A true story

Sunday 28 December 2008

A fairly long time ago, when I was an extremely young boy – knee-high to a grasshopper, and a student at primary school – I woke up one morning.

This was not an unusual event by any stretch of the imagination, and the incidents that followed were equally unsurprising. I dressed, ate breakfast, brushed my teeth, and so on – all things that happened every morning.

Then, it was time to put on my shoes, as ever. This was not as easy as one might think, however – you see, I couldn’t find them.

I looked everywhere – under the table, under the bed, in the refrigerator. They were nowhere to be found. I kept looking, without any luck.

As I scampered about frantically, wondering where the hell my shoes had got to, time passed. My father grew angry. When I heard Women’s Hour start on the radio, I knew I was in trouble – I was usually seated on the floor for an assembly, being brainwashed by local religious figure, by the time that came on.

Eventually, I found the shoes. They were under the sofa. Shoving them onto my feet, we dashed off to school as quickly as the bicycle could carry us without taking off. I was late.

When I burst through the door of the classroom, long after the school bell had made its sound, I was surprised to see a teacher who had never taught us before – a supply teacher. Our usual teacher was ill.

As the teacher wiped some ink from the whiteboard, it occurred to me that I did not know her name. She had written it on the board, but she’d just wiped it off. I squinted at the board, in a desperate attempt to try and make out the writing – often there was residue remain

Then, she said something:

Now, pay attention to what I am about to say, for I don’t want you to come running to me in five minutes, saying, “oh, Mrs Boddie, what is it we have to do?”

I was relieved. Now I knew her name – it was Mrs Boddie. Of course, I never actually needed to use her name – I’m not sure why on earth I was so worried about not knowing what it was – but it was a relief to know what it was, just in case some opportunity to say it presented itself.

Later, it was lunchtime. When I had eaten my lunch, it was time to run about outside, and I was delighted to discover that it was my class’s turn to play on the adventure playground climbing frame action apparatus thingamajig.

I hopped to the climbing frame excitedly, and made a start at climbing about like a monkey that’s had too much Red Bull. I was so excited that I fell off.

I was injured. I had injured my lip. Blood was oozing out of it at a dizzying rate.

I’m not quite sure why my lip was injured. I’m pretty sure I wasn’t using my mouth to scale the climbing apparatus – anyone who injures their lips because they used their lips to move about deserves to have been injured, for that is a stupid thing to do. It would seem that my

I rushed to have my lip fixed by the woman in charge of fixing injured whippersnappers – an enormous, ageing lady, who wore enormous, ageing, sack-like clothes. She then

I went home. A cut lip is not, in my opinion, a sufficiently serious injury to warrant going home, but who was I to argue? Only an idiot turns down an opportunity like that.

That day, three vaguely interesting things had happened. I did not know it then, but now I am grateful, for it gave me something to blog about.