Lily is 15 and leaves early for school. Her dad’s drinking drives her nuts, her unemployed brothers argue all the time and her mum’s not yet back from the nightshift at the bakery.
So Lily gets into school at 7, has a breakfast of a bun and apple drink – and zooms off to the music room, where Ms Chopin has made the piano available. Here for about an hour Lily plays boogie-woogie, Albert Ammon and Pete Johnson. She tears into the likes of Boogie-Woogie Dream. Her hands fly in a blur of syncopation. Notes tumble, spill, cascade, bop and dance and she sighs and shrieks.
Lily got hooked, when Ms Chopin gave her some recordings in the 7th year. She forgets everything. She is driven. It is marvellous. Her playing is unremarked, apart from Ms Chopin. It is not on the syllabus.
Lily’s in the C stream.
Then at 8:30 school starts and her day goes downhill with the curriculum. With few exceptions she gets bored, aimless and she can get into trouble.
Meanwhile, Timothy Winters, 12 and diminutive, is doing detention with Ms Jupe at the other end of this March day. Because he’s so tiny and his rucksack’s so big the journey from Trellick Towers to the school makes him almost always late. His dad suggests he bloody leaves earlier. But he doesn’t.
Mrs Dragon waits for him and pounces: “You’re late!”
“I know.”
He’s put in detention. It will go in his file. Boo hoo! He will fail in later life. Boo hoo! So he does time with his favourite teacher, Ms Jupe.
She is always professional, but has a soft stop for the tardy infant. He is a cartoonist of genius, especially of Mrs Dragon and the absurd world of school. Sometimes after a rubbish day he keeps Ms Jupe in stitches and she’s been known to take the illustrations home to her matchbox in Shepherds Bush.
“Same time, tomorrow, then Miss.”
Detentions are secretly sought and are the best part of his day. His drawings go unremarked, apart from Ms Jupe. It’s not on the syllabus.
Timothy is in the C grade.
In a world where so much is noted and filed and examined, these things are important. Boogie-woogie pianos and cartoons are just two. Most pupils have these serious, secret lives.
They’ve been driven off the syllabus. We’re busy talking about their grades. Are they C or D? Well, I was never interested as much in their future as I was in the present. Their lives might not be this good again. It’s this stuff you remember about Lily, Timothy – and any number of others – and why you mostly teach.
- Ian Whitwham is a former inner city London teacher.