He had it coming...
I went to a great Grammar School, with largely great teachers. There were, of course, the others..

Prime example would be our Art teacher, who was not fit to be in a school. Sarcastic nasty people belong in government and police force, not in school, where people are still not prepared for it ..

Our school was full of bright people, the average pass rate was 7.7 ‘O’ levels*. Those of us who went on to sixth form, had this twunt as form tutor. One lad passed 5 ‘O’ levels, which was still very good. But Mr Twunt thought that it wasn’t, and proceeded to be an unbelievable shit toward this guy. Just one example: How would you fancy starting every day at school to be greeted by your teacher with “So, still turning up are you?”.

Moving on a few months…

One of my hobbies was keeping reptiles. This was known, and I’d done a few talks for schools, clubs etc, so my biology teacher (Mr Ritson, top teacher, privilege to know him) asked me to do a talk for the next door Girls Grammar School. Sounded like fun, so I agreed, as long as I could bring them in to school in the morning, and leave them in a warm, locked room until the lunchtime talk, do the talk, and put them back afterwards…

“OK, deal”, says Mr Ritson.

So drove to school (big event in itself, 17, just passed test) with two Burmese Pythons, 9 and 12 ft respectively. Got in good and early, to show [off] snakes in sixth form room. Did it all very sensibly – checked that everyone was OK with it, before bringing them in. Anyway, all went very well people having a laugh, and people getting over snake phobias, which was the general idea. This went so well, that I realised it was registration time, so checked with classmates, brought snakes in to registration, with the intention of taking them to their warm room before classes started.

This is where it all kicked off. I hadn’t asked the twunt teacher about his feelings towards the pythons. He came in, late, and walked to his desk without spotting over 20ft of python draped around the back of the room. Sat down, looked up and went white. Instantly, I mean, flash. Now I was holding one, and Colin, the harassed pupil, the other. So, for the only time in my life (as far as reptiles go), I took advantage of the situation. “Don’t you like these, they’re very friendly” said I, moving towards him. The two of us cornered him in the room using two,frankly, bloody enormous, examples of his obviously massive phobia.

Egged on by the rest of the room (“Come on sir, they’re very friendly – let them give you a BIG hug”)
We had him there for several minutes, until he broke. He ran out of the room crying, never did come back.

This generated a trip to the headmaster to explain the incident. (I asked the rest of the class to look after the snakes, as I might be a while). The head was startlingly cool, I explained why they were in the room, he said “OK, but that didn’t require you cornering Mr Twunt with them did it?”. Fair question. I said “No”, he said “Make sure they’re put where they wewre supposed to be”, and that was the end of it. No punishment, no parental involvement, nada.

Can only assume that the Head had a pretty good idea of what a scumbag this guy was, probably saved him the hassle of sacking him.

Finally, and irrelevently, I’d like to say how gutted I am that most of my favourite B3tans are going to a party in London six weeks after I emigrated to Perth, Australia. If there any B3tans in Perth – fancy a beer?

Apologies for length.


*If you’re of the GCSE on onwards generation, this-is-a-big-number**.

**Only kidding, lighten up and show you can take a joke by pressing the “I have a sense of humour” button at the end.
(BeatsWork, Sun 13 Nov 2005, 15:50, Reply)