The importance of staying on green

When I was at school, there was a boy named Birdseye.  Our teacher called him Bird’s beak, Birdbrain, and so on.  I thought it was funny.  My name wasn’t Birdseye.  Or Wurm.  Sir called him Grub.   He didn’t connect the two, bird and grub.  These days, insults only come from little beaks.  Teachers get the sack. 

Home time.  I slipped out of the girls’ school and reached the bus stop, safe back in the adult world.  You’d think.  A group of girls had come through the gate behind me.  When they saw me at the bus stop, they chorused “Hallo, sir,” suggestively, the way that only teenage girls can do, but everybody understands.

“Hey, hey, hey,” said the man next to me.  He didn’t have to say it so loud.  “Male teacher at a girls’ school.  He must be gay.”

    Chigwell Row

     
            Move on.  I made it to Hainault.  It’s an outer London suburb.  I got off the train and walked towards the bus stop for Chigwell Row, which is up the hill, where it’s green, and there are lots of trees, with a church on top.  I don’t live there.  I was helping a wealthy Russian with her English. 

The bus stop is next to the station.  I was almost there when a man dropped his bag on the footpath in front of me.

“Can you pick it up for me, please?” 

It wasn’t pretty please.  I looked at him.  He was about my age.  He wasn’t drunk.  When I didn’t bend down straightaway, he carried on speaking, like someone who needed to finish a script.  But his tone was harder.

“I asked you to pick it up for me.” 

“I thought you dropped it on purpose.”

“Fuck off!”

He walked on, I walked on, we continued with our afternoon.  I wonder how long he’s been doing that, in Hainault of all places, and how he hasn’t been stabbed to death. 

It was very hot, a nice day for the beach.  I’d just got sand in the face.   The road outside Hainault station doesn’t look much like a beach, except for the litter and the bare-chested youths.  I don’t remember if Hainault made the news during the riots.  It doesn’t mean there weren’t any riots.  The youths of Hainault may have intended to riot, perhaps some of them even thought they were rioting, but people didn’t notice any difference, and it wasn’t reported.

          A child’s mother once called me a wanker.  Parents, like children, can say things teachers can’t.  In some schools you can’t even discipline the children.  I mean you’re not allowed to.  I was sent to a primary school in Hackney.  It’s London’s Wild East.  The deputy head explained their ‘traffic light’ system.  A lot of schools have it.  All the children start on green.  If they’re bad, their names are moved to yellow.  If they’re bad again, their names are moved to red.  She emphasised the importance of staying on green.  I thought she might have told the children that, not me.  The class teacher said the children never stopped talking.  I thought she might have told the children that, not me.  

           She came in later while I was teaching.  The children were completely quiet.  She was amazed.  Then she saw the traffic lights.  A lot of names on yellow and red.  She was horrified.  I was thrown out before lunch.