What is it about physics teachers?
This story contains exaggeration for comic effect - but not as much as you might think. It's at least within touching distance of true.

BC was my physics teacher for GCSE. (We had to do at least one science. This was mine.) He had an obsession with prisms and ticker-tape timers. On a couple of occasions he'd dig out the school's supply of radioactive isotopes and wave them in the general direction of a Geiger counter or (hilariously) our testicles, before launching into a tirade about how Greenpeace exaggerated the threat of contamination at Sellafield.

But mostly, what BC did was to crank out a very long-winded shaggy dog story about an octopus. Fair play to him: he made it last whole double periods for well over a year. This story was such as to make Tristram Shandy look concise and structured.

He retired at the Easter before the GCSEs. His replacement looked a bit like Kryten, and had been on the board that had set the upcoming exam. In his first lesson with us, he produced a copy of the syllabus.
"OK," he said. "I don't expect that I'm going to have to do much by this stage except make sure you're prepared. So let's see what you think you need to brush up on."

He started naming subjects. We looked blankly at him. Quickly, it dawned that he was going to have to be more than a caretaker. BC had spent so much time talking about octupi that a good two-thirds of the syllabus was untouched after 18 months. There were six weeks to go.

The replacement teacher - whose name, sadly, I've forgotten - was unpreturbed.
"Right," he said. "Obviously, I can't tell you what's going to be on the exam. But if you listed carefully to the things I'm going to teach you over the next 12 lessons, you should be all right."

We took the hint.
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Fri 30 Jan 2009, 14:52, 4 replies)

Simply the fact
that the story was about an octopus made me dissolve into giggles! No particular reason, I just found that funny.
( K2k6 has a proper job these days, Fri 30 Jan 2009, 15:54, closed)

When you write these stories, Enzyme,
are those the actual initials of the people involved, or do you have some double-blind random allocation of initials so that the original people can't ever be identified and your tale can get Ethics Committee approval?

(That's my short, passive-aggressive way of saying you should use names rather than letters, as I was saying to E, F and G only last week.)
( crackhouseceilidhband Fuck off back to Mumsnet, Fri 30 Jan 2009, 16:39, closed)

Pah. Ethics committees. I know how they work.
They're genuine initials. Ner.
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Fri 30 Jan 2009, 19:21, closed)

octopus
It wasn't the one about the mild green hairy lip squid was it?
(andythepieman Is surfing the waves of indifference on, Wed 4 Feb 2009, 11:04, closed)