The Art Department was Proud...
For a whole three months in 2004, I was a schoolteacher. The Principal of the establishment was, by all accounts, an incompetent, self-righteous, bone-headed idiot who'd somehow landed the job after a short but undistinguished career in the Diplomatic Service. He was held in very low esteem by students and staff alike, and just about every single one of his voluntary actions made the general feeling about him worse.

The time came for the Upper VI to stand down before their A-Levels. Inevitably, we were expecting some high-spirited, but good-natured, trouble, and were prepared for it. What actually happened was a bit more serious.

People arriving at school on leavers' day were greeted by expletive-laden abuse directed at the Principal that had been spraypainted prominently across one of the school's buildings, and on the tarmac in one of the quads, by some of the more disgruntled leavers. The department in which I taught was across the road on a different site, but the news spread down there quickly enough. I, and a couple of other staff, wandered across to see what had happened. Among the students, there was a rumour that the vandals had hidden themselves in the school at the end of the previous day, and so hadn't even had to break in.

The Principal was standing in the quad when I arrived, surveying the damage. There's a chance that he was wondering what he'd done to attract such invective, but I suspect that he was actually planning the petty revenge he would be taking on the main suspects, whose identity was an open secret. He saw me and made some comment about the disgusting behaviour.

I hummed and hawed a bit, and made the right noises of agreement - after all, I was supposed to be a member of staff. But it was obvious that, even among the staff, the condemnation of the vandalism was less-than-wholehearted. The Principal was, after all, universally loathed. So although I made a number of expected statements about irresponsible vandalism while I was talking to him in earshot of some students, I couldn't help adding a codicil of my own.
"Still; you have to admit that they chose quite a nice shade of paint, don't you?"

Well, it was true.
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Mon 11 Oct 2010, 11:12, Reply)