THERE’S this guy in our street and every second Monday he acts in a bizarre manner. He leaves his house by the back door wearing a brown paper bag with eye holes cut in it. After slinking along the wall of his house, he changes the number plates on his car, a beautiful, metallic green Skoda Felicia Estate.
Following a tortuous route to shake off any possible tails, he heads for Carluke Recreation Centre. Once inside the building, he waits for the receptionist to be alone, then sidles up and asks: “Can you tell me which room the Writers’ Group is in tonight?” “THE WRITERS’ GROUP? ROOM P27.”
“For goodness sake shhh, will you? I don’t want my pals to know I’m here. I’m a qualified physics teacher, and if this got out . . .”
Oh, all right, then. You’ve guessed that it’s me. Every second Monday since the beginning of the new session, I’ve been going to a group where people bring along pieces of their writing to be discussed.
For the first two sessions I kept fairly quiet as I tried to get a feel for the dynamics of the situation. Everyone seemed to be positive and mutually supportive so by night three I felt ready to take something along. It was the Monday of the September holiday. I had spent half of the day wrestling with an Ikea flatpack. I was already 10 minutes late when the last doorknob went on. A shower would have been a good idea but I settled for a change of shirt and a flash over with antiperspirant body spray.
“Anyone brought anything to read tonight?” a group member asked when I got there.
“I have,” I replied. My mouth was already dry. I hadn’t felt this nervous since I last gave a science in-service to primary teachers. The antiperspirant stopped working.
I got through my piece - an extended remix of a TES Scotland article about the first time I flew solo with a science class - without my tongue gluing itself to the roof of my mouth. There followed a period of helpful feedback and constructive criticism. As ever, Oscar Wilde was correct. There is only one thing worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about (though you do wonder if Oscar had ever experienced being hit in the groin by a fast-moving basketball when he wrote that).
Once again I was left wondering if this is all symptomatic of an aspect of my character that drove me into teaching, ie I’m a bit of a show-off who likes the sound of his own voice (even if it does mean I have to use a lot of male toiletries).
Gregor Steele can’t bring himself to read out his one and only poem.
