The Heart of the Dales

by Gervase Phinn

  ‘James Oliver Jonathan Ormerod,’ he replied. ‘My granddad calls me Jo-Jo but my dad calls me Jack.’

  ‘Well, Jack,’ I said pleasantly, ‘you’re going to hear the story again.’

  ‘But I know what happens,’ he replied.

  ‘So do I,’ said another.

  ‘And I do,’ added a third.

  ‘Well, it’s always good to hear a story again,’ I told them.

  ‘Why?’ asked Rhiannon.

  ‘Well, because it is,’ I replied feebly. ‘And you haven’t heard me tell it, have you?’

  ‘My grandpa’s read it to me,’ said Rhiannon. ‘He’s got the book with pictures in it and he’s really good at reading stories.’

  ‘Have you got the book with pictures in it?’ asked the child who was afraid of sharks.

  ‘No, I haven’t,’ I replied, wondering just what I had let myself in for.

  ‘And he pulls faces and makes noises as well,’ added Rhiannon.

  ‘Does he?’

  ‘Are you going to pull faces and make noises?’ asked Jack.

  ‘No, I’m not,’ I said sharply. ‘Now, let us all sit up nice and straight, children, ready to listen, otherwise we won’t hear the story.’

  ‘I know what happens,’ said Jack, turning to face the rest of the class.

  Undeterred, I began. ‘Once upon a time there were three Billy Goats Gruff. There was the father, Big Billy Goat Gruff; the mother, Medium-Sized Billy Goat Gruff; and –’

  ‘Little Billy Goat Gruff,’ cut in Jack.

  ‘Little goats are called kids,’ added Rhiannon.

  ‘And Little Billy Goat Gruff,’ I repeated, fixing Jack with an eagle eye. ‘They lived in a valley in the cold cold winter to keep warm, but when spring came they climbed up to the rich green meadow on the hillside –’

  ‘And crossed a bridge,’ interrupted Jack, before wiping his nose on the sleeve of his jersey. ‘They have to cross a bridge.’

  ‘We’ve not got to the bridge yet,’ I told him, and continued. ‘They climbed up to the meadow on the hillside to eat the fresh green grass that grew there. Each morning, when the sun shone high in the sky, they would run across the fields and, as Jack has already told us all, they would cross the rickety-rackety old wooden bridge that spanned the river.’

  ‘I wouldn’t like to go over a rickety-rackety old wooden bridge,’ said the child who was afraid of sharks. ‘It sounds dangerous.’

  ‘Well, the Billy Goats Gruff were very careful when they went over the bridge,’ I told her.

  ‘And there’s this troll under it,’ said Jack, pulling a gruesome face and growling. ‘Grrr! Grrr!’

  ‘Yes, I know there is,’ I said, ‘and we haven’t got to the troll yet. Now, be a good boy, Jack, and listen to the story. You’re spoiling it for everyone else.’ I proceeded. ‘Every day, the billy goats liked to cross the rickety-rackety old wooden bridge which went over the river, to get to the fresh green grass on the other side.’

  ‘You’ve told us that,’ said Rhiannon.

  ‘Now, in the darkness under the bridge there lived a mean and ugly troll, with eyes as big as saucers, ears as sharp as knives and a nose as long as a poker.’

  ‘He can’t help being like that,’ announced Rhiannon.

  ‘No, I don’t suppose he could,’ I said.

  ‘My grandpa says that people can’t help the way they look.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ I sighed. ‘Now this troll –’

  ‘I told you there was the troll,’ mumbled Jack.

  ‘This troll,’ I continued quickly, ‘was very bad-tempered and unfriendly.’

  ‘Like my granny,’ said the child frightened of spiders. ‘She’s very bad-tempered and unfriendly.’

  I moved on hurriedly. ‘The troll was always hungry and slept for most of the time.’

  ‘Like my granny,’ said the child. ‘She’s always hungry and sleeps for most of the time.’

  I sighed, and continued: ‘And the ugly troll waited under the bridge for creatures to cross, and then he gobbled them up.’

  ‘With great sharp teeth and claws,’ added Jack.

  ‘That’s right,’ I said, ‘and –’

  ‘I know what I’d do if an ugly troll with sharp teeth and claws jumped out on me,’ said Jack.

  ‘And what would you do, Jack?’ I asked wearily.

  ‘I’d shit myself !’

  ‘Perhaps we ought to have another story,’ I suggested, reaching over to the bookcase.

  9

  Mr Hornchurch greeted me enthusiastically when I entered his classroom later that afternoon, shaking my hand vigorously and telling the children what a pleasure it was to have such a distinguished visitor in their midst. I feared that this warm welcome was going to make my meeting with him later in the afternoon all the more difficult.

  At first glance, the teacher seemed to have followed the recommendations in my last report since his classroom was now a whole lot tidier. On my first visit, the mass of clutter and colour that I had walked into would have been the perfect set for a film version of The Old Curiosity Shop. Huge posters, bookjackets and long lists of difficult and awkward words had covered every wall, revolving mobiles had hung from the ceiling, boxes of every conceivable shape and size had been stacked in a corner along with piles of books and a basket of footballs and cricket equipment. On two large trestle tables there had been old tins and strangely-shaped bottles, bleached skulls and old bird feathers, shards of pottery and clay models. Now it looked more like the conventional classroom, far better organised and neater but, I guessed for the children, a great deal less interesting.

  Mr Hornchurch’s appearance had undergone a change, too. He was now dressed more conservatively in a pair of baggy blue corduroy trousers, shapeless tweed jacket, white shirt, and a loud kipper tie. However, he still had the wild and woolly head of mousy hair surrounding his long pale face.

  Having wished me good afternoon, the junior class resumed their activities. One group of children was gathered round the teacher as he conducted an experiment involving a tankof water and various objects. They were predicting whether various objects would sink or float, and I listened for a while to a fascinating and impressive discussion. It was explained to me by one of the pupils that the class was to visit the Science Museum in London the following weekend, and they were undertaking some preparatory work. Another group was busy writing a play the class would perform at the end of term, while a third group was writing stories. The classroom was a hive of creative activity and not once did the teacher have to tell any child to get on with his or her work.

  ‘May I look?’ I asked a blond-haired boy with large ears who was poring over an exercise book.

  ‘Sure,’ he replied, sliding the book across the desk. I sat next to him and examined his work. He watched me for a moment before telling me, ‘I’m writing a newspaper article about the effects of pollution on the marine environment. We went on a trip with Mr Hornchurch to an aquarium last Saturday and we learnt all about oil tanker leaks and the rubbish that gets dumped in the oceans of the world, so I’ve got lots of facts and figures.’

  It was an excellent piece of work – clear, well structured and neatly written. I glanced though his exercise book and was struck by the quality of the other pieces of writing. His work was unusually accurate and well presented for one so young.

  ‘You’re a fine writer,’ I told the boy.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘I want to be a journalist like my mum when I leave school.’

  ‘And you seem to be a very good speller,’ I said. ‘How old are you?’

  ‘Eleven,’ he replied.

  ‘I don’t think I’ve ever met an eleven-year-old as good at spelling as you.’

  The boy smiled broadly. ‘Cheers, mate!’ he said, nudging my arm with his elbow.

  ‘Is everyone in the class as good as you?’ I asked.

  ‘Mostly,’ he told me. ‘You see, we do quite a bit on spellings with Mr Hornchurch.’

  �
��And what do you do to become so good?’ I asked.

  ‘Well,’ replied the boy, ‘we do rules for a start.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘There’s “i” before “e” except after “c”. Of course, it doesn’t always work. Mr Hornchurch says that where there’s a rule, there’s generally an exception.’

  ‘He’s right there,’ I agreed. ‘At school I learnt the little poem:

  It is “i” before “e”;,

  Except after “c”,

  Or when it is “eigh”,

  As in “neighbour” and “weigh”.’

  ‘That rule works with me,’ the boy continued, ‘because I’m called Kieran but it doesn’t work with my mum, she’s called Sheila, and it doesn’t work with my dad, he’s called Keith. They’re what’s called ‘irregulars’. We list any irregulars in our spelling book.’ The boy reached into the drawer beneath his table and produced a notebook. On each page was a different spelling rule neatly written out in large black letters. ‘So you see,’ he explained, ‘under the irregulars for this rule we have: “weigh” and “weight”, “freight” and “height”, “heir”, “heifer”, “beige”, “feign”, “weir” and loads of others. Mr Hornchurch says the English spelling system is really confusing, specially to those trying to learn the language. He says that foreigners have to learn the language three times: first its meaning, then how to pronounce it and then how to spell it.’

  ‘I see,’ I said, extremely impressed. I thought at that moment of Mrs Sidebottom and tried to imagine the fun foreigners would have attempting to pronounce her name.

  ‘When Mr Hornchurch was at university, he studied languages and taught foreign students over the summer holidays. He used to ask each of them to read a sentence at the end of the course. Hold on a minute, I’ve got it written down in my jotter.’ The boy reached into the drawer again and produced another book. ‘This is the sentence: “A rough-coated, dough-faced, tough-looking thoughtful ploughman strode through the streets of Scarborough, and after falling into a slough by the side of a lough, he coughed and hiccoughed and went on his way.”’

  ‘That’s very good,’ I said, chuckling.

  ‘Mr Hornchurch said that if the students could pronounce all the words correctly at the end of the course, they had just about mastered the English language and they had been taught well.’

  ‘You don’t seem to have a problem with the English language, Kieran,’ I told the boy, ‘and Mr Hornchurch appears to have taught you very well indeed.’

  ‘He’s a good teacher is Mr Hornchurch. He makes the lessons interesting, and likes a laugh – but he sometimes comes out with things.’

  ‘Does he?’ I said, my thoughts returning fast to the principal reason for my visit to the school. I wondered just what the ‘things’ were that the teacher came out with.

  ‘He uses unusual words and expressions. He says, ‘English is a real can of worms, as slippery as a snake in olive oil, like walking blindfolded through a minefield.’ He’s full of expressions like that.’

  ‘Well, you seem to be pretty knowledgeable about the English language,’ I told him and I meant it.

  ‘Look at this word for example,’ said the boy, picking up a pencil and a scrap of paper and scribbling something. ‘Look at that word – “GHOTI”. How would you pronounce that, then?’

  I had come across George Bernard Shaw’s capricious spelling before. I often used this word on my English courses to demonstrate what I grandly called ‘the orthographic irregularities’ in the English language. However, I decided with young Kieran to play dumb. ‘I’ve never heard of it,’ I said, ‘but I suppose I would say “goaty”.’

  ‘It says “fish”,’ the boy informed me. ‘You have “gh” as in “laugh”, “o” as in “women” and “ti” as in “station”. Mr Horn-church said he was shown this by a famous writer called George Bernard Shaw – probably a friend of Mr Hornchurch’s.’

  ‘Well, I don’t think your teacher has actually met George Bernard Shaw,’ I said, ‘but I do know that that particular writer was very keen on making spelling easier for people.’

  ‘But we don’t just do rules,’ the boy continued. ‘We learn what Mr Hornchurch calls “little wrinkles”.’

  ‘Go on,’ I said, intrigued.

  ‘Say if you want to learn a particular word like “necessary”. We learn a “little wrinkle” – “one coffee and two sugars” – then you remember it has one letter “c” and two letter “s”s. “Accommodation” is another difficult word – “two cottages and two mansions” – and you remember the two “c”s and two “m”s.’

  ‘That’s very good,’ I said, laughing.

  ‘Mr Hornchurch’s got loads of “little wrinkles” and we also work out our own.’

  ‘I must try myself,’ I told him.

  ‘Then we do mnemonics,’ said the boy.

  ‘“Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain”,’ I said.

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘That’s a mnemonic,’ I told him, ‘to help remember the colours of the rainbow in sequence: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet. If you want to learn the order of the planets you learn: “My Very Easy Method Just Speeds Up Naming Planets” for Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto.’

  ‘It’s good that,’ said the boy. ‘I’m going to write that down in my jotter. Mr Hornchurch says that if we come across something interesting, or an unusual word or phrase or an old expression, we should write it down because it may come in useful later on when we are doing our writing.’

  ‘That’s a very sensible idea,’ I said, and watched the boy begin to write the two mnemonics I had given him. ‘Well, thank you for talking to me, Kieran,’ I said, standing and getting ready to see what the other children in the class were doing.

  ‘Don’t go yet,’ he pleaded. ‘I’ve not explained what mnemonics we use to help us remember how to spell difficult words.’

  ‘Very well,’ I said, sitting down again.

  ‘As I was telling you, we work out mnemonics for difficult words. Take “because” – “big elephants can always understand small elephants”; “rhythm” – “rejoice heartily, your teacher has measles”. Then there’s “embarrass” – “every mother’s boy acts rather rudely after some sausages”. You can work out a mnemonic for any difficult spelling.’

  As the boy spoke I was reminded of the word that was almost consistently misspelt in letters I received from parents when I was a teacher. The word was ‘diarrhoea’. One very inventive parent wrote to me saying that, ‘Debbie is off with dire rear’, another that his son was absent with ‘diahr, dihia, diahrh,’ with all three attempts crossed out and then the phrase, ‘the shits’ written after it.

  ‘See if you can work out a mnemonic for “diarrhoea”. Do you know how to spell that?’

  The boy shook his blond head.

  ‘Look the word up in the dictionary, and then see if you can think of a sentence to help you remember how to spell it.’

  ‘I’ll have a go,’ he said and off he went to find a dictionary.

  I turned my attention now to two girls working together on the next table, which was covered with brochures and booklets.

  ‘Once you get Kieran started,’ the first girl told me confidentially, ‘you can’t shut him up. Mr Hornchurch says he talks like a Gatling gun, whatever one of those is.’

  ‘May I ask what you’re doing?’

  ‘Me and Miranda – I’m Rowena, by the way –’ said the girl, ‘are writing a guide for the aquarium of the future. We all visited the aquarium last Saturday and –’

  ‘I d-didn’t,’ interrupted her partner, a mousy little girl with large glasses.

  ‘Well, no, Miranda, you didn’t go but the rest of the class did,’ continued Rowena.

  ‘My f-father wouldn’t l-let me g-go,’ stuttered Miranda, ‘H-he said I had to s-stay at h-home to p-practise my p-piano. He d-doesn’t believe in s-school trips. He s-says they’re a waste of t-
time.’

  ‘Well, perhaps he’ll take you to the aquarium himself one day,’ I said.

  ‘N-no, he w-won’t. He’s always too b-busy,’ said the child, firmly.

  Undoubtedly, this diffident girl with the pronounced stutter, large sad eyes and small pinched face was the child who had innocently been the cause of all the upset.

  ‘Anyhow,’ said Rowena, ‘we visited this brilliant aquarium and we had a talk from this woman fish expert – she’s called a piscatologist or something – who says there are hundreds of species of fish no one ever sees because they are so deep down in the ocean where no divers can go.’

  ‘Why can’t the deep-sea divers see them?’ I asked. Very often inspectors askpseudo-questions. They know the answers and are merely testing to see if the children know. I always found it refreshing to ask a real question.

  ‘Because the water pressure is too great right at the bottom of the sea,’ the child told me. ‘But Mr Hornchurch says eventually we will be able to see them when scientists have invented special breathing apparatus.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Mr Hornchurch says the deep ocean is the greatest frontier of discovery.’

  ‘So what have you written so far?’ I asked.

  The girl shuffed through the papers. ‘This is our second draft. We’ve just got it back from Mr Hornchurch with ideas on how we can improve it.’

  ‘Would you like to read it to me?’ I asked.

  Rowena gave a dry little cough. ‘Hem-hem.’ Then she read. ‘“Eleven thousand fathoms down in a dark, dark world where man has never been, there are sorts of alien life forms. There are snails, molluscs, octopuses, squids, eels and crustaceans.”’ She stopped and giggled. ‘I didn’t know what the last word was or how to spell it so I wrote “crushed Asians”. Mr Horn-church said it was a very good attempt.’ She read on. ‘“There’s a big variety of very strange fish at the bottom of the deep black sea. There’s gaper eels with big eyes at the front of their heads, vampire squids with flappy ears like Dumbo and white jaws and blood red eyes, there’s angler fish, headlight fish, sea stars and dragon fish which light up their prey before gobbling them up.”’