THE BAD OLD DAYS

Les looks back at his youth with a mixture of regret and envy

If only they had produced school teachers in my day like what they do today, how much better my education would have been. Most of the teachers I came across all looked about 87 and most of them had bad teeth as well!

Today it's all rather different, well if what I have been reading about in one of our national newspapers is anything to go by. It appears that a lovely lady geography teacher aged 25, well she looked to me rather lovely according to her photograph, has been brought before the courts for what was described as "snogging" a pupil.

The court was told she had kissed a young man, who was 15 years of age, and 6ft tall, (steady ladies), twice in a classroom and once when she had enticed him in to a stationery cupboard.

We never had stationery cupboards in my day as a result I was never enticed in to one. Come to think of it, reflecting on what our teachers looked like then, I had much to be thankful for.

I was talking to a dear friend of mine the other day, no it wasn't the one who goes on holiday to Sheringham with his dog and wife, not his wife, someone else's, no you have heard that tale before so no way do I intend to repeat it, some of my tales might be boring but never repetitive.

My dear friend, who in another life was a school teacher, on hearing my story jumped to the defence of those in his former profession reliving his own experiences which to this day still obviously troubles him.

And to think that while at this time I was employed in the comparative secure, and in many ways such a fulfilling, job digging up carrots on Methwold Fen, my dear, dear friend was in a centrally heated classroom wearing his best suit, the one his mother bought him when he past his driving test, and having to overcome almost constant harassment from young females who left nothing to the imagination as to what they would do to him if ever they got him on to the banks of the River Wissey.

It is only when I listen to such stories do I stop and reflect on what a credit my dear friend was to his chosen, but never-the-less most noble profession. And yet to this day he still retains, in spite of everything, his sense of humour and this very much came to the fore recently when he received a visit from his new Vicar.

A wry smile crossed my friend's face as he listen to the Vicar recalling how in church last Sunday he had to announce that the drip in the pulpit came about as a result of heavy rain and not what some members of the congregation thought.

As the Vicar left my friends house he informed him that he had unveiled his church new planned giving slogan which was, "I have upped my pledge- now up yours" and with that he was gone.

Les Lawrence