College are braced for walk-outs, while masters at St Paul’s will down tools for the first time in the school’s 500-year history.

I’m lucky. I’m available to volunteer. I wouldn’t be the slightest bit inconvenienced if my eight-year-old daughter couldn’t go to school: I work from home, our house is always full of people, and she is perfectly able to educate herself for more than a day. Nor do I side with one party or the other: I come from a family of teachers, have the highest regard for them, and believe they can’t ever be paid enough if they’re good. But I do believe children are infinitely more important than politics; I like my daughter’s friends hugely and their mothers just as much; and I’ve learnt that we pull together in life – particularly women, and particularly mothers. I dare hope there are things I could contribute in the classroom and, if it will help, that’s reason enough.

I rang my daughter’s school. One of the perks of my husband’s employment as chaplain in a boys’ public school is a place for our daughter in the sister establishment. I was confidently told that we don’t close for hail, snow, wrong kind of leaves, bubonic plague or world war. Certainly not industrial action, which our staff won’t be engaging in. No, silly me, of course not.

But since I’m on the telephone, I said, what would your response be to parents volunteering? My daughter’s school, I discovered, has the strictest policy possible. Not only do you have to be thoroughly vetted by the Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) in order to do anything – help the girls off with their coats, let alone accompany them to the lavatory – but the charitable trust that also employs my husband uses its own “enhanced” CRB check “which would show up the library fine you didn’t pay at the age of 14”. Crikey. I rack my brains: what else do they know about me?

An unchecked parent could just about watch the girls walk down the street under close supervision of a teacher. “Forgive my asking,” I said, properly curious now, “but is that for PR purposes? Or because you believe it really protects them?

blog-o-rah-mah: A Busy Bee Interlude

Something just occurred to me.  Just this morning as I was sitting at the end of the counter, in my customary place in front of the tropical island poster on the wall, reading the paper as I monitored out of the corner of one eye the disposition of the Busy Bee breakfast rush, I was startled, as always, by the brief, strident ringing of the Alternate Reality Generator warning bell. (On the wall above the ice machine.) It always seems like no one ever hears it but me. As I always do, I checked out the front window, where there is a row of four-top tables between the front door and the east wall. As always, the tables have red formica tops and are bounded on the edges by a chrome strip.  The chairs match. No one but me notices that the landscape outside has changed. It looks like the Gobi desert to me, the diners are all wearing shorts, boots and capes, one moon is setting, one is still above the horizon, and the sun is a hot red-orange torch above them both. The tables have red formica tops and chrome strips around them.  This never changes.  Same with the counter where I sat. Denise passed by the end of the counter carrying a full glass coffee pot and filled Laslowe's coffee cup with a quick, controlled slosh. He looked up appreciatively.  The crisp, pale green waitress uniforms never changed either.  I looked past the grill out the window in the back door and saw Laslowe's ornithopter where it squatted ominously, dominating the back lot.  It never changed either, and for the life of me I couldn't figure out if the thing was supposed to actually fly in all these realities--it looked like such an ungainly and unlikely machine--or in just a few with lower gravity and thicker air.  Where did he build it? I thought back and realized it was in the "real" reality, the one I considered my home. In which case, it was more fantastic yet. But I was starting to forget where that was anyway. Two men entered the front door, and the little bell mounted above it gave a jingle. The men wore suits.  That never changed, even though it seemed to put them at a distinct disadvantage, since this is no doubt why Laslowe rose and set his paper and coffee cup down in one fluid motion and in the blink of an eye was across the dining room putting a hand on each man's shoulder.

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