I am still trying to arrange an appointment with Mr and Mrs O’Farrell to discuss Peter’s lack of academic progress. They couldn’t attend parents’ night in the week after the October break because they were still on a holiday. I have offered no less than five alternative dates, but they have always declared themselves too busy.

I am moved once again to reflect on the value of education in the eyes of today’s breed of lumpen parentariat, as I like to describe them. Not content with removing their son from Standard grade classes for a self-indulgent fortnight in the sun, they are even unwilling to accord his teachers the respect of some time for a professional consultation.

Anyway, I have sent a letter home with O’Farrell offering three further appointment times on any day this week except Friday, when I have to pick up Margaret after the rehearsal for her first school nativity play. With any luck, I might be in time to see her first entry on stage (she’s a donkey, so doesn’t make an appearance until Act 3).

Tuesday

As I might have anticipated, the only date that Mr and Mrs O’Farrell can manage this week is Friday. I have acceded, but on the strict condition that I have to leave school by 3.40pm at the latest.

Meanwhile, Pamela Blane’s campaign to reduce the size of her modern languages classes - and increase the percentage of academically gifted children in them - is gaining momentum. She has sent letters home to the parents of a carefully selected target pupil population (namely those with IQs she estimates at under 82), explaining that their children no longer have to take a foreign language as a compulsory subject.

Her letter is a cunningly worded document, worthy of Jesuit sophistry at its best. I quote: “Although your child has an entitlement to a set number of language teaching hours throughout his or her school career, it is my estimation that (pupil name) has already received that entitlement by the end of second year, especially when I take into account the comprehensive language teaching programme offered by hisher primary school in P6 and P7. I am happy to discuss the matter further with you at parents’ night next year, but would advise that a wide range of alternative and equally attractive subjects are on offer in the same column as modern languages I ” It was news to me that Pamela thought primary school language provision was worthy of the name and I reminded her assistant principal teacher of some previous views on the subject.

“You’re right, Morris,” Angus Douglas sighed at lunch break. “Five years ago, she said it was a disgrace that primary teachers could even think of teaching French after two and a half days in a hotel with some photocopied worksheets and a set of language games. Now she says that it counts towards the kids’ lifetime entitlement and if it means getting rid of the no-hopers we forced into compulsory languages a decade ago, then the entitlement policy’s all right by her.

“To my mind, it’s all very well to think about small, academically motivated classes, but if she’s not careful, she’ll do half of us out of our jobs!” The man’s got a point.

Wednesday

Our new house, which was scheduled to be ready in September, should, several completion postponements later, now be ready for entry on December 21. Great!

Meanwhile, the purchasers of our previous house, not content with insisting that we vacate in September in spite of the fact that left us homeless, have yet to move in because they want to “redecorate the lot, from top to bottom”. Rubbing salt into our wound, they have sent a letter of dissatisfaction to our lawyer complaining about the “dysfunctional state of the central heating system” and the “accumulations of congealed urine on the underside of the downstairs toilet seat”.

I have refuted both allegations. Especially the one about the central heating system.

At school, Richard Dick has become most exercised about target setting. Our headmaster has come to the end of his SQA awards analysis for last session and is angry about the large percentage of pupils who did not achieve the grades that staff had predicted. But he’s not as angry as the staff concerned.

“Bloody hell,” George Crumley stormed away from the principal teachers’ meeting this morning. “It’s all our fault, you know. The fact that I predicted a General 4 for six kids who ended up with a Foundation 6 is apparently all my fault. And if the four Bs I hoped for in Higher get a C, while the As I’d targeted end up with Bs, then that’s all my fault as well.

“He never once seemed to consider the part that the pupils had played in the equation, such as making no bloody effort whatsoever to study for the exam.”

“So did they all fare worse than you’d expected, then?” I made gentle enquiry.

“No!” he exploded with pent-up fury. “That’s the worst of it, Morris. Some of them did better than expected. But they were apparently a glaring example of ‘poorly constructed predictive indicators’ on our part. So it seems that we need to be more careful when consulting our crystal balls in future,” he reflected bitterly.

Several jokes about crystal balls sprang to mind but I thought them better left unspoken.

Thursday

If I ever give up teaching, then I think I’ll go into the personal hygiene industry. The reason is very simple: no pupil’s schoolbag seems complete these days without an awesome array of deodorants, perfumes and all-over body sprays. And that’s the boys; especially Stephen Rose and Tony McManaman.

I look back with winsome regret upon my own school days, when a bath was a weekly occurrence and the appearance of anti-perspirant on my bathroom shelf was contemporaneous with my 17th year and the possible appearance of a girlfriend.

O tempora! O mores! I am moved to reflect as I wander through the second-year cloakroom. Frankly, it smells like a Turkish brothel, as each child with the ability to secrete excess perspiration (which is every one of them) seems intent upon swathing him or herself in bursts of sickly perfumed sprays with the most improbable of names for an inner-city comprehensive like ours. Names such as Atlantis, Delphi, Gravity, Parnassus.

Anyway, it all made a good story for Amanda Fraser of the Parkland Gazette, with whom I have struck up a media-friendly relationship after she agreed not to publish a rather ill-advised comment I made last month. In return for the occasional human-interest story from our educational powerhouse (sic), she promises to remain tight-lipped.

I can see next week’s headline already, as she reports on the changing habits of the adolescent male. A Rose by Any Other Name I Well, you get the idea.

Friday

Mr O’Farrell, a thick-set man with a mind to match, arrived 20 minutes late, minus his spouse but with a dripping fish supper and his gormless offspring in tow.

“Come in, come in, Mr O’Farrell,” I welcomed him to the guidance base with pursed lips. “I’m so glad you could fit me into your busy schedule,” I smiled thinly, but the sarcasm was lost on him.

“That’s OK,” he waved a dismissive hand, drizzling with grease. “Too bad youse’ve tae leave in 10 minutes. Great joab, teachin’. Eh? Wish ah could feenish at twenty tae four.”

I saw little point in beating about the bush. “Mr O’Farrell, I’m very worried about Peter’s chances of attaining a decent grade in English next year or, indeed, in any other subject,” I explained. “You took him away from school at a very important time and he failed completely to hand in any of the homework you requested while you were abroad in October. And I’m afraid he’s fallen so far behind, that catching up will be I” “Haud oan. Haud oan,” he stuck his jaw out and noisily chewed on a huge section of deep-fried haddock. “Ur youse huvin a go at me fur takin’ a hoaliday whin ah waanted tae? An whin it wis convenient fur ma wurk?” “I’m not having a go at anyone, Mr O’Farrell,” I started to reply, but was distracted by Peter propelling himself into a sitting position on the edge of my desk.

“Peter, I’d rather you sat on a chair than on my desk. Please?” I asked with perfect reason in my voice.

“Aye. Shoor!” he replied with unnerving obedience. Then he grabbed a chair from beside his father, placed it on top of my desk and hoisted himself aloft to take up position on a chair, as asked.

But it was a chair on top of my desk!

I looked up at him. He looked down at me. Then we both looked across the desk at his father, in a mutual and unspoken plea for parental support. Which I lost.

“Wa hey! Guid wan, Petesie, boay!” was his father’s judgement, as he stood up and held his hand aloft for a high-five, which his son duly gave.

At this point I rose from my seat, picked up my briefcase and made my excuses. I explained, with supreme politeness, I had a pressing engagement with a donkey.

Which made two in one day.

John Mitchell