FIFTEEN MINUTES
More than four decades ago, I taught English
in a boy’s grammar, waiting for it to go
comprehensive. I can think of three
notable alumni: a Labour PM,
whose only school magazine piece was
‘Ephemera’; the lover and killer
of a fêted, controversial playwright;
and a cult film director (see below).
The classrooms were built round a courtyard –
as if the architect had worked to some
Mediterranean model. Mine
was opposite the staffroom. One lunchtime,
I was marking at my desk and looked up
to see the said director, furtive,
at the staffroom door. I continued marking.
I heard shouting and looked up again to see
a colleague pounding on the door. (There was
a gap between the lintel and the door
into which three large screws had been driven).
There was huffing and tutting and enquiries –
low profile to deter imitation –
by the Deputy, an overweight caner.
‘You were at your desk. What did you see?’
‘I was intent on my work,’ I said, grinning.
‘This is serious!’ ‘Indeed it is,’ I said,
laughing. Courtesy of Mrs. Thatcher,
the school never went comprehensive. I left.
It never occurred to me to betray
such a consummate piece of performance art,
such an exquisite act of irony –
the masters trapped in their privilege,
imprisoned in their ignorance – but rather
held the knowledge close like a password
to my identity. I disclose it now
I am almost certain who I am.
Howard Gardener
September 24, 2015Well – who’d have thought it? Mr Selzer has a darker side tucked away in there . . .
Alan Horne
September 27, 2015Hahaha! I never knew about this. Good for Alex. And for you, David.
John Huddart
September 28, 2015A really fine piece – full of drama and mystery – and a superb ending, as clever and as puzzling as a password itself, and to provide answers in the tags! Genius!
Simon Taylor
October 4, 2015Identity passwords – or those memorabilia-filled shoeboxes?
Courtyard schooling feels imperial British – township South Africa, as we know David. Cane? Tawse? A language of Instruction not your own? Many forms of punishment and a curriculum to belittle, humiliate.
And worse: yours a Grammar School, mine a ‘Residential School for Educationally Subnormal Boys’ (1971) a refuge for adult serial abusers – 2 receiving 10 year sentences this year. Naively, I too talked and probably laughed with both. I too left.
This memorabilia remains in my shoebox, but also those who stayed to change things throughout their careers: Pete Spencer, Margaret O’Hanlon and many more, and the ’81 Warnock Report.
David Selzer
October 4, 2015Many thanks, Simon. Your impassioned, cogent comment alludes to so much history, raises so many issues and roll calls those who changed things. I think the stirring and shaping of memory is one of poetry’s functions.