I don’t often have horrible dreams but I did last night. I dreamt I was still a teacher. It was late at night and there was a meeting I was supposed to be at. I could hear voices at the meeting, but I couldn’t find where it was happening. I walked around for a bit, not recognising the school I was working in at all, except bits of it looked like my childhood grammar school, all wood panelling and smelling of polish and formaldehyde.
I asked a janitor chap if he knew where my classroom was. He said, ‘I’ll go and check in the mechanics room,’ (???) and I waited for a while but he never came back. I thought, ‘I can find the mechanics room,’ but I couldn’t. Eventually, I found my classroom, but someone else was in there with a bunch of ankle biter primary children, and when I opened my usually neat and organised filing cabinet, it had been filled it with a load of tat. The interloper teacher carried on teaching (when I say ‘teaching’ it looked more like arsing around with crayons and dressing up stuff) whilst I tried to find my planner, laptop and files. I found them by a small sofa, next to which stood a vacuum cleaner which the teacher, who had moved into my classroom, told me to take with me when I left.
In the corridors I looked at my planner. It was now early in the morning - just before dawn - and my planner was missing my timetable so I didn’t know which class I was supposed to be teaching. I didn’t even know if it was Week 1 or Week 2 in the timetable rotation. The planner was full of meetings that had, apparently, been planned months in advance but of which I had no recollection. Some of them were identified by abbreviations and initials. One of them relied on me having analysed some ‘A.D.S’ data to present to my colleagues. I had no idea was this was but it was happening on 12th October.
Suddenly, I found myself outside on what seemed to be a university/ college campus. The sun was just coming up and I didn’t have a clue where I was. I asked a couple of people. One shrugged and said they were too busy cooking breakfasts to help, and the other suggested I Google-mapped the class where I was supposed to be. I said, ‘How can I google map my class if I don’t know which one it is?’ And she said, ‘Just open the image of the World and zoom in until you find it.’ At that moment, Prince Harry arrived in a large car and everyone was shouting, ‘Look! Prince Harry!’ and I said, ‘I don’t care, I need to find my class.’
I wandered around for a while, and the day seemed to pass really quickly. It felt like being in a school, but without the atmosphere of purpose and learning. I was aware I was missing classes and was worried that my colleagues were having to cover for me because I wasn’t there. But I didn’t know how to get ‘there’, wherever ‘there’ was. In the end I thought, ‘It’s all too late now. If I wander off, no one will miss me and everything will still be okay, anyway.’
And then I woke up because Nell was fidgeting downstairs, and I took her into the garden and she did a phenomenally enormous poo.
What was all THAT about, then? The horrid dream, not the poo.
I haven’t been inside a classroom for almost four years. Could it be that I have, briefly, thought about applying for a tutoring or supply job because I am feeling anxious about not being in paid employment? Could it be that I’ve been writing a scheme of work and lesson plans in order to teach Tarot? Could it be I am, and always have been, scared of being lost and somewhere I don’t know? Could it be that the mild mannered janitor was really Hong Kong Phooey??
Answers on a postcard, please…
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