If you were to cast your mind back to Talkback No.4 you will notice that I ended that particular chapter embarking on a brand new teaching career. The college band (Sefton Wall) sadly came to an end and we all went our separate ways.
I decided for whatever reason (probably the lure of the bright lights and the big city) to remain in London and not return to my beloved Newcastle. My first teaching post was to be in the East End and was to say the least rather daunting, but as with anything you have to start somewhere. Don’t get me wrong, I’m as big a fan of Albert Square as the next man but as a newbie it wouldn’t have been my first choice (no offence Mr. Dyer). Mind you, it’s glaringly obvious that openings in Knightsbridge and the like are rarer than hens’ teeth, only coming along when someone either retires or shuffles off this mortal coil.
So briefcase in hand (at least I was looking the part) I headed out to ‘Jack the Ripper’ land. For the life of me I just can’t remember the name of the school, or whether Jack was actually a former pupil, but surprisingly I managed to settle in far better than I had expected. My class was made up of older juniors (average age about ten) who by and large were well behaved and as I recall none of them carried knives! Of course back then the teachers were expected to cover every subject, including P.E., which as you can imagine was no easy task. Being the pre-google age more often than not I would send a pupil off to the library to look up something I didn’t have a clue about. It was on one of these jaunts that the Headmaster stopped my little researcher in the corridor and asked whose class they’d come from. “That new foreigner’s class, sir“ came the reply, obviously my Geordie accent hadn’t mellowed much by that time.
On another occasion I’d just told off one young lad for misbehaving after which he threatened to bring in his dad (who was a docker and apparently harder than a coffin nail) for a friendly(!) chat. As luck would have it nothing happened, but if push came to shove I was fully prepared to pretend that I was still learning English.
So there it is, it’s a teacher’s life for me then… well, that was until I saw an advertisement in my weekly music paper, New Musical Express if you remember it?, anyway I could already smell the grease paint and hear the roar of the crowd, now all I needed was some loose change and a telephone box!
Keith.