had stopped providing it.
Some kids covered up their work with their arms. Others showed him what they’d done, grinning stupidly. This was the top set, supposedly. God help the rest, Maxwell thought to himself. Still, the names were right. Tamsins rubbed shoulders with Imogens and Williams and Harrys. Later in the day, when he met his Set 3, he’d find the Sharons and Traceys and Waynes and Shanes. Why, he found himself wondering again, had two entire generations forever ruined a classic Western by christening their moronic offspring Shane?
It was just as he was making his second circuit that he noticed them. Below the window. The boys in blue. Two uniformed constables, their diced headbands vivid under the painful glare of the September sky, threading their way through the bike sheds. There’d be smokers there in half an hour, the hardliners bent on lung cancer who’d cultivated that curious method of holding ciggies in the palms of their hands so the smoke didn’t show. But it wasn’t smokers the fuzz were after. They seemed to be checking bikes. Every now and again, one of them would stoop and say something to his colleague who’d write something down. Maxwell couldn’t make out a pattern in their search. It seemed random. What were they looking for?
Then he was aware from the growing row that Set l’s first task of their History careers was over and he told them to pass their papers forward so that no one could see what they’d written. When the little pile was high enough on his desk, he unfolded them one by one and read them out.
‘A hundred,’ he said and got a laugh. The figures actually read fifty-five, but that was too close to be funny and Maxwell a great believer in licence. ‘Sixty-eight.’ A titter. Thirty-four.’
A howl.
‘Who put that?’ he asked.
Slowly, furtively, a lad’s hand climbed into the air.
‘What’s your name?’ Maxwell demanded.
‘Tom,’ the lad said, still junior school enough to think that surnames names didn’t matter.
‘Tom what?’ Maxwell asked.
‘Wood,’ the lad said.
‘Well, Tom Wood,’ Maxwell crossed to him, ‘you are a fine judge of men and will make a first-class historian.’ He held out his hand. ‘Allow me to shake you by the hand. You’ve made an old man very happy.’
The others laughed. Then he read out their guesses. Four of them only were spot on. When he asked them, none of them knew why they’d carried out the exercise. Year by year, none of them ever did.
‘Time,’ Maxwell said. ‘The most difficult idea you’ll have to cope with in History. Most of you got my age wrong. You put me too old. There are two reasons for that. One, my hair is greying. Two, I’m a teacher. And all teachers are old, aren’t they? Like mums and dads. Ancient. Teachers don’t have lives of their own. They just climb into a cupboard at four o’clock and out again at nine. Somebody throws a switch and we start teaching. If I’d asked a class of five-year-olds how old I was, they’d have said two hundred, three hundred. Time is the most elusive thing to handle. It trickles through your fingers like sand on the beach. One casual misuse of it, one slip and it’s gone for ever.’
The bell shattered the moment. No one moved. ‘That’s the signal for the end of the magic,’ he told the eager, anxious faces, ‘the breaking of the spell. You’ll go on now to some irrelevance like French or Maths and you’ll forget all about that sand, won’t you?’ He smiled. ‘Until the next time. And next time,’ he dismissed them with a wave of his arm, ‘we’ll discuss the conceptualization of Hegel’s dialectic. Good morning, boys and girls.’ And another generation had come to know Mad Max.
Someone – and it was probably Roger Garrett, compiler of the calendar – had decreed that at the end of the first gruelling day of term there should be Department meetings.
Paul Moss was sufficiently a man of the people to provide biccies. Tea was on Anthea
Some kids covered up their work with their arms. Others showed him what they’d done, grinning stupidly. This was the top set, supposedly. God help the rest, Maxwell thought to himself. Still, the names were right. Tamsins rubbed shoulders with Imogens and Williams and Harrys. Later in the day, when he met his Set 3, he’d find the Sharons and Traceys and Waynes and Shanes. Why, he found himself wondering again, had two entire generations forever ruined a classic Western by christening their moronic offspring Shane?
It was just as he was making his second circuit that he noticed them. Below the window. The boys in blue. Two uniformed constables, their diced headbands vivid under the painful glare of the September sky, threading their way through the bike sheds. There’d be smokers there in half an hour, the hardliners bent on lung cancer who’d cultivated that curious method of holding ciggies in the palms of their hands so the smoke didn’t show. But it wasn’t smokers the fuzz were after. They seemed to be checking bikes. Every now and again, one of them would stoop and say something to his colleague who’d write something down. Maxwell couldn’t make out a pattern in their search. It seemed random. What were they looking for?
Then he was aware from the growing row that Set l’s first task of their History careers was over and he told them to pass their papers forward so that no one could see what they’d written. When the little pile was high enough on his desk, he unfolded them one by one and read them out.
‘A hundred,’ he said and got a laugh. The figures actually read fifty-five, but that was too close to be funny and Maxwell a great believer in licence. ‘Sixty-eight.’ A titter. Thirty-four.’
A howl.
‘Who put that?’ he asked.
Slowly, furtively, a lad’s hand climbed into the air.
‘What’s your name?’ Maxwell demanded.
‘Tom,’ the lad said, still junior school enough to think that surnames names didn’t matter.
‘Tom what?’ Maxwell asked.
‘Wood,’ the lad said.
‘Well, Tom Wood,’ Maxwell crossed to him, ‘you are a fine judge of men and will make a first-class historian.’ He held out his hand. ‘Allow me to shake you by the hand. You’ve made an old man very happy.’
The others laughed. Then he read out their guesses. Four of them only were spot on. When he asked them, none of them knew why they’d carried out the exercise. Year by year, none of them ever did.
‘Time,’ Maxwell said. ‘The most difficult idea you’ll have to cope with in History. Most of you got my age wrong. You put me too old. There are two reasons for that. One, my hair is greying. Two, I’m a teacher. And all teachers are old, aren’t they? Like mums and dads. Ancient. Teachers don’t have lives of their own. They just climb into a cupboard at four o’clock and out again at nine. Somebody throws a switch and we start teaching. If I’d asked a class of five-year-olds how old I was, they’d have said two hundred, three hundred. Time is the most elusive thing to handle. It trickles through your fingers like sand on the beach. One casual misuse of it, one slip and it’s gone for ever.’
The bell shattered the moment. No one moved. ‘That’s the signal for the end of the magic,’ he told the eager, anxious faces, ‘the breaking of the spell. You’ll go on now to some irrelevance like French or Maths and you’ll forget all about that sand, won’t you?’ He smiled. ‘Until the next time. And next time,’ he dismissed them with a wave of his arm, ‘we’ll discuss the conceptualization of Hegel’s dialectic. Good morning, boys and girls.’ And another generation had come to know Mad Max.
Someone – and it was probably Roger Garrett, compiler of the calendar – had decreed that at the end of the first gruelling day of term there should be Department meetings.
Paul Moss was sufficiently a man of the people to provide biccies. Tea was on Anthea
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