Scaling Mount Olympus
So I went to a school in the Cambridgeshire Fens, and back in the early nineties - a decade or so before they hired a somewhat murderous caretaker - OrbitalPete started in Year 7. Being an ex-grammar school the place had quite a few senior staff who had been kicking around the place for decades. Whilst one of these was the brilliant geography teacher, his opposite number was the evil dragon that was the Classics teacher. The bright and shiny year 7's were subjected to an hour of Classics lessons a week with this witch.

To set the scene and give you an example of the kind of malicious behaviour this woman was capable of, when you got into her class you had to get all your stuff out of your bag. If at some point during the lesson you had to get anyhting *else* out of your bag, that'd be an instant detention. One girl in the class received a backhanded cuff from the woman on not completing a homework - made somewhat worse by the knuckledusters comprised of massive ugly rings. The really cherry ont eh top of the cake was - as a meek 11 year old telling her I wasn't going to be in her lesson the next day as I had to go to my grandmothers funeral she responded by telling me that it's not my place to *tell* her I won't be there - I had to *ask*, and gave me a detention for my troubles.

Anyway, I digress.

She had a habit of setting stupid homeworks. I can't remember quite what the theme of the one set this particular week had been - perhaps something like "make a scene from greek history and literature", but all I know is that I spent an entire weekend crafting a papier mache mount olympus, complete with Elyssian Fields, a river Styx in PVA glue, and a hollow interior containing a rather fine depiction of hades.

I take it in proudly to find it's worthy only of a C.

The next week see two girls walking out of school carrying something rather familiar. I run over to see what appears to be my Mount Olympus. Then, as I get closer I realise it's not. She set another class the same homework, these two girls saw what I'd done and decided to copy it. Frankly they'd done a shoddy job. But they'd scored an A.

I later discover that there is something of a feud running between her and my dad (who taught at the school as Head of Technology - judging by the number of CDT related stories on here this week I can only guessat the adulation and joy many of you will be thinking at that). On his first week at the school 20 years previously he'd told her to piss off as she weas a stupid old bully. They hadn't spoken since, but she realised that the next 5 years were a perfect opportunity for her to have a poke at him through me. Oh what fun that was.

Length? There's a Marathon pun in here somewhere.
(OP, Mon 17 Aug 2009, 16:53, Reply)