‘And which is your favourite bible story?’ I asked.
‘Waay, it ‘ud ‘ave to be David and Goliath.’
‘Why is that?’
‘Well, it’s a cracking good tale, i’n’t it? Old Goliath comes ovver dale, huffin’ and puffin’ and shoutin’ and screamin’ and wavin’ his reight big sword abaat like there’s no tomorra and tellin’ t’Israelites to send out their champion. Out comes little David, wi’ nowt but a sling shot in ‘is ‘and. “Waaaaay!” rooars old Goliath. “Tha must be jokin’. Is this t’best thy lot can do? Little squirt like thee! I could tread on thee and squash thee. I could spit on thee and drowan thee. I could breath on thee and blow thee into t’next week. Send out a proper champion not a little scrap like thee. I’m not feightin’ thee.” Anyroad, David says to ‘im, “I’m thee man,” and he reaches into t’beck and pulls out a pebble t’size of a pullet egg and pops it in ‘is sling shot and lets fly. By the ‘eck, it di’n’t ‘arf shift and it ‘its old Goliath smack between ‘is eyes.’
‘That must have really hurt him,’ I ventured.
‘’Urt him?’ ‘Urt ‘im?’ the buy cried. ‘It ruddy well killed ‘im!’
I looked down and tried to suppress my laughter. ‘Well, what about this book of yours, then, William? Tell me a little bit about it and then perhaps you would like to read me a page.’
‘I can do that wi’out any trouble at all, Mester Phinn,’ he told me confidently. ‘Now then, this book is abaat exploration in t’Arctic.’
‘It’s a very old book,’ I observed, fingering the shabby cover and staring at the cramped print and yellowing pages. It had a rather unpleasant, musty smell to it.
‘Aye, I got it from a charity shop. Dun’t really matter what it looks like, though, does it? It’s what’s inside what counts, my granddad says. Same wi’ people, he says. “Many a good tune played on an owd fiddle.” He says that an’ all.’
‘Very true,’ I agreed. ‘Off you go, then, William. Read me a couple of paragraphs.’
The boy took a deep breath, cleared his throat noisily and began, his body hunched and his face close to the page, ‘“The gale raged about the tent. Captain Scott decided that they must continue with the march despite the appalling weather. To stay there would have meant certain death in the icy wasteland. Facing chasms and crevasses, thick-crusted snow and massive mountains of ice, the explorers plodded on. Their cracked lips were broken and raw, their fingers numb with cold and their feet frozen beyond feeling. Slipping and falling, sliding and stumbling, plunging blindly into yawning ravines and escaping only by a miracle, Captain Scott and his party marched onwards.’” The boy paused and thought for a moment before commenting, ‘He’s a gret one for t’verbs, this writer, i’n’t he?’
‘He is,’ I agreed, chuckling.
‘Not so ‘ot on t’adjectives, though.’
‘No,’ I agreed, thinking that Mr Spencer-Hall’s lesson had had some impact.
‘He died, tha knaas.’
‘Who did?’ I asked.
‘Captain Scott. He were found frozzen to deeath.’
‘Oh, yes, I know. It was a very sad end.’
‘Aye, he died all right.’ The boy thought for a moment. ‘It gets reight cowld up where I lives but not as cowld as that. Shall I go on?’
‘No, that’s fine, William,’ I said and then added, ‘It’s a marvellous story, isn’t it? A story of great courage and determination.’
‘It is that,’ agreed the boy. ‘It is that.’
‘And you’re a grand reader, William.’
‘Aye, I’m not too bad, even if I says so mi’self.’
The boy’s folder was impressive. There were stories and vivid descriptions, little anecdotes and lively accounts. It was clear that Mr Spencer-Hall had covered a good deal of ground with his pupils and that he had taught them well.
One poem in William’s folder appealed to me in particular. ‘I guess this is about this remarkable granddad of yours, William,’ I commented.
‘It is that,’ said the boy. ‘And he were reight chuffed wi’it an’ all. It’s called T’ Dalesman.’
‘I’m sure he was very proud. Would you read it for me?’
William shuffled in his chair, coughed and read his poem loudly and clearly.
Old man, sitting on the stile,
Hands like roots and haystack hair,
Smoky beard and sunshine smile,
He doesn’t have a single care.
Old man, staring at the bield,
Falcon-nosed and raven’s eye,
Thin as the scarecrow in his field,
He stands and sees the world go by.
‘What’s a “bield”, William?’ I asked.
‘Tha not from around here, then?’
‘No, I’m not.’
‘An “off-comed-un”, are you?’
Since starting work in rural Yorkshire, I had been called this more times than I can remember – someone from out of the dale, a foreigner. ‘I am indeed an “off-comed-un”,’ I admitted.
‘Sometimes in a field tha’ll see a wall,’ the boy explained. ‘It gus noweer, it dunt divide owt, it just stands theer, just a bit o’ drystone wall. People passing – “off-comed-uns”, visitors and the like – they often wonder what the heck it is.’ He scratched the thatch of thick hair.
‘Well, what is it, William?’ I asked.
‘I’m just abaat to tell thee, Mester Phinn. That bit ‘o wall is a “bield”. It’s for t’sheep to get behind for a bit o’shelter when t’wind lashes at ‘em and rain soaks ‘em through. It’s a sort of refuge.’
‘I see. Well, that’s something I’ve learnt this morning.’
‘Mi granddad says you nivver stop learnin’.’
I tested William on his spellings, punctuation, knowledge of vocabulary and grammar and was well satisfied.
‘It’s been a real pleasure talking to you,’ I told him, closing the folder of work.
‘Likewise, Mester Phinn,’ he replied. Then, getting to his feet, he patted me on the back as a grandfather might do to his grandson. ‘Tek care,’ he said, ‘and if tha wants to see mi abattoir, it’s in t’corner.’ Then he departed with his book, folder and oil refinery, whistling merrily as he went.
Most of the questions school inspectors ask in the course of their work are pseudo questions. We know the answers; they are not genuine in the sense that we are asking something which, for us, is obvious. When I ask a child to spell a word, I already know the spelling. When I ask if he knows what a noun is, I am fully aware of what it is and am just testing him. But there have been many occasions on my travels around the schools in the Dales where the questions I have asked are genuine, when I have no idea of the answer. After William had returned whistling to his seat, I added yet another word – ‘bield’ – to my Yorkshire vocabulary and wrote it down in my little black book alongside ‘arran’ (spider), ‘barfin’ (horse collar), ‘biddy’ (louse), ‘chippy’ (starling), ‘fuzzock’ (donkey) and other wonderfully rich and descriptive dialect words.
The next pupil was something of a contrast. He was a shy, mousy little boy who fidgeted in his chair but managed to keep his hands clasped tightly in front of him as if bracing himself for some unseen and impending horror. He had deep-set brown eyes with thick lashes and kept glancing nervously in my direction. I could see that he found me rather intimidating despite my efforts to put him at his ease. He answered my questions in monosyllables, read quickly and in a trembling voice and was very pleased when I curtailed our interview. He scuttled away and buried his head behind a big book.
The third child, a large healthy-looking girl sporting straw-coloured hair gathered up in enormous bushy bunches, deposited her reading book and folder of written work in front of me, plopped onto the chair and stared up with a wearisome expression on her round face. It was clear that this pupil, unlike William, was not overly enthusiastic about showing me her work but, unlike the nervous little boy, she was by no means daunted by the presence
of the stranger in the dark suit.
I smiled. ‘And what is your name?’
‘Janice.’
‘Well, Janice, I’m Mr Phinn and I am here to see how well you are getting on in school.’ She nodded. ‘And how do you think you are getting on?’
‘All reight,’ she replied, somewhat sullenly.
‘Working hard?’
‘Yeah.’
‘And keeping up with the work?’
‘Yeah.’
‘And what do you enjoy best about school?’
‘Goin’ ‘ome,’ she told me bluntly.
‘Well, would you like to read to me?’
‘I’m not dead keen, but I will if I ‘ave to.’
‘Let’s have a look at your book.’ The girl flicked open a thin green volume entitled, An Anthology of Animal Verse.‘Ah, a poetry book. Do you like poetry then, Janice?’
‘Not really,’ replied the girl before adding, ‘It’s just that poems are shorter than stories and easier to read.’
The poem, called Nature’s Treasure by Philomena Phillpots, described in the preface as ‘The Dales Poetess’, was delivered slowly and loudly, the reader stabbing the words with a large finger like someone tapping out an urgent Morse code message.
Oh, what lovely little lambs
Prancing in the spring!
Hear their happy bleating,
Oh what joy they bring!
I groaned inwardly and had to sit through six more verses, all as trite as the first.
‘Is that it, then?’ asked Janice, snapping the book shut and looking up at me. She was clearly keen to get away. I suggested that she might like to tell me a little about what she had just read.
She considered the prospect for a moment before replying. ‘I ‘ave enough trouble wi’ readin’ it, ne’er mind havin’ to tell you abaat it as well.’
‘Do you like reading then, Janice?’ I asked cheerfully.
‘No.’
I gave it up as a bad job. ‘Well, shall we look at your written work?’
‘Can if tha wants.’
Janice’s written work consisted largely of spelling exercises, short pedestrian passages of prose, a few poor-quality rhyming poems and numerous descriptions, rather more lively and descriptive, of calving, lambing, sheep-shearing and other farming matters.
‘You keep cows on your farm then, do you, Janice?’
‘Yeah.’
‘And pigs?’
‘Yeah.’
‘And what about sheep?’
‘What about ‘em?’
‘Do you have any?’
‘Yeah.’
This was hard work but I persevered. ‘And do you help with the lambing?’ I asked.
‘Yeah.’
‘It must be wonderful each year to see those little woolly creatures, like the ones in the poem, all wet and steaming in the morning air, with their soft fleeces, black eyes like shiny beads and their tails flicking and twitching.’
‘It’s all reight,’ she said, stifling a yawn.
‘And what do you like best about lambing?’
She considered me again with the doleful eyes before telling me without batting an eyelid, ‘Best part’s when me and mi brother slide on t’afterbirth in t’yard.’
‘Really?’ I said, and thought of Philomena Phillpots’ truly awful little verse about ‘lovely little lambs prancing in the spring’. It was a world away.
At morning playtime I joined Mrs McCardle in her room.
‘Your face was a picture with little Melissa and no mistake,’ the headteacher told me, shaking her head and smiling. ‘You looked like a little boy who had just had his ice cream snatched from his hands – completely stunned. I must say I didn’t realise what word she wanted until I saw the beginning of her story in her book. It happens so often, doesn’t it? I recall once when a child asked me to spell “virgin” and I did exactly the same as you. “Why do you want that particular word, James?” I enquired. “I need it for my story, miss,” he announced. “But I asked you to re-tell the parable of The Good Samaritan and I don’t recall there being a virgin in that story,” I replied. “But you asked us to do our own ‘virgin’ of it, miss,” he responded. He meant “version”, of course.’ Mrs McCardle shuffled some papers on her desk. ‘Anyway, how did you find Mr Spencer-Hall and his class?’
‘Well, the junior children seem to be doing well,’ I replied, ‘although there is a range of ability. There are some very lively and able children and others who clearly need a great deal of support. However, standards are generally pretty good. I’ll be sending a full report next week and will call in again when you have had a chance to read my recommendations.’
‘I’m pleased to hear that,’ said the headteacher. ‘Mr Spencer-Hall’s been like a cat on a hot tin roof since he heard you were coming, whittling and worrying and moaning and groaning. He’s a bit long in the tooth is Mr Spencer-Hall and has been here many years but he works hard, prepares his lessons well and the children produce some very praiseworthy work. Sometimes his Prophet of Doom manner is a bit tiresome but his heart’s in the right place.’
‘William’s an interesting boy,’ I said.
‘Oh, William Turnbull! He’s a character and no mistake. Did you manage to get a word in? He’s got what my mother used to call “verbal diarrhea”. He never stops talking.’
I don’t know about William having verbal diarrhoea, I thought, but Mrs McCardle could certainly give him a run for his money when it came to talking.
‘You know, Mrs McCardle,’ I told her, ‘William is an accomplished poet and I would love a copy of his ‘Dalesman’ poem if I may.’
‘Of course, Mr Phinn, I’m sure he’d be delighted to let you have a copy.’
In the infant classroom, to which I returned later that morning, the children were busily engaged writing their stories about insects.
‘Do feel free to wander and have a chat with the children,’ said Mrs McCardle.
One child, tongue stuck out in concentration, was colouring in a grey spidery-legged creature.
‘Daddy-longlegs?’ I remarked.
‘Crane fly,’ she corrected, pertly.
‘Ah yes. Would you like to tell me a little about your project?’
‘We’ve been looking at all sorts of insects,’ said the child, placing her pencil carefully on the desk. She was a precocious little thing with shiny blonde hair and bright brown eyes. ‘Mrs McCardle brought some maggots in for us to watch them change into flies.’ Her voice took on a conspiratorial whisper. ‘And some escaped. They wriggled out of the tank and we had flies everywhere. Mrs Dodd she’s our cleaner – was not very pleased. Toby brought in a wasps’ nest that he found in his garden. What else? Oh, we have a wormery where you can see the worms making tunnels, and a tank where we have beetles and bugs.’ She thought for a moment before asking, ‘Is that called a buggery?’
Here we go again, I thought, and moved on swiftly.
I came again upon Melissa who was putting the finishing touches to her story about the lonely beetle and his amorous adventures on the compost heap. I asked her how she was getting on with her story.
‘It’s going very well, thank you,’ she told me.
‘I would love to see it when it’s finished,’ I told her.
‘OK.’
Next to her was an awkward-looking boy with spectacles and big ears. He was sitting in thoughtful silence, his elbows on the desk, his hands propping his chin. ‘I’m just thinking for a minute,’ he told me seriously. ‘My story’s about a bee who’s lost his buzz and can’t find his way back to the hive but I don’t know how to spell “nectar”.’
‘Well don’t bother asking Mr Phinn,’ chipped in Melissa, ‘he’s not very good at spelling, are you, Mr Phinn?’
2
That visit to Staplemoor County Primary School was the first of the new term but, as every school inspector – and indeed every teacher – knows, a vast amount of work has to be done between the end of the summer term and
the beginning of the next when the new school year begins. Soon after the schools had broken up for summer, I had taken a few days off to visit my parents in Rotherham since there was some important news to tell them. Now back, I faced a pyramid of paper on my desk which had to be dealt with before I could escape for some holiday. However, as I sat there staring at the daunting pile, I thought about the school year we had just finished.
It had been a really interesting year. I had arranged courses and conferences for teachers, directed workshops, carried out various surveys, attended appointment panels, advised school governors and hosted important visitors from the Ministry of Education and Science – all this in addition to inspecting schools.
Yes, I thought to myself as I stared at the untouched mountain of paper, it had been a good year, but I reckoned it would be dull indeed compared to the year which lay ahead of me. That promised to be the most exciting one in my life so far, for, at the end of the previous term, I had asked the woman I loved to marry me and – bingo! – she had said yes.
On this July morning, I had arrived early at the inspectors’ office, in buoyant mood despite the dismal weather. It was a dark, rain-soaked landscape that rolled past the car window as I drove the short distance from my flat above The Rumbling Tum café in Fettlesham High Street to County Hall. The room where I worked, and which I shared with my inspector colleagues, was cramped and cluttered. There were four heavy oak desks with brass-handled drawers, four ancient ladder-back swivel chairs, four grey metal filing cabinets and a wall of dark bookcases crammed with books, digests, journals, folders and files. A couple of unhealthy-looking spider plants struggled for life on the shelf by the window.
Just as I was about to tackle the pile of paper, there was a clattering on the stairs leading up to the office. This signalled the imminent arrival of Julie, the inspectors’ secretary, in those ridiculously high-heeled shoes she was fond of wearing. Julie, with her bubbly blonde hair, bright open smile and constant chatter, brightened up the dullest of days. She was ever-cheerful, wonderfully efficient and her ready wit combined with typical Yorkshire bluntness helped her immeasurably to keep the school inspectors in order. I suspect we were not the easiest of people to work for.
Head Over Heels in the Dales Page 2
