littlemoose

Gah. The builders were supposed to be here today, but are coming tomorrow instead... and the OT is coming tomorrow too... and mum's looking after her friend's little boy again...

Gah. Gah, I say.

On the plus side, I finished the assignment for writers class. It's quite long, but if you'd like to read it:

'Mental Arithmetic 4', everyone in the class had a copy.

A4 sized floppy bound workbooks of a dull grey colour that held pages of multiplication and long division in ordered rows, bordered by a line of boxes awaiting the answers worked out by eager young minds.

I hated Friday mornings. Hated the half hour that awaited after prayers and roll call, where copies of 'Mental Arithmetic 4' bounced down in front of each pupil like a malevolent meteor shower. The teacher would call for quiet and, for half an hour, all that could be heard in the stale, stuffy air was the scratching of pencils on cheap recycled paper.

It was always me. Once that half hour was up she would look around the room, venomous glare piercing us from behind glasses that made her eyes look small and piggy. She would point and snap, "Bring up your book!" at her unsuspecting victim.

But it was always me. She had me right at the front of the room anyway, close enough to see every pencil mark, hear every whisper, and that day she knew she had struck gold.

Every box on my page was empty.

The sound of my chair legs scraping on the tiles reverberated around the death-silent room. With suddenly clammy hands I gathered up my workbook and marched slowly up to the side of her table.

"What do you have for question five?"

The gossiping girls at the back of the room leant forward in their plastic seats.

"Nothing, miss."

"Question ten?"

"Nothing, miss."

She snatched the book out of my hands, holding the blank page up for everyone to see. Her voice had become a thunderstorm of scorn.

"You haven't answered any of these questions! Are you too good to do sums, is that it?"

My shoes suddenly became the most interesting thing in the room.

"No miss."

She eased back down into her chair, flicking slowly through the working-out covered pages of my workbook.

"Five out of ten, two out of ten, nought out of ten. Do you actually know anything?"

From somewhere beyond the blurring image of my shoes and the floor, the answer came to me and bubbled out of my mouth before I could stop it.

Strong and clear I said, "Yes."

Her head snapped around, surprise etched over the distaste on her face.

"Oh you do? What?"

"I… I'm good at writing."

She seized my wrist with painful fingers, forcing the battered maths book back into my trembling fist.

"Writing!" She spat, glasses flashing dangerously. "And where are airy-fairy words going to get you? You don't know anything that matters."

She looked at the rest of the class, soaking up this latest drama like rows of spiteful sponges.

"Get changed for P.E. Not you." She added, not letting go of my wrist. "You get out your jotter."

I scrambled back to my place, pulling the book from my bag, wiping my eyes desperately under the desk.

Soon the room was filled with the colours of P.E. class, football kits, stripy T-shirts… and me in my navy uniform.

We marched along the corridor to the hall and while the other kids were busy getting out the sponge balls I found myself perching on a rickety old stool behind the dusty piano.

She snatched my jotter from me, tearing through the pages until she found the first blank one and throwing it back at me.

"You will write out the eight times table," she said, the words rolling from her lips with relish, "write out each sum ten times, then when you've finished, start again."

The noise and colour and joyous relief of a frantic dodgeball game faded and were lost behind pencil scratches and sloping rows of blurring numbers.

When the hour was up, and the lunchbell rang, I tottered from my stool, holding up my jotter for her inspection. Not even looking at the pages she nodded curtly and I was free to go.

Doing my homework that night at home, in the safety of the dining room, I pulled open my jotter; looking at the sums I had been forced to write out. I had transposed the digits of one of the answers, making all the others that I had counted out on my fingers behind the piano, completely wrong.

I buried my head against the cheap paper and cried useless, angry tears.