“I loves yous Aprish”

21/06/2008 by April First.

And thus it was Friday.  The headmaster did not appear.  Janice and I settled down to work, regarding Mrs Marchmount in a totally different way.   She didn’t speak to us of her appearance on the barricades nor we to her but the respect was there.

Without saying a word she indicated that work was the order of the day, and so we worked, catching up on finances, orders, registration checking, next year’s timetable, supply teachers - all the general mish-mash that makes life in the school office what it is.

Except of course mostly it isn’t.  It is pizza delivery drivers and dentists, Havoc-Blythe and Janice, the head and the Bollard, and even birds trapped inside the ceiling, not to mention fax machines with a 25 mile radius.   When people ask me why I do this job, that’s what I say.

What I don’t say is that I do it for the unexpected phone calls.   I had just got home, noting with interest the postcard on the door mat suggesting that I should put this in the window if I wanted a more exciting life, when the phone rang.

“Aprilsh,” said the voice.

There was something ghoulish in the sound.  I could have put the phone down and called the police.  I could have put the phone down and called Janice.  I could have, but instead I said, “Yup.”

“I love you Aprish,” said the voice, “that’s what its all about.  I love yoush.”

“Mr Berlusconi?” I asked - for those who receive daily postcards through the door inviting us to take on a new life can tell these things in a trice.

“Call me Felicity,” said the voice.

“What?” I asked taken by surprise despite my years as a school administrator.

“No.”  There was a strangled hiccup.  “Nah, ’snot right.  Phillip.  Call me Phillip.  Philippiodio.”

“Headmaster are you at the Toppled Bollard?” I asked.

“Come and joins us.  All here.  Whole can, cang, gang.  Whole gangdang.”

“Mr Berlusconi, I thought we had dealt with all this.”

“But Is loves yous,” he said, and the line went dead.

I went to see Janice.  We agreed we couldn’t go to the Bollard for fear of meeting the head, so we went to the Upright Post, the towns other notorious drinking establishment.  A group of Morris Dancers were sitting at the bar arguing about knitting patterns.   Three minutes later Havoc-Blythe walked in.  I looked at Janice but she gave me a “I didn’t tell him,” look.We talked about crazy lives, school, right brain technique and why the three of us - the cream of the county - were single, bemused, talented, underpaid, happy, kind, friendly unattached people.   We couldn’t find an answer.

“Are the Latvian dentists still using the head’s study?” asked Janice.

Havoc-Blythe said they were and that he had heard from a friend at county hall that the school was being redesignated a community school.

So the evening meandered to a close.  When I got home I put the postcard in the window.

Just to see, you understand, nothing more.

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