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Final words to a Head Teacher

Dear Mr McCrum

This may be the last blog I ever post, as I am sick and may not last the night.

As my late headmaster, you have a right to know this. In the event of your not being alive yourself, please can your executors arrange for it to be passed to someone else who was intimately involved in my education, although possibly not Mr. Pike who was maybe just that bit too intimately involved.

I have a nasty infection of sorts, that I have self-diagnosed as coming from one of two of my body’s traditional trouble spots, a kind of simultaneous corporal flare-up in, say, Beirut and Belfast. I feel grim, and have retired to bed, albeit not before a puritanical walk with the dogs in the rain, a heroic appearance at work, and a slightly longer one…..well, let’s not even go there.

And I am writing to say that the experience has led me to understand that you were wrong all along. Hard work is no more the route to happiness than Jeremy Corbyn is the route to a state visit to Israel. Hard work is grim. Lying in bed is wonderful. Hard work is pointless. Inactivity is glorious. All that guff you gave us about graft is just so much hot air. I have met inactivity, and I adore her.

I have spent an hour of the morning lying still in bed watching the leaves on the tulip tree outside, marveling at how each leaf seems to be independently sprung from the others, and from its branch. Add in another hour watching the top of the bird table, and a third one the cracks in the ceiling, and the loveliness of having reached no useful conclusion on any of them is palpable. I heard and ignored the phone ringing in a way that made me feel all-powerful. I looked admiringly at the covers of two heavy-ish books I wanted to read, and realised that I had no intention of starting either. Why would I? It would require effort and commitment, both of which I have consigned to the recycle bin outside. Possibly permanently.

And, once I reached the conclusion that I possibly still had a few hours left in me, I turned on the much-derided daytime TV, and uncovered a cultural cornucopia of whose existence I had not the faintest clue: Headhunters, Dickinson’s Real Deal, Garage Sale, Motorway Patrol, Best ever Bakes, Escape to the Country. I can see this one lasting well into November, as I have a lot of catching up to do. I am having to rush this very blog, as I see that A Place in the Winter Sun starts in ten minutes, and I don’t intend to miss a second of it. The only disappointment is to find that Jeremy Kyle, of whose show I had at least heard, has bitten the dust.

I may have sweats and shivers; I may be more ill than I am letting on (as men often are), but I am also exquisitely happy.

Sitting in front of me is your report from Autumn 1976, a term that you called Michaelmas to confuse people like me, saying that I ‘lacked ambition’.

Not any more I don’t, my friend.

Yours etc

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