Curiosity ~ Lucidity ~ Humanity
WAY OUT OF town, beyond the Abbey and the seagulls, Eskdale lay sandwiched between an industrial estate and a thin slice of sixties housing. Every day I bumped-and-trundled in by train; my friend, living round the corner, strolled in with the bell.
Occasionally, he’d wait at the schoolgate.
‘Slod.’
Slim Rod; ha-ha. I’d three stone, a foot-and-a-half, on him.
‘Peet.’
Six years into Thatcherism, our schoolbooks were mouldering revenants: Charles ‘Turnip’ Townsend, Jeni from Borneo brushing her teeth with coconut-bristle, Didier and Pascal cavorting round the pages of Tricolore. French, though, was a respite from the misery. Unlike Miss Dingle, the English harpy sniping at our sentences, or Smoky Joe Jessup hacking through woodwork, Miss Flyaway wafted through a classroom of half-understood delights.
‘Hello, boys,’ she’d say.
‘Miss!’
Hot as croque-monsieurs, breathier than prog-rock, we sat and bulged and squeaked. Miss Flyaway’s skin was golden, her figure bursting with forbidden juice. Today’s blouse was slit to a deep, tantalising vee. I nudged Peet.
‘Don’t look, you loghead!’ I fingered Pascal, frisbeeing in the parc. ‘Now!’
Les pêches were out – ripe fruit, nestled in soft linen linings – and strange things were happening beneath the desk. I battered the textbook like Thumper having a seizure; Peet sniggered. Miss Flyaway floated over.
‘Boys?’
Before we could react, she reached out. From one textbook page, wide-eyed teenagers observed a gigantic schlong winding from the window; on another, two sportifs stalked the cinder path on high-stepping willie-stilts. She stiffened, called everyone to order, disappeared.
A moment later she returned with Miss Dingle. The two loomed, everything shrivelled then the class-bell rang. Everyone scattered.
‘Not you two.’
Miss Flyaway fingernail-cinched our Tricolores like a brace of rattails.
‘Your work.’
Even in the eye of the storm, I snuck Peet a grin. His eyebrows surged. Miss Flyaway flipped to the centrefold, garlanded with great rococo wreaths of wieners, and her own eyebrows bristled. Miss Dingle sidled up behind, industrial-sized bottles of Tipp-Ex balanced on her palms.
‘You will white-out every one of these – monstrosities, line by line, before you leave. The classroom’s empty. I’ve cleared your schedules.’
She rose, drew the vee closed, stalked out. Miss Dingle plonked a bottle atop each of our two most prominent creations.
A moment later, the schoolyard faded to silence.
‘Hmmm,’ I said.
‘Yeah,’ said Peet.
Instead of respite, we were staring at a sentence. There were hundreds of em! I cracked a bottle. Peet set to, tracing Didier’s equipment. After a minute he was close to tears.
‘They’re sharper than ever!’
Didier now possessed a king’s member perfectly coated in shimmering correction-fluid. Outside, some kid laughed – ha! – and my brain finally roared to life.
‘Come on! Line by line, she said.’
I slapped some gunk on the page, guided it around. For the rest of the day we painted, and chortled; chortled and painted; and as the seagulls departed, the last lorry burped through the industrial gates, we carefully, systematically, outlined our revenge.
Bio-Fragment of James Roderick Burns: "I am fascinated by raccoons. Though I lived on Long Island for five years (portions of which are covered in woods, and with Suffolk County being the Lyme Disease capital of the US) I managed to encounter not a single raccoon in my time there. Similarly, having spent periods of time in South Georgia, where my wife’s family is from – which is thick with trees – I did not bump into any raccs. I have been thinking about them, tweeting about them and writing about them for years (three short stories and numerous poems so far) it is all book-learning, imagination; I am yet to make raccoon first contact.
"I have tried: in a New Orleans park after a wedding (escaped, leaving only footprints); at Northumberland Zoo (when I found out about Albert the raccoon, he’d passed away six months before); at an Oxfordshire wildlife sanctuary (waylaid by my wife’s sudden illness). I love their inquisitiveness, crackling fur, oildrop eyes and little people hands. Their intelligence and feistiness. Their overall charm. Like Calvin Coolidge, I hope to make the acquaintance of one in the near future!