At the chalkface: Parents’ Evening

“I’d rather be planting a vegetable than teaching him!” said my old French teacher, “Chunk”, to my poor mother many years ago. Honest. Yes. Bracing, even – but a bit harsh. Mother, who’d left school at 12 and regarded any meeting with a Teacher in a Gown like an audience with the Pope, was baffled by this preference for horticulture over the more Gallic kind. Did I have the IQ of a cabbage?

“He wouldn’t know a conditional, if it bit him in the bum.” His addendum didn’t improve things. “He is often deliberately stupid!” Wrong. Deliberation wasn’t in it. I was just rubbish. Or – heaven forfend! – perhaps very badly taught. Whatever, he removed his glasses, identified another parent, and barked “Next!”. Mother almost bowed, thanked him for his time – about 45 seconds – pondered thumping me, before shuffling to another table for some more patrician insults.