OFSTED Squared
Raymond was sitting on the toilet wondering what would
happen if he stuck his knob in the top of his bottle of Listerine Cool Blast.
Probably it would freshen it up. Or sting. Or both.
He had once, in his younger days, slapped Old Spice
all over his balls. Not something he would do twice. But Listerine Cool Blast?
Well…
Standing up, he rambled across to the shower and switched
it on.
Through the slits of grimy blinds, the sun stroked the
floor tiles. Hot. It was always hot. Hot enough the fry his breakfast on the
pavement beneath his apartment if he fancied some grit in it. And cat shit. Due
to the fact that a family of strays lived in the scrubby, thorny bushes that arose
there. They would come out tails stiff and hopeful if you made that clucking,
clicking, sucking noise.
Raymond often thought he should have some food for
them but then, more often than not, forgot that he had thought it.
The bus to work was, as usual, quiet, because it was
half past five in the morning. It was occupied by a variety of races – South
African, British, Filipino to name but three.
And they all, all of them, stared across the gravel
desert, missing the colour green and watching as distant grey shapes coalesced
into solid block buildings from within the misted heat haze. The bus was getting
closer, weaving the lanes of the expressway, wefting vast four wheeled drives, warping
its occupants up and down as it hit potholes and bumps.
Raymond was amongst them, having an internal grumble,
two voices arguing inside his head.
“Why can’t you get Mentadent P, anyway?”
“Colgate is
fine.”
“I hate
bloody Colgate. It’s minty.”
“Mentadent
P” was minty, too”
“But it was
a better sort of minty, more minty in its mintiness.”
“Oh, shut
up, fuckwit.”
“No, you
shut up. I LIKE Mentadent P.” And the last bit came out horribly loudly and
rolled around the bus like a ricochet.
The girl in
front turned her head in concern. “You need to pee?” she declaimed, in her
Portuguese accent, which resembled the autotuned falsetto of one of those
ubiquitously dreary modern urban stylee singers, “Can we stop the bus? Raymond
needs to pee.”
The driver
indicated and pulled onto the hard shoulder as the traffic whistled past.
Raymond reddened up. “No, no,” he explained, in vain, “I meant toothpaste.” But
the girl stared blankly, and the bus looked interested, so he shambled to the
door, dismounted and fumbled with flies in a mime of urination. “Oh, that’s
much better,” he declared gaily as he mounted the steps, making a mental note
to get revenge at some point. See how she would like squatting in front of the
morning’s commuter drek.
It was a
relief when the bus finally pulled up at Gallileo British Academy. Nevertheless,
Raymond headed straight for the toilets.
“My name is
Jack and I live in the back of the Greta Garbo home for wayward boys and girls,”
hummed Raymond to himself as he stood at the rear of assembly. The students
were seated in front of him, Year 7 at the front, Year 13 nearest to his
polished black slip-ons.
Filing the tune under ‘good’ in his mental juke box,
he strained to focus. His tinnitus was swooming in the ears though, as it always
did when bombarded by the peripheral noise of perpetual air conditioning.
“blurgh,
blurgh, blurgh, grades, proud of the way you, blurgh, blurgh, blurgh, celebrate
your success, blurgh, blurgh…an outstanding school with exceptional
results...blurgh, blurgh.” Shit, it was dull and, worse, long, long, long. He
was swaying, due to having stood in one place for too long and his feet were thrumbing.
He shifted his weight from left to right, right to left, noting that younger
colleagues were having no such problems. Bastards. Full of juice and, no doubt,
alcohol, having partied and screwed each other all weekend. His teeth throbbed
in time to his pulse.
The head of
secondary, Adela, was also young; mid-thirties and extraordinarily beautiful.
The rhythm of her talk; the way her hands conducted her words caused her body
to shimmy; all teeth, blue eyes and hair. It was hard not to be
caught by her undulating sweater as the indistinct, high pitched, hypnotic
ululations caused his eyes to close in dream and yearn for long, forgotten movements below.
“So, now,
I’d like to introduce you to our OFSTED inspection team.”
He snapped
back to attention.
The kids
applauded. They always applauded. A packet of cheese and onion crisps could
walk on stage and they would whoop and holler like Jack probably would from
backwards of his wayward home. Given the chance.
And there
they were, the execution squad, all the way from England, strolling on, totally
shit and giggles, waving at the faces in front of them, scoping the girls on
the left, boys on the right, occupying the space between.
For a
minute, Raymond screwed up his eyes.
Why, man, it
looked as though the bloke he assumed was the lead inspector was going to raise
both hands and wave like some legendary rock star who’d returned from a hiatus
and was about to announce a new album and tour. But no, he seized the microphone
from Adela.
“Oh yay! Oh
yay! Oh yay!” he yelled, reminding Raymond of the time Neil Kinnock had made a
prat of himself at some conference or other by whipping his audience up into a
cream of excitement then losing the election convincingly. “Thank you! It’s a
real thrill to be in your country!”
Well of
course it was. They’d been put up in the Radisson with its luxury pool, ten
restaurants and seven bars. No doubt they’d milk this for everything they
could, the bastards. Raymond scowled at the thought, shuddering at the
contemptible sight.
“I am Lead
Inspector Boyles! And I’m the one who toils! May I introduce my team? Misters
Turvey, Flange and Stirrup? Now, you’ll be seeing a lot of us over this next
fortnight…”
Fortnight?
Normal inspections took three days. Even the Kwatari one, which had labeled the Academy outstanding, had only taken five. Fortnight?
“Which is,
as I’m sure you’ll know, being an outstanding academy, English for two weeks.
And we will be looking to bestow upon you, as an international school, the
British seal of excellence!”
More ecstasy
from the audience and one or two were even slinging books and folders into the
air as though it was graduation day. Adela was beaming, grinning from ear to
ear, but Raymond could only feel his soul sinking, sinking. Boyles paused,
hands stretched forward above the assembled like some vile pastor bestowing
blessings from the motherland.
But then: A
disturbance in the force and a collective shiver of apprehension.
Obviously sensing a big change in the weather Boyles turned his head to Raymond’s
right. His mouth no longer smiling. His eyes cold, observing, darkening. “You.”
he spoke, after a pause, “How? What are you doing here?”
For silently,
approaching the stage, were four more besuited people. As they ascended, one
extended his hand to Adela. “Good morning. My name is Lead Inspector Mockman.
We are your OFSTED team.”
Well, you
could have spiked Raymond’s hair and called him a toothbrush.
At that afternoon’s
English Faculty meeting, there was uncertainty.
The head of
the department, Julie Scringe, scanned the eyes of her team, which were mostly
projecting a veneer of nonchalance. And then there were other eyes, belonging
to those who were not English but taught it anyway, either bored or confused.
“Well,” she conjectured, “two teams, half the time.” And she focused on
Raymond.
“Don’t you
ever think it,” he spluttered, “those bastards are like the spinach that gets
caught in your teeth, where no matter how hard you try, no matter how
rigorously you get that string stuff and rub…er...rub between them…your teeth
look…well…er…green, if you smile. And you’d better not…smile, I mean…um…what is
that string stuff called?”
“Floss?”
asked Ciaran.
“Yes, sorry,
feeling somewhat flostered right now.”
Someone
snorted; then, looking at Julie, thought again and ceased.
“Raymond,
please watch your language.”
“You can’t
watch language, can you?” Raymond, normally quiet and not one for shouting for
fear of spraying spittle, now raised his voice in fury. “How many are they?
Eight? That’s double the observations, double the meetings, double the
admin…they’ve squared themselves, that’s what they’ve done. Squared themselves and
they will multiply and fuck with us until their lies stretch out until the
crack of doom.”
“Raymond!”
“Oh, what do
you know, child? I came here to escape from these bastards and they’ve followed
us, followed me…what do they here? What possible gain can there be for our
school? Judgement by the same cretins who screwed everything up over there and who
now want to do the same here.”
“Enough,
please. They’re inspectors, not creatures from the dark side of a forgotten
Marlowe tragedy. Are you scared?”
“Scared? No,
of course I’m not scared. Why this is hell, nor are we out of it. Scared?
Scarred, yes. Scared? Pah. But, I know these types. They say that people who
can’t; teach. I say that people who can’t teach become OFSTED Inspectors. They
are the worst kind of human being. Incompetent, corrupt and completely
intolerant scumbags.”
“Really.”
“Yes,
really. Eight of them. Eight complete pricks. Eight fucking limpid knobs to
unzip, extract from flies and thrust in a large vat of Listerine Cool Blast
before we boot them off campus. No. Cool Blast would be too kind. Original. The
brown one that tastes like TCP. Anything less would be too good for them, I
say.” And he smashed his fist on the table.
Their surprised silence stunned the room.
Then a hand
was raised. “Julie? What’s TCP?”
So it was
that, two days later after the morning break, Raymond left Adela’s office.
He wished
that she wore one of those hygienic mouth masks, the type that barbers or
dentists wore, for he was drenched with the spittle of her bile.
Still, like
some Mother Clennam, dormant for years, he felt provoked and ready to
spontaneously combust. Well, possibly. In the back of his mind, George Martin’s
orchestra had struck up something from the backside of the original Yellow
Submarine LP.
So he
marched in time to the Blue Meanies, remembering John. He reflected that he’d
been reasonably lucky this far: three days in and untouched by them. They were
obviously disinterested and had decided there were bigger fish to fry. Raymond
grinned to himself. Maybe the news of his outburst had put them off and they
weren’t going to tangle with him. He reached his classroom almost cheerful.
To his
annoyance, Lead Inspector Boyles had arrived before him. He had made a dugout
in the corner and boxed filed himself behind a desk. He looked fearful.
Raymond
nodded. To let him know he knew. As it were. Then he scanned the classroom.
“Morning, lads.”
“Morning, Mr
Raymond. Look there’s one of those inspector men in here. Why do we always get
these inspector men lately?”
“Eh! Tameem.
Shut it, yesterday it was inspector lady.”
“Inspector
lady. Inspect–a lady. Hur, hur, hur.”
Pursing his lips, Raymond shuddered. “I see him, Abdulla. You’re late. Where’s Flange?”
“Flange? I
don’t know, sir. He’s probably coming.”
Huge Year 11
boys, wrestling for position, throwing books on desks, sweating from football
in forty degree heat. Healthy, bearded burned faces grinned teeth and cheer,
glad to be in the English classroom, talking in throaty Arabic. The spiced
scent of oud drifted and caught the zeitgeist. Conspicuously white and wan, Boyles
looked a long way from home. “I think they require improvement.”
“Excuse me?”
“These
boys.” Boyles was scribbling on some sort of overcomplicated pale tissue paper British
form.
Raymond
scowled.
“Mr
Raymond!” Muhammed shouted across the classroom. “Hey. Ghanim is late. I’ll
give him slap. It’s disrespectful. Here, catch this.” He slung a football at
Raymond, who, a player in his day, took it on his chest then caught it.
“Sit down,
lads.”
The boys
ignored him.
A few more
shambled in, throwing bags around in a pantomime of disruption.
Deep within his paper box, Boyles' pen was busy - scribble, scribble, scribble.
Well, OK.
Scanning his classroom, Raymond took up his books as he had for countless years and now here
they were, the boys, too big for the desks, slumped, looking bored, but the eyes, well those
brown eyes; telling a deeply different story, if you could read it. And he
always could. Even back then.
Because now,
Ahmed, in studied carelessness, chucked Steinbeck on the desk, a battered
edition, well thumbed. “Eh. Mr Raymond? This thing. Explain it to me. What is
cat house where men are going?”
Someone
sluiced a torrent of Arabic from the second row, then switched fluidly to
English: “It’s a place for cats, idiot.”
“The stray
ones that live in the trash?”
“Chub. Of
course the stray trash ones: like you.”
“Ahmed, stop
shouting, open your book, and write down the lesson objective. And the three differentiated
outcomes.”
Raymond,
looking at the board, wished he actually had some differentiated outcomes or a
plan for the lesson, but he didn’t, because they were complete bollocks. He had
planned to do what he always did, which, basically, was to get the boys to
read, talk a bit, then do some writing. He glanced at Boyles, who ignored him
and scribbled some more.
“What are
these outcomes, Mr Raymond?” asked Muhammed - a fair enough question.
“Ah…er…um…I’ll
write them on the blackboard.” Raymond started to sweat as the boys waited, languid
legs stretched out.
“EH! Sir!
It’s white! Like you!” yelled Tameem, then sniggered, thumping his neighbour’s head
affectionately.
“Yes, yes, I
know, the whiteboard.” Raymond pulled open the desk drawer and looked for a
board marker and inspiration, sweating slightly. He rummaged around, found his marker,
but all that remained, to his complete lack of surprise for it was, after all,
his desk, were two or three unopened boxes of toothpaste, bottles of various
flavours of mouthwash and some tooth picks. He pulled these out and piled them
on an empty desk in front of the boys.
Boyles
watched him, pen poised.
Raymond
cleared his throat. “Now, lads, are we ready? So…er…write this into your
exercise books…ah…today we will practise descriptive writing and…um…our bronze
outcome, as it were, is…you will be able to describe a toothpaste tower;
silver…you will describe the toothpaste tower pretty well…and, gold, you will
use describing words to describe in detail a tower made entirely from
toothpaste in a mighty damn good way. Mighty damn good.”
“What?”
“Just write
it down, Abdulrahman, just write it down.”
The boys
scratched paper slowly with pens, copying from the board. It was now ten
minutes since the lesson had started. Once done, most slung these down and
waited patiently for something to happen, filling time with cuffing each other
or pulling phones half out of pockets to check for messages under the tables.
“Now, then,
now then,” boomed Raymond, with a confidence he didn’t feel. “Volunteer,
please. Who can build a tower using…”
“Mr Raymond!
You’ve spelt it wrong. Toothpaste has a T. You’ve put Boothbaste.”
“Well
spotted, Thani, Excellent. Ah…dictionary chase, boys, first to get a
dictionary, look it up, slap the board with a fly swatter and write it gets the
star prize.”
They needed
no further orders. 15 huge blokes shoved chairs back, thrust tables forward,
piling over each other; a thrashing, flailing fist of arms and legs in a 100
metre dash for the bookshelf.
Too late, Raymond remembered they were in the same corner where Boyles was now cowering.
“Found it!
Where’s the fly swat, sir?”
“Fly swat?
Er…we don’t have them. Sorry. I read this activity in a paper. 100 great OFSTED
lesson starters.”
Lead
Inspector Boyles, who had somehow survived serious injury, grimaced quietly,
dusted down his jacket and scribbled further notes as the boys reluctantly
returned. Raymond shook with unknown, strange feelings. “Now lads, that volunteer...who can build me a boothbaste,
I mean toothpaste tower?”
15 hands
shot up.
“Now,
lads…it’ll take skill. Plenty of skill. We call this a kinaesthetic task, you see?”
Scribble,
scribble, scribble.
Ghanim
pushed himself to the front and began balancing boxes on top of bottles with
some dexterity until it had reached an impressive height, watched by fourteen
other pairs of eyes, Raymond and a sceptical Boyles.
As he balanced
a final tube of toothpicks on top in triumph, the classroom door was kicked
open, causing the whole tower to crumble violently to the floor. Ghanim whipped
around in rage to confront the miscreant. “Flange! You cause my tower to
destroy!”
Flange, studiedly
late, slung his bag across the classroom and picked his way to an empty desk,
hooked a seat back with his foot and deposited himself there. He leant back
slightly and put his feet on the table. If he could have found one, he’d have
taken a match and struck it on one of the bristly cheeks of his classmates,
like a pasty Lee Van Cleef. Instead, he reached in his pockets, pulled out a
packet of fags with one hand, a lighter with the other, lit a cigarette, sucked
then exhaled with a hiss.
“Flange! What the bloody hell do you think you are doing?” Raymond cursed then bit his lip.
“Want one,
sir?”
“What? Want
one? Want one! What do you mean, want one?”
“A fag, sir.
I got plenty from the airport. You can pass me one back tomorrow, normal place,
if you want, sir. Behind the bike sheds. I expect you’ll want one after the
usual servicing, sir.”
“I don’t know what he means, Inspector.
I’ve never even been behind the bike sheds with him. Do we even have bike
sheds?”
“Do you?”
“No, Mr
Boyles, honestly. He’s new. He only joined this week from England, Inspector.
He’s a special needs boy. Probably.”
“Special
needs?”
“Yes, Mr
Boyles. I think he might have ADHD, sir. Or autism. One of those things on the
special spectrum. I’ll have him tested.”
Boyles rose
from his seat. “Tested? Do you know what you’re saying Raymond?” He drew
himself up to full height. “Put that cigarette out, Flange. Get your feet off
the table. Now, Raymond, I think I’ve seen all I need to see, don’t you?”
“Wait, wait.
You haven’t seen my main activity, yet, Inspector…”
“And what
would that be, exactly? Draw and label a toothpaste box? Describe the taste of
mouthwash? Role play a visit to the dentist where you and he discuss oral
hygiene?”
“No…well…er,
I quite like the role play one, Inspector…”
But Boyles
shuffled papers together and took his briefcase from the classroom floor,
intent on packing and leaving. “You’ve no lesson plan, no data, nothing. You’re
making it up as you go along aren’t you, Raymond.”
Flange
sniggered.
“Well,
you’ll definitely like my plenary. It’s well worth the wait.”
“Plenary?
Don’t bother. I’ll be seeing you later,” snapped Boyles, grimly. However, as he
spoke, a soft click broke the suspended silent seconds and yet again the door
opened; this time more smoothly. Another figure stood framed in the opening.
“Pray
continue with your lesson, Mr Raymond.”
It was Lead
Inspector Mockman.
It was now
Day 5 of the Inspections.
Well given
the circumstance, he had to pluralise, didn’t he?
Raymond had
given himself a day to think about it and he was taking no more. He had brushed
his teeth until his gums complained and his lungs were icy enough to freeze his
exhaling breath and now he waited impatiently, coiled like a spring, in the
short corridor that led to Adela’s office.
Voices
rumbled ominously from within.
Upon the
door itself, Adela’s nameplate had been covered with an A4 printout in comic
sans ms proclaiming the owner to be Lead Inspector Boyles. Childishly, however,
someone else had scribbled out the word Boyles with crayon and written Mockman
next it.
An atrocity.
And Raymond
saw with fixed certainty that hue and cry had blown here from across the seas,
traversing the desert to shake the school these five days, with no centre to
the storms; instead only two event horizons, multiplying with each other and bludgeoning
any hope of progress, any sort of exit, any kind of learning – just lending
still birth to the next generation. As it was, so it will be, thy kingdom come.
The door
clicked open. Adela herself strode out. She gave Raymond a contemptuous glance,
pushed past him and made for the bathroom.
It hadn’t
always been like this. When he had arrived, middle aged, heartbroken and
destroyed after a 25 year career in England, he had been her darling, the
‘English’ English teacher. Intervening years had made him older and had seen
her promoted. He had lost his bite. His gums itched where teeth used to be.
Having left
the door slightly open, however, those rumbles were now more audible, and words
could be picked clean from the carcass of the turkeys within. Exasperated and
bickering gobbets spat forth.
“It did not
require improvement. It was outstanding.”
“Outstanding?
You blind fool. We’re recommending special measures.”
“Special
measures? Pah. The closest you came to special measures was the last time you
used a ruler to measure your dick, Mockman.”
“Measure my
dick? Pah. At least my dick requires such a measure, Boyles.”
“I didn’t
come all the way from England to bandy words with you, Mockman. I didn’t have
to come at all. I’m a pastor.”
“Pastor?
Pah. The nearest you come to being a pastor is when you boil spaghetti,
Boyles.”
Raymond had
heard enough. Now, to be sure, he was meek, his teeth were now few and far
between, certainly, but he had sufficient boxes of toothpaste to build and
defend one final castle. He pushed open the door, without even waiting for
permission; he just walked right into the chicken coop like some kind of
toothless, aged silver fox. With a box of sharpened toothpicks in his breast
pocket for good measure.
It didn’t
bother the two lead inspectors one jot. They were eyeball to eyeball, clenching
their pale papers in aged almost fists but the veneer of manners were just
keeping them this side of the black hole.
His cojones twitched, just slightly, but Raymond registered it on the Richter scale. Surprised? I should say so. It was the first time for quite
a while.
“You lot,”
he cried. “You lot.”
Mockman
swivelled in Adela’s chair. Boyles would have done the same, but he’d drawn the
short straw of the cheap, non swivelling variety, so he was limited to moving his
neck. Given his age, this caused his face to convulse in pain for an instant.
“Ah, Mr
Raymond, isn’t it?”
One of them
spoke, Raymond wasn’t sure which. He had to screw his eyes tightly to tell them
apart. “I’d like to congratulate you on a first class lesson. Outstanding. The way you had the boys chasing after the
toothpaste boxes in a relay race; quite brilliant. That’s cutting edge English
teaching that is. It’s the sort of innovative approach sadly missing in England
these days.”
“Well, I
have to disagree with Inspector Mockman’s appraisal. I felt that your starter
was good, but your plenary required improvement. The fact is, Mr Raymond, in
assessing your lesson, I thought that there were areas of it that dipped into
special measures. But, then again, there were some bits that were good.”
“I couldn’t
give a fuck what either of you thought.”
“What?” One
of them spoke. Boyles, possibly.
“No need for
that, is there?”
“I think
there is.” Raymond spoke quietly enough, but he knew he was shaking. Why was he
shaking? But he looked at them. Yes. All shook up. “You’re nothing to me now.
You just haven’t earned it.” And in his head he could hear Johnny Marr. Perhaps
Johnny Rotten? Who knew. “Everybody you ever betrayed, that’s for sure,” he
said. “And the children. I’ve been here for years now. But back there; they’re
crying. They don’t forget what you…cunts…did. When? They ask. When? When will
you come back? You lot. Fuck off back to England”
“Punts? Where?
We’re not in Cambridge now, Raymond.”
“Not enough
mouthwash in the world. Not enough,” Raymond continued, still quiet, unsure of
even the next word, not really knowing. But he could see a world crashing and
burning, crashing and burning and there was no way to articulate everything he knew,
everything he had seen. “Fuck off back to England. Back to your wreck and ruin.
Leave us here in peace, here in the desert.”
The words
bounced off them like hailstones on cobbles. Boyles smirked. He tried to cover
his mouth with his hand, but Raymond saw it and, teeth clenched, he moved forward
aggressively.
Fortunately,
at that point, Adela, strode back into her office, clutching something bunched in
her left hand and a flimsy file in her right. She ignored Raymond; well he’d
expected that. But the next move was quite astonishing, even by her standards.
She walked behind her desk. She tipped over the chair containing Boyles, the
cheap one, and then swiveled Mockman around and pulled it out from under him.
That done, she sat down and shouted. “Flange! Get in here, now!”
Prostrate upon the floor, blinking and flapping like two landed trout, the Inspectors looked shocked. Adella
scowled and viciously threw the something in her left hand in their direction and
it bounced off Mockman’s forehead. Now Raymond could see it was the A4 paper
that had covered her office nameplate.
“That hurt,”
protested Mockman, pulling himself up. Similarly, Boyles raised himself,
flapping at the dust on his suit with his hands. They stood next to Raymond, in
front of the desk.
Flange
shuffled in through the door, eyes downcast; cockiness having quite deserted
him. He joined the three other men in front of the bench.
“Stand there,
Flange,” Adela snapped. Then threw herself down behind her desk and her eyes
scrutinised those in front of her, judge, jury and executioner and they,
standing like guilty schoolboys, avoided the piercing blue gaze. “Now,
gentlemen. Which of you knows this boy?” She spoke with soft fury.
Raymond
spoke first. “Er…well, obviously me, Adela, but I swear I have never, ever even
been behind the bike sheds…”
“Not you,
Raymond. I mean which of these two. These Inspectors.”
Neither
spoke. Mockman looked the shiftiest but Boyles was colouring fast.
Placing the file deliberately on her desk, Adela's voice was such that it might freeze the Caribbean. “This was found lying around in a
classroom.” She opened it and extracted a paper from the A4 flimsies within.
She looked at it and read aloud, skimming quickly over it. “Hmm, let’s see. ‘The
Flange Gambit…ah…memo to team…it would be quite…er… splendid if we could inveigle
Inspector Flange’s son…ah…Master Flange into the school…. free to cause mayhem
and malice in as many classes as possible…ensure he has a catapult…cigarettes…pea
shooter…bottle of ink’.” She stopped and looked up. “Is this some kind of joke?
The Flange gambit? What on earth has been going on?”
But now it
was Mockman’s turn. He broke rank and took a pace towards the desk. He seized
the paper from Adela’s fist and spun on his heel. It was quite impressive for a
man of his age. “Excellent. Just the evidence we have been looking for! Well
done, Ms Adela. Now we have them.” He paused. “You see I have not been entirely
straight and truthful with you these past days.”
“Really?”
Adela’s voice was dripping with sarcasm. “You shock me.”
“Yes,
really.” Mockman’s eyes were triumphant, stripping and dissecting the quaking
Boyles. “You see we’re not just any OFSTED team. Oh no. We’re the OFSTED team
that inspects OFSTED teams.”
“Oh my god,”
Boyles quavered, looking quite faint.
“You might
well say that,” growled Mockman, “you might well. Yes, my friend, little did
you suspect that during your inspecting, you too were being inspected by us.
Hah! We’ve been on to your lot for quite some time. Quite some time. You, you,
with your extended foreign junkets, your hotels with seven bars and ten
restaurants, with your hand picked team of cronies. Yes, my friend. The
inspectors have been inspected and their inspections have been found to be
wanting.”
“Oh, God,
no!”
“Oh, God,
yes. Hah. Well, my friend, your inspecting days are over. Never fear, Ms Adela,
never fear. I will have this lot cuffed and on the next plane bound for Blighty.”
With that
declaration, Mockman reached inside his pocket and pulled out a policeman’s tin
whistle. This he placed to his lips and with a mighty blow summoned his
colleagues who truncheoned the feebly protesting gentlemen out, leaving only
the three of them; Raymond, Adela and Mockman to contemplate the silence for a
while.
“Well, that explains a few things, I suppose.” Raymond spoke, his voice soft.
“Yes,”
hissed Adela.
“My words to
you earlier…ah...” added Raymond, looking at Mockman.
“Think
nothing of it my boy, nothing of it, heat of the moment…quite understandable.”
“No. I meant
every one of them. Fuck off back to England. You contemptible, incompetent bastards.”
Mockman
looked contemplative for a moment, then sighed. “I can’t do that I am afraid,
Mr Raymond.”
“What?”
“Well now, you
see, the current inspection is now null and void, isn’t it, as you might…er…inspect?
A hah-hah. So, we’ll have to start it all over again next week. Nothing else
for it, I’m afraid.”
“You have to
be joking.” Adela’s voice was venomous.
“No, afraid
so, we go again next week. After all, the school does want the kitemark British
seal of quality, doesn’t it?
“Well, I’m
not so sure anymore.”
“Well, of
course it does.You’ll
arrange with the CEO to extend our stay at The Hilton by another week?”
Before she
could answer, there was an urgent, sharp rapping at the office door. “Come in.”
Adela rose resignedly and walked to open it. Upon extending her hand for the
handle, however, it was thrust back imperiously to reveal another suited
greybeard, clipboard in one hand and the twisted ear of a snivelling boy from
Year 8 in the other. Adela clenched her teeth in an icy white grimace. “And
just who might you two be?” she snarled.
“Chief
Inspector Sodsmith, ma’am. And this wretched child is called Pockman. I lead
the OFSTED team that inspects the OFSTED teams that inspect OFSTED teams. It’s
a snap inspection, ma’am.”
Mockman
fainted.
That night, after
he had returned to his apartment, Raymond blankly walked to the local shop and
bought some cat food which he then placed in the bushes beneath. Later he
walked into his bathroom, took his knob out and stuck it into his bottle of
Listerine Cool Blast.
Maybe it was
due to the excruciating, torturous stinging; he couldn’t be sure. But for
whatever reason, he started to cry.
