24 24 ‘This morning, we have a very special visitor with us,’ said the teach er. She sm iled and turn ed in my direction. ‘Mr Phinn is a school inspector and he is very interested in what we are doing, aren’t you, Mr Phinn?’
‘I am,’ I replied, smiling.
‘He likes to sit in lessons and watch what children are doing, don’t you, Mr Phinn?’
‘I do,’ I replied, keeping the smile fixed on my face.
‘Now,’ continued the teacher, ‘because it is a Monday, we start the day as we normally do with “Newstime”.’ The teacher turned in my direction. ‘It’s an opportunity, Mr Phinn, for the children to tell us what they have been doing over the weekend. I don’t know whether it’s considered good practice or not these days. Things in education seem to shift like the sands of time.’
‘It is good practice,’ I reassured her, smiling still. ‘It encourages the children to speak clearly, confidently and with enthusiasm.’
‘Just what I think.’ She nodded and proceeded. ‘Well, this week, let me see whom I shall ask.’ She scanned the classroom. ‘Portia, would you like to come out to the front and tell us what interesting things you and your family have been doing over the weekend?’
A large, moon-faced, rather morose-looking girl with hair in enormous bunches and tied by large crimson ribbons, rose slowly from her seat and headed sluggishly for the front. She stared motionless at the class as if caught in amber, a grim expression on her round pale face.
‘Come along, then, Portia,’ urged the teacher.
‘Nowt ’appened, miss,’ the girl answered sullenly.
‘Something must have happened, Portia. Did you go anywhere?’
‘No, miss.’
‘’Well, what did you do all weekend?’
‘Watch telly, miss.’
The teacher sighed and turned in my direction. ‘It’s like extracting teeth, getting some of the children to speak, Mr Phinn,’ she confided in a sotto voce voice. ‘Some of them are very economical in their use of words.’ She turned her attention back to the large girl at the front of the classroom, who was staring vacantly out of the window. ‘Now, come along, Portia, there must be something you can tell us?’
‘Miss, we found an ’edge’og on our lawn on Saturday and it were dead,’ the child announced bluntly.
‘Oh dear,’ said the teacher, pulling a dramatically sympathetic face. ‘I wonder why that was. Do you think something could have killed it?’ She then looked in my direction, an expectant expression playing about her eyes. ‘Possibly a cat, Mr Phinn, do you think?’
‘My dad said it were probably next door’s dog,’ said Portia. ‘It’s allus killing things, that dog. My dad says it wants purrin down. It’s a reight vicious thing. It bit ’im when ’e was fixing t’fence and last week it chased this old woman who were collecting for the RSPCA right down t’path. We could hear t’screaming from our back room.’
‘Dear me, it does sound a rather fierce creature, Portia,’ said the teacher.
‘It bit ’er on t’bum by t’gate. All her little flags were ovver our garden and all down t’path. My dad said she wouldn’t be coming back in an ’urry!’
‘Well, well, how fascinating,’ said the teacher, pulling a face and arching an eyebrow. ‘Let’s see if anyone else has any interesting news, shall we?’
Towards the end of the morning I took the opportunity, whilst the children were writing up their news, to look at the exercise books. Portia was writing carefully in large clear rounded letters as I approached her, but on catching sight of me she froze, dropped her pencil and stared up like a terrified rabbit in a trap.
‘May I look at your work?’ I asked gently. She slid the book across the desk, all the while staring. She had written the date at the top of the page in bold writing and then underneath in four large capital letters the word ‘EGOG’.
‘What does this say?’ I asked.
‘Can’t you read?’ she said bluntly.
‘I’m not so sure about that word,’ I told her, pointing to the title.
‘’Edge’og!’ she replied, looking at me as if I was incredibly stupid.
Try as I might, I just couldn’t get her to speak to me above the single word so I tried another tack, to reassure her that I was really quite friendly.
‘It’s a lovely name, Portia,’ I said. She eyed me suspiciously. ‘You were named after one of the most famous characters in a wonderful play by William Shakespeare. Portia was a very clever and beautiful woman.’
I was about to launch into a rendering of ‘The quality of mercy is not strained’ when the teacher approached, bent low so her lips were nearly in my ear and informed me in slow and deliberate tones that ‘The name is spelled “P-O-R-S-C-H-E” not “P-O-R-T-I-A”, Mr Phinn. Her father told me, when I asked him about the unusual spelling one Parents’ Evening, that he always wanted a Porsche car but couldn’t afford one. She’s the next best thing.’ Mrs Peterson shook her head, shrugged and mouthed: ‘There’s always one!’