All week the headaches, dizziness, and general feebleness after hoiking the
normally manageable boxes of books along corridors and up stairs against a current
of school kids – all week this served as an excuse to loll about on the settee when
I got home, clutching the cool remote control to my fevered brow for the few hours
between getting home and bedtime. But when I awoke with a headache that would have
split a hundred year old oak tree in half, I decided the brain fever had well and
truly taken grip and had to drop the bombshell to the deputy head, who sounded half
asleep when I phoned.
After dozing for another hour in bed, I called the doctors and found myself being
prodded with ear probes and having lights shone into my eyes a short while later.
Strangely, when I left the surgery, safe in the knowledge that it was probably a
viral infection, I not only felt proud to have at last have an illness which I can
confidently name on my self-certification when I return to work, but also much
better. No long car commute and therefore no cause for the nausea I’d experienced
twice a day for a week, no shrill bells sounding just when I walked past them, no
need to stand up all day and feel dizzy as a result, and nowhere near the volume of
noise experienced in any one day at school. A friend of mine recently returned to her
school after a period of maternity leave, and confessed that the noise was the
biggest shock on her return; I thought it would have been a blessing after having
a baby squawking and crying the house down.
Feeling a bit better and having a bonus free day: what is a poorly teacher to do?
Well, it turns out that there was no need to even formulate an answer, because
without bells, lists, nagging, round robin notes and odd twinges of panic, the day
takes on a life of its own. A bit of pottering around and indecision over whether
to indulge in morning television or attempt the neglected washing up, and suddenly
it was lunchtime! Clearing up a week’s abandoned clothes and newspapers must have
taken the same time as an introduction to the lesson’s subject matter, three
reprimands for kids turning up late, and a grand hunt for a set of missing books.
Does time stretch when you have a lot to fit in to it, like lycra? Does it sag
like soggy wool when you cover a particularly uncooperative class? It certainly
seems to float by with graceful ease (like, ummm, chiffon, if you want the material
analogy) when you have a day of freedom and a thousand possibilities that you
never get around to. And the only real worry I had all day was: I may feel better
now, but am I just going to feel rubbish again when I go back to school, with its
noise and shouting and bells and stresses? I don’t think I need a doctor to tell
me the answer to that one.
added 22/1/05
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