School days are the ghastliest days of your life.

************************

I look out the window. Leonie walks past, her long blonde hair ripples in waves with each step.

I have the television on. It's called multi tasking.

I had another dance lesson yesterday. It was strenuous but enjoyable; tango, cha, cha, waltz. I only trod on my partner's toes once. Well, I didn't tread on it, I sort of nudged it with my foot. She said she was ok. There was no blood.

I think it was Robert Morley who said he'd only go back to his old school with a machine gun and an armoured platoon.

I know how he feels

The Disappearing Beetle

She plonked the plate down in front of me. Oh, joy, salad again. I say salad: there were two curling leaves of limp lettuce (that very green sort that looks like a dock leaf), a chunk of raw carrot, a couple of slices of beetroot, a bruised half a tomato (perhaps someone else got the best half) and something green and shiny, that might have been cucumber. Oh, and a slab of greasy yellow stuff, I took to be cheese.

Takin my knife, I gingerly lifted one of the lettuce leaves. And there it was. Horrified, I dropped the knife and sat bolt upright.  ‘What’s up?’ from Rimmer on my left.

‘A beetle. There’s a beetle in my salad!’ I cried.

‘Well don’t shout, they’ll all want one.’ This was Smith across the table.

‘It’s not funny, Smith’

‘Is it dead?’ Enquired  Aspinall, on my right.

‘Well it’s not moving’.

‘Perhaps it’s just stunned’ said Rimmer.

‘Just stunned!’ I shouted at him. ‘I don’t want a beetle – dead or just stunned’.

 ‘Complain – I would’ ,chimed in Wilson, two places up from me.

There was now quite a bit of excitement down our end of the long table as I passed the plate round for examination, and it attracted the attention of the teacher on dinner duty : A Miss Chaffeur, as I recall.  Teachers doing dinner duty still wore their gown, and Miss C, with hers billowing out behind,  rushed up. ‘What’s all this noise?’ she demanded.

Everyone fell silent. ‘Er, there’s a beetle in my salad, Miss’ I faltered.

‘Don’t be ridiculous’ She snatched up my plate and held it close to her thick spectacles. ‘Nonsense’.

But she took the plate away.

‘Hey – she just took your dinner. I wouldn’t have that,’ Wilson again, now that she was safely out of earshot.

Everyone was looking at me. I didn’t know what to do. This was the first term of my first year at Ashfield Grammar School, and I was completely out of my depth.

But before I could think of anything to do or say, Miss C was back. Once again the plate was plonked down in front of me – so hard the lettuce rattled. ‘There was no beetle in that salad.’ She glared at me. I looked at the plate.  The  beetle had disappeared.

‘But…’ I protested, looking around at my new friends, waiting for one of them to back me up. I was dumbfounded. ‘… you all saw…’ my voice tailed off in the thick silence.

‘Now get that dinner eaten and let’s hear no more about an imaginary beetle. I know your sort – you’re a trouble maker. Well, I‘ll have my eye on you from now on’. She stalked off.

I couldn’t eat the salad (it looked like the same one she’d taken away, minus the beetle).

Smith and Wilson divided it between them.

It took me a long time before I complained again – but when I did it ended up with me leaving that school.