Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Stars
Page 1
Also by Gervase Phinn
THE DALES SERIES
The Other Side of the Dale
Over Hill and Dale
Head Over Heels in the Dales
Up and Down in the Dales
The Heart of the Dales
A Wayne in a Manger
POETRY
published by Puffin Books
It Takes One to Know One
The Day Our Teacher Went Batty
Family Phantoms
Don’t Tell the Teacher
Twinkle, Twinkle,
Little Stars
GERVASE PHINN
MICHAEL JOSEPH
an imprint of
PENGUIN BOOKS
PENGUIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA
Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario,
Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)
Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland
(a division of Penguin Books Ltd)
Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell,
Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)
Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre,
Panchsheel Park, New Delhi – 110 017, India
Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632,
New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)
Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue,
Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa
Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
www.penguin.com
First published 2008
1
Copyright © Gervase Phinn, 2008
Illustrations copyright © Chris Mould, 2008
All rights reserved
The moral right of the author has been asserted
Book design by Janette Revill
Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser
978-0-14-190367-5
For my own bright little star, Megan Rose Phinn
Acknowledgements
The majority of these stories appeared originally in my five Dales books. However, for this special collection, I have embellished here, embroidered there, so these versions tend to be a variation on the originals.
The poems first appeared in the four collections published by Puffin Books, and are reproduced with their kind permission; there have been a few changes to the poems.
From It Takes One to Know One: ‘The Way I Am’, ‘Farmboy’ (originally ‘Farmgirl’), ‘Class Discussion’ and ‘Bible Class’.
From The Day Our Teacher Went Batty: ‘Angel in the Cloakroom’, ‘Dreaming’ and ‘Spelling’.
From Don’t Tell the Teacher: ‘Home’, ‘Question’ and ‘Using Your Imagination’.
CONTENTS
Gervase
1. ‘The Way I Am’
2. Tracey asks questions
3. Oliver and the school suspector
4. Chloë and the chicks
5. John has a midnight surprise
6. ‘Farmboy’
7. Trevor meets royalty
8. Maxine and the big stick
9. Elizabeth at the optician’s
10. ‘Home’
11. Andrew, the sheep expert
12. Billy making babies
13. Janice and the little lambs
14. Fred, café owner
15. Sophia, a new girl
16. ‘Class Discussion’
17. Naomi and the wobbling granny
18. Richard and the cookery class
19. Cressida faces the music
20. ‘Angel in the Cloakroom’
21. Roger writes a poem
22. Molly and the magic road
23. Joseph and the special present
24. Portia – there’s always one
25. ‘Dreaming’
26. Benedict, a precocious child
27. Mary in tears
28. Charlie, the remedial child
29. Imogen has trouble with her Rs
30. ‘Spelling’ and ‘Question’
31. Shane & Wayne prepare for Mother’s Day
32. Hyacinth, the child with special needs
33. Thomas, a boy of few words
34. Darren challenges the vicar
35. ‘Bible Class’
36. Paige and the numeracy worksheet
37. Stevie in trouble again
38. Simone & William learn to speak proper
39. Matthew and the dinosaurs
40. ‘Using Your Imagination’
GERVASE
I was not a particularly clever or confident child, never the bright little button who sat on the top table with all the clever children, with his hand always in the air to answer the teacher’s questions, the talented artist, sharp at number work, the good speller, the one who won all the cups, captained the school team, took the lead part in the school play. I was a member of the unremarkable majority – the average pupil, the big hump in the academic bell, the ‘nothing special’ sort of child, ordinary, biddable, quiet.
Last year I visited my former infant school headmistress, the redoubtable Miss Wilkinson. She was a 101 years old but still had the shining eyes of the great teacher.
‘You have done very well, Gervase,’ she said, shaking my hand. ‘All those books you have written. Doctor this and professor that – you have more degrees than a thermometer.’ Then she added with a twinkle in those shining eyes, ‘And you were never one of the brightest in the class, were you?’
‘No, I wasn’t,’ I replied. ‘I suppose I was a pretty average child but if I’ve achieved anything in life it is because of my parents and teachers like you who believed in me and encouraged me.’
‘And you do recall,’ she asked, ‘when you wet yourself?’
‘Of course,’ I replied. The occasion remains ingrained in my memory.
At the infant nativity play, I was one of the extras. The curtains opened and there I stood, on the otherwise empty stage, next to the cardboard stable, six years old and stiff as a lamp-post. I was the palm tree. I was encased in brown crêpe paper with two big bunches of papier mâché coconuts dangling from my neck, a clump of bright green cardboard leaves in each hand and more arranged like a crown on my head. My mother had knitted me a pale green woollen balaclava helmet through which my little face peeped. I was so excited and stared out at all the faces in the audience.
Then someone in the front row laughed and that started off others laughing, too. They were laughing at me! It was the first occasion anyone had laughed at me and I felt so alone and upset and had wriggled nervously. I looked for my parents and, seeing them in the second row, I focused on them. They, of course, were not laughing. I began to cry and then, frozen under the bright lights and frightened, I wet myself. It seeped through the brown crêpe paper, leaving a large dark stain in the front. The audience laughed louder. I was devastated.
On the way home, my face wet with tears, my father held my small hand between his great fat fingers and he told me that I was the best palm tree he had ever seen. My mother told me that I was the star of the show. I knew full well a
t the time that they were not telling me the truth, but it was so good to be told. I felt so secure and so loved.
‘And do you remember, Miss Wilkinson,’ I asked her now, ‘what you said to me when I came off the stage? Instead of being cross, and telling me I should have gone to the toilet before the show, as some teachers might well have done, you put your arm round me and said, “Don’t worry, love, it’s not the end of the world. Why, when I was your age, I used to wet my knickers, too.” ’ There was a short silence. Then a small smile came to my former teacher’s lips. ‘It’s funny how things come full circle.’
In this collection of stories, anecdotes and poems, the shining stars are the children, all of whom I met over my years as a schools inspector in the great county of Yorkshire. They will, I hope, delight you as they did me, with their blunt observations on life, their disarming honesty and their irrepressible humour. For me, whatever their background and abilities, they will forever be my bright little stars.
1
THE WAY I AM
I’m just an ordinary sort of boy,
Not the centre of attention,
The best of the bunch,
Apple of the teacher’s eye,
The one everyone remembers.
It’s just the way I am.
I’m just an ordinary sort of boy,
Not the high flyer,
Captain of the team,
Star of the school play
Top of the class.
It’s just the way I am.
I’m just an ordinary sort of boy,
But I’m not invisible.
I do exist!
I’m as different as anyone else,
There’s nobody like me.
And to my family, I’m pretty special.
So please, sir, please, miss – notice ME sometimes.
I am what I am.
2
TRACEY
ASKS QUESTIONS
I was accompanying the new Chairman of the Education Committee around a village primary school. He was certainly viewed with much interest when he entered the small classroom and, with his red cheeks, great walrus moustache and hair shooting up from his square head, it was not surprising. He was introduced to the very nervous teacher who was taking the class, and then sat down solidly, legs apart, on a tiny red melamine chair designed for very small children.
After a while he was approached by Tracey a little girl who stared and stared at his round, red face and drooping moustache. Then the following conversation took place.
‘What is it?’ asked the little girl.
‘What’s what?’ retorted the visitor.
‘That on your face.’
‘It’s a moustache.’
‘What does it do?’
‘It doesn’t do anything.’
‘Oh.’
‘It just sits there on my lip.’
‘Does it go up your nose?’
‘No.’
‘Could I stroke it?’
‘No.’
‘Is it alive?’
‘No, it’s not alive.’
‘Can I have one?’
‘No.’
‘Why?’
‘Well, little girls don’t have moustaches.’
‘Why?’
‘Because they don’t.’
‘Can I have one when I grow up?’ ‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because ladies don’t have moustaches either.’
The little girl thought for a moment, tilted her head on one side before answering. ‘Well, my grannie’s got one!’
3
OLIVER
AND THE SCHOOL SUSPECTOR
The children sat straight-backed and silent at their desks, looking nervously at me. Their teacher – a tall, thin woman with a pale melancholic face, and dressed in a prim white blouse buttoned up to the neck – scanned her class with an expression that would freeze soup in cans.
‘Mr Phinn is a school inspector,’ she told the children. ‘He will be testing your reading this afternoon.’ She turned in my direction and in a sharp voice announced, ‘They are very good at reading, Mr Phinn.’
‘I am sure they are,’ I replied.
‘And you will find that they are competent, too, at arithmetic’ She turned to the class and fixed them with a gimlet eye. Are you not, children?’
‘Yes, miss,’ they chorused unenthusiastically.
And I bet you have a lot of fun in school,’ I said. I didn’t mean to sound sarcastic but, judging from the teacher’s expression, it must have appeared like that.
‘Mr Phinn,’ she said with a slight smile, ‘we do have a lot of fun in this school.’ She stared at her class. ‘Don’t we, children?’ The children stared impassively. ‘We really do have so much fun, don’t we?’ she repeated a little louder.
There were a few nods. I caught sight of a small studious-looking little boy at the back with large glasses and a mop of unruly red hair. He shook his head. The teacher had spotted him, too.
‘Yes, we do, Oliver! We’re always having fun.’ She fixed him with a rattle snake look and gave a little laugh. It was not a pleasant little laugh. ‘Too much to say for himself, that young man, Mr Phinn,’ the teacher confided in me in an undertone. ‘We do have a lot of fun.’
As I passed Oliver on my way out, I heard him mutter, ‘I must have been away that day’ I suppressed a smile.
‘Oliver,’ continued the teacher quickly, her face now rather more leering than smiling and her voice with quite a sharpness of tone to it, ‘would you go and ask the school secretary to ring the bell for dinnertime, please, there’s a good boy.’ The last phrase was said with some emphasis. ‘And shall we all now say “Goodbye” to Mr Phinn, children?’
‘Goodbye, Mr Phinn,’ the class intoned.
Goodbye,’ I said.
Oliver and I walked down the corridor together. ‘Can I ask you something, Mr Phinn?’ he said.
‘Of course.’
‘How do you become one of these suspectors, then?’
‘Inspectors, Oliver.’
‘How do you become one?’
‘Well, you have to work hard at school, read a lot of books and when you go up to the big school you have to pass your exams and that takes a long, long time.’
‘How old do you have to be?’ he asked.
‘You have to be twenty-one to be a teacher, even older to be a school inspector, so you have a long way to go.’
‘And then you can sit at the back of classrooms and watch people?’
‘That’s right.’
‘And hear children read?’
‘That’s right.’
‘And look at their writing?’
‘And look at their writing,’ I repeated.
The little boy looked up and then scratched at the shock of red hair. ‘And you get paid for it?’
‘And you get paid for it,’ I told him. He still looked very thoughtful, so I said: ‘Would you like to ask me anything else?’
‘No, not really, but…’ He paused.
‘Go on, Oliver. Have you got something to tell me?’
‘Well, Mr Phinn, I was just thinking, that when I’m twenty-one, you’ll probably be dead!’
4
CHLOË
AND THE CHICKS
In the Infant classroom, I discovered Miss Reece, a young woman with sandy-coloured hair tied back in a pony tail and wearing a bright yellow mohair jumper and pale cream slacks. She sat with the children clustered around her and was reading them a story from a large coloured picture book which was displayed on an easel beside her. One small girl sat on her knee. I crept to the back of the classroom, perched on a small melamine chair and listened.
‘I can see the little lamb bleating in the meadow,’ read the teacher slowly and dramatically. She pointed at the picture. ‘Can you see the little lamb, children? Isn’t he lovely and woolly?’ The children nodded vigorously. Miss Reece continued, ‘I can see the little calf mooing for his mother.’
‘He is, isn’t he, Chloë.’ The teacher read on. ‘I can see the little foal frisking in the field. “Frisking” is an unusual word, isn’t it, children?’
‘It means kicking up its legs, Miss Reece,’ called out a child sitting cross-legged in front of her.
‘Well done, Martin. It does mean that.’
‘He’s sweet, isn’t he, miss?’ said the little girl sitting on the teacher’s knee.
‘He is very sweet, Chloë,’ agreed the teacher, ‘but just listen, dear, there’s a good girl, otherwise we will never get to the end.’ She turned the page. ‘I can see the little piglet grunting in the grass.’
A small boy, with red hair and a runny nose, who was sitting directly in front of me, began snorting and grunting like a pig.
‘We don’t need the animal noises, John-Paul, thank you very much,’ said the teacher with a slight edge to her voice. ‘Just look at the pictures and listen to the words.’ She turned the page. ‘I can see the little chicks chirping in the farmyard.’ The small child sitting on the teacher’s knee leaned forward and looked intently at the picture of the bright yellow chicks. ‘They look as if they have just hatched out of their eggs, don’t they, children?’ said the teacher. ‘All soft and fluffy and golden.’
Chloë looked at the picture and then at the teacher and then back at the picture. After a moment she began stroking the teacher’s bright yellow mohair jumper.
‘Do you know, miss,’ she said in that loud, confident voice only possessed by young children, ‘you look as if you’ve just been laid.’
Miss Reece turned crimson and I nearly fell off the chair, laughing.
5
JOHN
HAS A MIDNIGHT SURPRISE
John was a serious little boy of about seven or eight, with tangled straw-coloured hair. I had been reading the story of Peter Rabbit in Mr McGregor’s garden to his class, and young John had spoken up, saying rabbits were a nuisance and should be shot.