Scraps, Snippets, Squeers

I’m home now, but little things keep occurring to me and I want to write them down before I forget. I was always scared of the headmaster: he is irascible and deaf and almost dying of swine flu with cardiac complications failed to improve his mood. The school is built round a horseshoe-shaped corridor, so sound carries and I would usually hide when I heard his ranting approach. Children who are sent to stand in the corridor shrink back into alcoves, hoping he won’t notice them as he prowls past. He was always polite to me and seemed genuinely interested in York and Cistercians, but I could tell he wasn’t one to cross.

One of the teachers asked me round to dinner just before I left Ile Rousse, and I heard the whole story: apparently the headmaster regularly pulls the children’s ears, hard enough that one had to get stitches afterwards. He has also come to blows with three of the teachers, and will come up the next day and do the bises as if he hadn’t thrown a punch the day before. I find it funny that in a country so thick with bureaucracy, anxiety and policy documents surrounding every aspect of education, Wackford Squeers can still be pulling ears.