Knocking on doors

20/11/2008 by April First.

Being in control of the school’s administration, rather than undermining it (as MI5 suggested I had been) turned out to be not that difficult. Janice and I set the systems to rights, took out all the checking processes that were going on, and we started to work through the details of who we actually had on site both in terms of staff and pupils.

I took a summary of my notes to Havoc Blythe after break, and suggested that he circulate a list of all the remaining staff to all the remaining staff, with a note saying that if anyone on the list objects to anyone else on the list they should report to HB now with their complaints.

“Can’t they report to you?” he asked.

It certainly wasn’t a task that I wanted, but at the moment Janice tapped on the door and came in. It was so strange to find Janice HB and I adopting these formalities – tapping on the door indeed. Janice was about to apologise for interrupting the meeting with the Doctor told her not to be stupid – and actually put all three of us at ease by reminding us who we were.

“Mrs Marchmount is back,” Janice said. “She apologises for having taken leave of absence for a couple of days, but didn’t feel too well.”

HB looked at me, and I at Janice. We shrugged as one. Janice got up to tell Mrs M she could have her job when Havoc Blythe said, “but do tell her that April is head of department,” and Janice smiled. She’d love doing that.

The acting head accepted my idea for the list circulation to teachers, and then we turned to the list of pupils. We currently had about 60 percent of the normal numbers and didn’t really want the rest back. We agreed that I would send a note to all parents saying that because of the mass absenteeism no pupil who had been away for the last week would only be allowed back if they returned next Monday at 9am and there was no more trouble. Anyone not returning by then would be deemed to have left.

“Doesn’t that sound like Ms Bland?” I said.

“Yes,” he agreed, “but just this once I think…”

Between us we decided that we’d close the school completely tomorrow morning, and that normal classrooms would resume in the afternoon. Staff who had shown sympathy to the Normans would not be allowed back, and we’d do our best to run on supply teachers and study periods in the interim.

Before I left for the day I checked the bank account. We were £100,000 overdrawn. I went back to Havoc Blythe with the news. “So they got the money,” he said. “That can’t be all of it, but it is something. What else did they want?”

We still didn’t know, but called it a day.

After I’d got home, had a drink and a few nuts courtesy of the new M&S store at the local garage, the police turned up. It was the same team that had tried to caution me for having an overcrowded house in the days when everyone wanted to be at the school

They showed me a picture of Ms Bland and asked me if I knew her. I said I did, and told them how. They asked if I had ever heard of the Parasite Corporation. I said no – and they told me that this was who Ms Bland worked for.

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I am shocked beyond beyondness

19/11/2008 by April First.

Not surprisingly Havoc Blythe knows all about me being with MI5, what with him being with the Service too. He sat in on the start of my meeting with Call, my contact in the Service, before discretely retiring to carry on with the task of stopping teachers who claim they were against the Ms Bland regime from setting fire to the books of teachers who they claim were “lackeys of the Norman Tradition.”

I was mortified about Havoc Blythe. I mean, I knew he knew, because Havoc Blythe knows everything, but still.

Does a woman have no secrets?

Call congratulated me, told me that my back pay was being sorted, that it would be in before Xmas, along with a bonus, and that Havoc Blythe had made it quite clear that I played a major part in the overthrow of the Bland regime so quickly.

“You mean they didn’t plan to get out when they did?” I asked.

“Of course not,” said Call. “They knew that you were countering their every move, and that in the end they had no chance of overcoming your strategy, and so they abandoned the place.”

“But they had the toxoplasmosis parasite all over the school” I said. “I thought we failed.”

“Rubbish,” said Call. “The plan was to infect every single person at such a level that simple injections would never kill off the virus. You stopped it at the early stages, and Her Majesty’s Government is very grateful. Very grateful indeed. Your modesty becomes you, perhaps you would like to come out for a meal sometime?”

I said I would think about it.

“Your work in undermining Ms Bland and her colleagues was utterly central to everything. Quite frankly I don’t know how you do it, and in fact we are thinking of giving you a post in a training college to show young recruits how you do it. Singlehandedly April you brought the whole school administration to a halt.”

I thought about it. I am not sure it is something I want to put on my cv.

“So what now?” I asked.

“Well the good doctor will have to calm things down, we need you and your worthy team to get the admin system running again, and we’ll have the school ship shape (if it were a ship at any rate that is how we would have it) before Christmas.”

“Hang on,” I said. “What do you mean ‘my worthy team’?”

“Didn’t Havoc Blythe tell you?”

“Tell me what?”

“You are head of administration in the school.”

“No he did not tell me.”

“Probably didn’t want to spoil the surprise. Well if there is nothing else…” he made to move.

“Just a moment,” I said, “what are you saying my job is – and in terms of your answer where does the Bursar, and Ms Marchmount fit in?”

“You, April First, are head of administration. You can call yourself Bursar if you wish – that is up to you. The past Bursar has been attacked by a group known as Parents Against the Norman Traditions.”

“Pants?” I asked.

“Indeed,” he said. “The bursar ate a lot of chips I believe.”

I said that I thought he did.

“Then that would explain it. The chips were crawling in the parasite.” (I decided never to eat a chip again). “Mrs Marchmount has asked for compassionate leave to help her find a new man-friend – apparently the last one left when he heard that she might have toxoplasmosis inside her. But you have not been promoted because of their departure – it was always the plan that you would take over once victory was secure.”

“No one told me,” I said.

“Need to know,” said he, and I couldn’t think of an answer. Didn’t I need to know? Apparently not.

“So just get the school in order would you. Your cheque is in the post.”

And with that he got up and left.

As I strolled back to the office in a somewhat bemused state Havoc Blythe came up to me and pecked me on the cheek. “Congratulations,” he said, and sailed in that annoying way he has, back into his office.

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We still don’t know why

18/11/2008 by April First.

A medical unit has arrived at school and every member of staff, and every child is being given the parasite tests. Those who have the parasite are being injected against it, and will have to be checked regularly.

Havoc Blythe oversaw the operation for a while, as befits a benign headteacher, and then suddenly appeared in the staff room in that way that he has always had.

“Imagine,” Janice said, “if the parasite got into the whole population. A complete country of risk-takers. What would it be like?”

“Italy,” said HB. We looked at him. “Have you never driven in Italy?”

“Or come to that, I suppose,” I said, with a sudden insight, “the banks of this country up to the start of the great crash. Lending money to everyone without any thought whether they could pay any of it back. That’s risk taking at the highest degree.”

“In that case,” said Janet, “we have to include the people who borrowed the money, plus a fair few people who drive in this country.”

“Which means,” said Havoc Blythe, “the parasite has probably got quite a hold anyway.”

“Which still doesn’t answer what they were doing here – why try and convert a regular ordinary school into a hot-bed of risk taking by giving everyone a parasite? I would like to have that explained!” I told the room at room. No one was able to offer me any insight – although I suspect as always that Havoc Blythe knows.

In the evening I got a call from Call, my MI5 contact. I have to admit in the past few days I had forgotten about that whole strange episode of being recruited by them. But they wanted to see me. And they wanted to see me at school. That was odd, because I thought it was all secret. But military intelligence is coming to see me tomorrow at work.

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The strangest weekend of my life

17/11/2008 by April First.

The weekend.

And perhaps the oddest weekend of my life.

First to the General Hospital for a series of tests to see if I had the toxoplasmosis creature inside me. Blood tests, lots of peering into my eyes with bright lights, and very strangely (or so it seemed at the time), a series of tests asking me what I would do in certain situations. For example I was asked, “if you were driving towards a set of traffic lights with no cars in front, and the lights changed to yellow, would you normally, a) speed up and jump the lights, b) slow down and stop. Lots of questions like that.

All five of us were given the tests, and Havoc Blythe promised us all both a) a full explanation and b) lunch at his expense, when it was all over.

So we stuck it out, and then wandered to the Creationists Bar at the Toppled Bollard.

And this is what Havoc Blythe said:

Toxoplasmosis was found in the kitchens, as well as on the pictures and on the books – so the regime of Ms Bland was using the most obvious approach – put the parasite in the food – and was using the pictures and book approach as a back up for those who didn’t partake of school meals.

The parasite, HB reminded us, perhaps with a little more graphic detail than I really needed during lunch, normally lives in mice. But the second part of its lifespan is inside a cat, so it needs to get from the mouse to the cat. This it does by making the mouse take more and more risks when it approaches the cat. Instead of running away in fear, it will start playing with the cat’s tail. Eventually it takes on risk too many, the cat eats the mouse, and the cat gets toxoplasmosis.

Then the cat starts taking more and more risks – such as running across a road with traffic in it, and eventually it dies, but the parasite survives in the brain usually long enough for the cat to be eaten by mice, and the cycle continues.

In other words, what the parasite does it increase risk tasking. And so, we guess, what the people who had taken over our school were trying to do, was to experiment on the pupils and students in our school and see if they could be made to increase their risk tasking. Ms Bland and others set up a world of control, and then dared the pupils and students to go beyond.

“And not just pupils and students,” said Havoc Blythe. “Half the staff in the school have school food – either in the breakfast club, or at lunch.

“So all the time it looked like they were trying to control, they were actually setting up a situation in which there would be insane levels of risk taking. Discipline, law, order, control – it would all go. As we all know, in the end the school only works when most pupils agree that the teachers are in control. When the ordinary every day pupil stops thinking that, we’re lost.”

“So if 90% of the kids do their homework,” said Binky, “then we can handle the remaining three or four,” said Binky, showing a rare grasp of maths. “But if no one does the homework…”

“It all breaks down,” confirmed Havoc Blythe.

“But why?” I asked. “Why do it? There are lots of schools where discipline and behaviour are virtually dead in the water. We all know them – there’s a metal detector on the gates, and they take everyone’s fingerprints on day one.”

“We’re still guessing up to a point,” said Havoc Blythe, “but consider what it would do to our society if suddenly schools that were previously on the up, working towards what the government wanted, descended into chaos.”

We sat and thought about it for a moment. It still didn’t answer the question why, but it was quite a chilling thought.

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And it’s a truth too horrible to contemplate

16/11/2008 by April First.

We started the day removing from the school’s database all the files that related to who supported the occupation, and who was considered dangerous by Ms Bland and her jolly crew. The people in the school who were considered to be the most likely to cause difficulty for the Norman Tradition, as the regime always referred to itself in school documents, were given a D rating of 1 to 5. Janice, Bodger, Binky, Havoc Blythe and I all got five.

Teachers and others who were thought to be positive about the regime and its reform and who would do its bidding were given “Plus” ratings of 1 to 5.

A single back-up copy of the lists of Plus and D marks was made and given to HB before we wiped the listings. It is part of his attempt to stop reprisals by some teachers on others who are thought to have been sympathisers.

Parents who removed their children are starting to send them back – but are now complaining that sports kit is missing from lockers, books from desks and so on. I wrote a standard note that tells them that we have had a number of changes and that we are looking into what is going on.

At lunchtime Havoc Blythe called our little band (we are now calling ourselves Class D5) into the head’s office. All the pictures have been removed from the walls, and a team of forensic scientists have been across every inch of the surface.

“The pictures, and the books removed from the library, which were all about to be returned, have all got traces of the toxoplasmosis parasite on them,” he reiterated. “This was clearly not an accident but the whole plan of the occupying forces in the school. For some reason they wanted to get the parasite slowly into the bodies of people who touched the books or the pictures – which of course would be children.

“It is a very unorthodox way of getting the parasite into the bodies of the pupils – but this is a resilient parasite and its spores can stay alive on paper for a short period of time.

“The parasite is normally found in mice and cats.”

We all looked at HB in total amazement (not to mention panic at the thought that we too might have picked up this parasite). I think every one of us tried to talk at once.

“I’ve fixed up for our group to be able to go into the General Hospital tomorrow morning and have tests done. If any of us have got the parasite there are drugs that will flush it out of the system.”

“But what does it do?” asked Janice.

“In the mouse-cat system it sits in the brain of the mouse, until the mouse is eaten by the cat, and the parasite moves into the cat. The cat dies, and its remains are eaten by a mouse, and the parasite moves into a mouse.”

“What part of the cat and mouse does it live in?” asked Binky.

I wished she hadn’t asked that, as I was feeling ill enough as it was. “The brain,” said Havoc Blythe.

“And it can live in people?” I asked.

HB said it could.

None of us needed any persuading to meet up at the hospital at 9.30 tomorrow.

For the rest of the day I sat in the office, occasionally touching my head, wondering if the odd thoughts I had been getting had anything to do with a mouse-cat parasite. I noticed Janice did the same.

At 3pm there was a commotion in the corridors as a group of 6^th formers launched an attack on a set of teachers who were holed up in the gym. It seems that the teachers had been identified as fellow-travellers with the old regime.

Normally I would have gone to help, but I really didn’t feel up to it. I urgently need that trip to the hospital.

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The truth starts to emerge…

14/11/2008 by April First.

Havoc Blythe called another meeting of his “inner circle” – Binky, Janice, Bodger and myself. I must say I rather like this notion of being in a “special group”. Several teachers who would never normally talk to me at all (in that they only talk to other teachers) actually came up to me in the staff room and asked “how things were going”. I naturally gave them totally false information about concerns about collaborators during the previous regime and the need to get the school back into balance.

The meeting itself at last gave us some clear information as to what has been going on – and it is a most extraordinary tale.

It seems that the books which had been removed from the library, plus all the pictures that had been put up in the school of late, were all contaminated with a parasite called toxoplasmosis.

The idea, we gather, was to get this parasite into the pupils and students through having them touch the pictures or books, although the reason at the moment is not clear. Havoc Blythe says that he expects a report on the organism and what it does, in the near future. His view is that the books that had been removed were about to be put back and would be of interest to the more intellectual students because they had for a while been on the “do not read” list.

Meanwhile fractiousness within the school is growing. One group of teachers has been identified (by other teachers) as having been “spies” for the old regime and there are demands for their withdrawal at once. Anyone seen wearing the “smart business” uniform that Ms Bland and her team insisted on wearing is automatically ostracised. Ultra casual is now in. Teachers have started wearing jeans just to show they had no truck with the “old ways”. On one of the corridors where the rather nice (but apparently infected) pictures had so recently stood, someone put up the graffiti, “The Staff Must Go”.

Bodger reported that there has been a continuous series of attacks on the school central computer system. “Some teachers who feel they are in danger of being identified as collaborators with Ms Bland and co are clearly trying to get into the system and change the records. I’ve been offered quite a bit of money to take down the firewall,” he added with a smirk.

“Did you take it?” asked Havoc Blythe.

“Of course,” said Bodger.

Somehow I get the feeling they all know more than Janice and I. Still, it is nice to be able to drop into the Toppled Bollard for the occasional red wine without fearing that we might be spotted by Ms Bland’s Stormtroopers, and then have to face an inquisition the next morning.

Apparently the report on toxoplasmosis will be in tomorrow.

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