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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20/06/2008 by April First.

I woke up early, thinking (of course) about school.   To try and stop the same thoughts going round and around in my head I tried to think what Chief Inspector Morse would have done.

What he would have done is had a lot to drink, blamed Lewis, had a lot to drink, got more friendly than he should have done with a female suspect, had a lot to drink, listened to opera, blamed Lewis, and had a lot to drink.  And then somehow when you weren’t watching, it would have all come to him, he would have said “of course”, driven off (with a lot of drink inside him) and solved the crime leaving Lewis shaking his head.

It didn’t seem a model I could follow.

I got to school early, and a quick conference in the office ensued - inevitably containing myself, Janice and Dr Havoc-Blythe - was unexpectedly joined by Mrs Marchmount.

She apologised for butting in (most unlike her), offered to go away if we wanted her to (a statement never previously experienced by any of us) but said that she had heard what was going on.   She was, she continued, utterly on our side, and thought she might be able to help.

We said, “ok”, and settled down.

The main point Mrs Marchmount made was that if the head asked to see me alone again I should refuse, on the grounds that he was trying to incriminate me and was repeatedly demanding my resigation.   I should ask that my advisers should come along as well.  We thought about this, and then thought, yes, why not.

On cue the Mr Berlusconi, our beloved headteacher, walked in, and asked to see me.  I went through the ritual, he said that was outrageous, I said I was not prepared to meet him alone under any other circumstances, and he said, “Look I am not trying to get you to resign, I am trying to apologise.”

So we stood there, in the school office, looking at each other - Mr Berlusconi, Mrs Marchmount, Janice, Havoc-Blythe and me.   And then Mrs Marmount said, “Headmaster, April is extremely upset and dismayed by your little meetings with her each morning.  You seem to alternate between dismissing her and then reinstating her with alarming regularity and if I may say, a certain amount of instability.   You are causing my colleague a huge amount of distress.  This cannot continue.”

My mouth dropped open.  I looked around.  The mouths of everyone had dropped open, except that of Mrs Marchmount who had folded her arms and was looking squarely at the head.

“I….” he said.

“Quite,” said Mrs Marchmount.  “Shall we all go into the deputy’s office, or would you like to continue debating it here, among the dead flowers?”

We went into the deputy head’s office.

“Now,” said Mrs Marchmount as we all looked on in a mixture of horror and admiration.  “Is it your intention to dismiss April, or is it your intention to apologise?  We need a final answer.”

There was a long silence.  Eventually the head said,   “Who wrote those comments about me on the school intranet?”

Mrs Marchmount said: “Who wrote those comments about the office staff on the school intranet?”

There was another long silence.  The head looked at me.   “What do you think you saw outside the Toppled Bollard at the weekend?”

I was about to answer when Mrs Marchmount said,  “Headmaster, you cannot ask a member of staff that.  If you are suggesting April has done something wrong, then present your evidence, and make your statement.  April can then call in her Union representative and we can have a proper hearing.   If you proceed in this manner of accusation and question it is quite clear that we must move at once to an industrial tribunal where all the evidence, and I repeat all the evidence, will be heard.   We can look at exactly what has been written about all members of staff on the school’s computers, we can examine your conduct in a public place at the weekend, and indeed your running of the school and my running of the school office, and April’s work - which I can tell you has been of the highest quality.

“We can take note of the fact that you have allowed your office to be turned into a dental surgery and a base for a team of pizza delivery drivers…”

“Allowed???” he cried.

“Allowed - since you are the person supposedly in charge.  Who else could have given permission?”

There was silence.

“Or perhaps you would like to apologise to a member of my team that you have upset?”

The head apologised to me.   Again.

We went back to the office.   Twenty minutes later doughnuts arrived - it turns out we were in the middle of International Doughnut week.  At lunch we went out for a drink and raised our glasses to Mrs Marchmount, a much misunderstood woman.

We invited Mrs Marchmount for a further drink at the Toppled Bollard that night, but she declined, saying she had other arrangements.   Janice, Havoc-Blythe and myself went anyway, and raised our glasses to her once more.

When I got home there was a note saying that if I wanted a more exciting life I should put  a postcard in the window.

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19/06/2008 by April First.

It just goes on and on, and I really don’t know how much more I can take.   The head came to school again - that is three days running - and this time asked me to go into the Deputy Head’s office (his continuing to be “out of action”).

Carefully walking around the flowers from the garage that were still on my desk (and now looking a little tired and wan) I trotted along behind him and once in the room sat on the edge of the chair,  waiting for him to speak.

He cleared his throat.

“I have had a report from a set of ICT experts,” he said, “and it appears my apologies were out of place.   The comment about myself on the school web site was written by yourself and your colleagues.”

I said nothing.

“I think we should stop this at once.  You deliberately allowed me to make a fool of myself  by apologising, and quite frankly I expect your resignation, immediately.”

I said nothing.

“If you have nothing to say,” he said, “we shall stop this meeting now.”

I said, “In the matter of my leaving the school, do we also take into account Saturday lunchtime at the Toppled Bollard?”

He looked curious.  “What do you mean?” he asked.  (At least he did not say, ‘I have no idea what you are talking about’ as they say on TV.)

I told him that there was an incident at the Toppled Bollard on Saturday at lunchtime, and that he was part of the incident, and that I was there.

He looked at me.  I looked down in a demure manner most becoming of an administrator who has just been sacked (again) by her top boss and in reply has told him that there is more to this than meets the eye.

After a moment he said that it might be better if we postponed the meeting for a while, and during that time would I “get those ruddy flowers off my desk?”

I returned to the office and told Janice (and Havoc-Blythe who, inevitably, was there within seconds) all about the events.   The consensus was that I had “done good”.

Nothing more was said and the day passed quietly.  However there was a curious note  at home when I arrived which said that if I wished to have a more exciting life I should put this postcard in my front window and leave it on display for 24 hours.

I took the card round to Janice’s house, and we contemplated it for some time, before deciding to do nothing - at least for the moment.  Between us we were completely unable to come up with any clear thoughts on what the head was going to do next, and so were unable to plan any strategy.   But we both knew I had now given the head an idea of the main card I held - although he still didn’t know that Janice had been opposite the Bollard during the incident, nor how much we had seen.

Before Janice left I asked her if she had done any work at school today.  She said “no”.  She asked me if I had.  I said “no”.   It is strange how events can make the time pass.

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18/06/2008 by April First.

As I entered the office this morning I looked at Janice, and within seconds Havoc-Blythe popped his head round the door in that annoying way he has.  None of us had to say a word, but our thoughts were all of a kind: “What next?”

What next was the head arriving (two days running was unprecedented we all agreed), coming into the office and saying, bold as the brass door knocker on the front of the caretakers house would be if it were not tarnished, that he felt I had suffered particularly from the last few days events and perhaps I would accept “this” as a token of his understanding.  

From behind his back, like a rather poor magician who knows he has run out of tricks but can’t get off stage, he produced a bunch of sad looking flowers which had clearly come from the garage on Dunk Street.   I looked at them in what was (so Janice and HB told me later) a combination of horror, disgust, amazement and bemusement.  

Seeing as I was not going to take them and rush off to find a vase (a vase in our school office?) Mr Berlusconi put the flowers reverently on my desk and shuffled out.  

I am not sure if he heard the muffled laughter as he meandered to the deputy head’s room, and we certainly did try to keep our subsequent screams down to below 120 decibels, but it was hard.   We were still having fits when Mrs Marchmount came in, and demanded an explanation for the unruly behaviour which was so unbecoming in a professional office.   Janice told her the fully story at the end of which it was all Mrs Marchmount could do to hold on to her chair and thus avoid ending up in a heap on the floor.   I begin to see her in a new light.

Next in was the Bursar, but we told him it was Mrs Marchmount’s birthday and we had just sung her the traditional song.

Twenty minutes later we all watched the head sneak out through the side door and light up a cigarette in his car.   “I didn’t know he smoked,” said Mrs Marchmount.  “He doesn’t,” said Janice.

At the end of the day the flowers were still sitting on my desk wrapped in cellophane.  It seemed a shame to spoil their resting place so we decided to leave them there.

I may have done some work today, but I don’t recall any.

Havoc-Blythe called me at home and suggested that “us three Musketeers” as he now dubbed himself, Janice and I, should meet up for another pow-wow on the “Berlusconi affair”.  I said that I liked to keep my home life and work life separate.  He said that in a period of intrigue such as this, that was hardly possible, but I told him I would try.    There was a pause in the conversation and I was sure I could hear Janice’s voice in the background.   Immediately after putting the phone down I called Janice, but she wasn’t in.

Watched a DVD of Inspector Morse for the rest of the evening.

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17/06/2008 by April First.

I have never entered worked with such trepidation since that rather unfortunate (but fortunately brief) affair with a very junior member of the teaching staff last year. But I learned then that the best way to deal with such matters is to brazen it out, and thus I walked in to the office and brazenly took my place.

At 10am Mr Berlosconi (who you may recall is our headteacher) entered my working zone and asked if he could see me in the deputy head’s office (his room being somewhat over run by Latvian dentists, and their pals, the pizza delivery drivers.)

Mr B sat at the desk and I sat opposite trying (without success I fear) to put on a look which said, “why on earth should you want to see little old me?”

“I wish to apologise,” said the head. “Someone has been playing some rather cruel practical jokes on me, and sadly they have seen fit to involve you in the matter. I want you to know that I realise you are not involved in any way.”

People say that sometimes I do have something of a blank expression on my face, and I suppose I had one at that moment. Certainly my mind went blank and my famous book of right brain techniques had nothing to offer. Fortunately, the man himself came to my rescue.

“Someone has written a very silly little piece about me and put it in the staff section of the school’s intranet.”

Wow, I thought. Someone has been tutoring him. As far as I knew the head didn’t even know we had an internet, let alone an intranet.

“I was then given, er, information, that you and one of your colleagues in the office and one of the teachers had been involved.”

(That would be Janice and Havoc Blythe, I thought. Why didn’t he just come out and say that?)

“I have since then discovered this is not the case (oh????) and also discovered someone has stolen my mobile phone, and sent you the most stupid messages. Again I want to assure you it was not me.”

And then he stopped – that was it. No more explanation. Nothing about the Toppled Bollard and falling over outside it. Nothing about the police.

I was stunned. Shocked. Amazed. Quite soon I would probably also be amused and annoyed. Simultaneously.

I certainly had no idea what to make of it, but the meeting was over, and I left.

I make it a rule not to see Havoc Blythe of my own volition – he finds me often enough – but today was an exception, and at lunch Janice, HB and I gathered in the rather dingy coffee shop just around the corner from the school, and debated.

And debated.

Even HB was forced to admit that this was not what he had in mind when he told me to hang on and wait. Quite where the head’s version of events came from, we couldn’t imagine. It was possible that he was not aware that Janice and I had witnessed his drunken performance, and that having found our piece about him on the computer system, and his texts to us, he just made up a story. But, we felt, it was all a bit weak.

We decided to wait for events.

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15/06/2008 by April First.

Blake’s Coffee Shop – the Saturday morning haunt of Janice and me which we habitually frequent after a hard time strolling round the town centre not buying things, sits opposite the Toppled Bollard – the public house of a certain notoriety that we frequent on Saturday evenings to partake of the weekly quiz.

Although it is not the central reason for our using Blake’s (Janice once went out with the son of Roger Blake, the owner, and as such is entitled to a discount on her donuts), we are able to view the comings and goings in the Bollard as we sit gazing onto the hustle and bustle of this little township that the Almighty has seen it fit to deliver us unto.

Thus it was that we were gazing in the general direction of the drinking establishment that is the only cause of our town’s fame, when to our total and overwhelming surprise we found ourselves not looking primarily at the down-and-out with an Alsatian who plays the penny whistle excruciatingly badly by the door of the public bar, but the figure of Mr Berlusconi, our occasional headmaster. One minute all was peace and quiet and the next Mr B himself emerged from the pub looking disheveled beyond the realms of possibility (not to mention singularly unshaven), and immediately fell over the Alsatian before (rather unwisely I felt) picking a fight with its owner.

Several minutes passed before the dog and whistle blower were separated from our Leader, who was left with a bloodied nose and an inability to get up and stay up.

Janice and I decided that it would be foolhardy to spoil the entertainment by rushing matters, but eventually, upon finishing the donuts and cappuccino took the gentle stroll across “High Boulevard” (as the pedestrianised zone at the heart of our township is known), and approached the crumpled figure who authorised our monthly pay cheques.

He looked up uncertainly, taking several moments to focus, before finally recognising us as being among his paid hands.

“Fzgrogit asietgog,” he said.

“Misbobob hartsy” replied Janice sternly.

He raised a hand as if asking us to pull him up, and after several moments due consideration (during which time a crowd gathered) we declined to help, although a visiting police officer did eventually get him to his feet, leaning him against the pub wall, next to the dog.

It was while we were considering what to do next that two journalists arrived accompanied (as is the law in our community) by a second police officer. The constable instructed us to move along quietly, while the journalists enquired if we knew who the man was. Janice told them that he was a ne’er-do-well who made money from getting his picture in newspapers and then suing the editors for invasion of his privacy.

We all looked sadly at Mr Berlusconi who stated that, “podklik naser gruddit,” before returning to the ground.

The policeman kindly accompanied Janice and I back to Blake’s where he bought us more coffee and asked if we’d like to accompany him to the constable’s ball that night. We told him we had a prior engagement, but might make it along later.

The evening in the Bollard was, inevitably, one of high excitement. Annoyingly, Dr Havoc-Blythe already had the full story of the afternoon’s events before we arrived and thus robbed Janice and I of part of the fun of relaying the tale. HB gave us to understand that there was a woman involved in Mr Berlusconi’s problems.

It was as we settled down to round one of the quiz (Havoc-Blythe insisting on sitting next to me on the grounds that “us right brainers should stick together”) that I received a text. I screeched in surprise. It was from Mr Berlusconi, and said simply, “In voew of ylur djggustong dehibbor in thy toon todoy yu r sicked. ”

I really was nonplussed but Havoc-Blythe reminded me of our quizzical duties.

“But April has been sacked you blithering twirp,” said Janice gently.

“Wait for the next text,” said Havoc Blythe. And so we did.

I refocused and took in the next question. “Which PG Wodehouse character caused the final collapse of the Roman Empire?” announced Billy The Dog, our host, quizmaster and Elvis impersonator.

“Alaric, Duke of Dunstable” Havoc Blythe and I shouted, as one. This was of course a shame, because one is supposed to write the answers down, rather than call them out, but it was good to know that our right brains were still functioning. Interestingly most people did not take our lead with the answer, despite its obvious correctness, thinking (wrongly) that this was a deliberate ploy by HB and myself to put everyone else off. As the correct answers were announced I explained, patiently, as if to a dim headteacher, that Alaric was also the leader of the Visigoths who in 410AD had sacked Rome, as well as being the friend of Lady Constance.

“How do you know all this?” asked Binky who was helping out the Eternal Elves team.

“Right brain technique” I said tapping my head, a movement that was only slightly lessened in its effectiveness by the fact that I tapped the left side of my brain.

“But have you read any PG Wodehouse?” asked Binky.

“Not as such,” I replied, and decided to leave it at that.

I heard no more from Mr Burlosconi until I awoke on Sunday and found a text message informing me that my appalling behaviour on Saturday “in the full public view” left him no alternative but to relieve me of my duties and forbid me from entering the school.

By 10.30 Janice and Havoc-Blythe were gathered in my sitting room. HB’s view was that we should do nothing and simply wait for further developments. Janice was in favour of the more direct brick-through-his-car-windscreen approach and I was somewhat inclined to this view myself,

As we continued to debate the merits of each tactic I received another text from the Leader – this announcing that any personal affects on my desk would be forwarded, and that I should not in the meanwhile attempt to speak to any other member of staff.

By noon there was not enough room in my sitting room to hold everyone who had turned up. Janice had texted everyone and the entire office staff and a considerable number of teachers were in place, giving opinions and offering support. I ran out of gin and we adjourned to the Toppled Bollard.

We were still there when I received another text, this one saying “Sropr Drbo.”

The consensus was that I should appear at work on Monday as normal and await events – but that I should put a brick in my handbag just in case.

I accepted the wisdom of the masses, there was a hearty cheer, Havoc Blythe bought me a drink, and for once – just this once you understand – I accepted.

Click on “What else” at the top of this page for details of what the School of Educational Administration does.  And when something unusual happens to you, do email me.   Much of the story comes from school administrators.  April@admin.org.uk  

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