Thoughts on class of Mitchell Street and ptetty tyrants,

or, Bunter Thinks It Over.

Coming back to my earlier musings I knew this was only some aspect of my
personality I had grown up with, that it wasn’t really me. I could blame it on others,
my mother, who were quick to point out my (apparent) inadequacies, who would
endeavour to convince me I was lacking in something everyone else on the planet
was born with; common-sense, according to her. Presumably it was her common
sense that informed her of this. She and her common sense were on very good terms,
and were as unanimous in their opinion and contemptuous hatred of me for not
having any to speak of as she was of my equally blatant stupidity. A circular and
conveniently impregnable onslaught, a paradoxical viewpoint as vice-like, as
inflexible as one of those stiff penknives where I might chip a nail trying to prise it
open. Sometimes it was as if the world was trying to provoke me beyond all
endurance: that most of the time it felt as if I was in a state of suppressed anger and
frustration; that the natural response of any sane and reasonable person would be to
strike out. Daily stupidities and assumptions and humiliations minor and major that if
I were to respond to them as I felt and knew them to be for what they were, I knew
my relations with others, with home life, with school, would shift from sullen or
closed-lipped tolerance to outright war. That there was conflict wasn’t in question.
Their often-unwarranted contempt and tyrannical outbursts and even demeanour
made that clear enough.
What was almost just as intolerable was the complacent assumption I could see
on their faces, of their place in the status quo as they went about in their trance it and
so they could never seriously be called to account. The system worked for them as it
was on their side. I only had to think of the casual and threatened nastiness, of dire
consequences for anyone who such as hinted they might have an ounce of self-
motivated thought or humour, when our class had the honour of being visited by one
Miss Ramsden, some crazy old bint, bitter with bile and hatred and hatred of us
because we were young and powerless but we still had our whole lives before us.
But for the time being, this merciless, odious dingbat had us in the clutches of
her harpy talons and she would relish it as long as she could make it last. Short of
some loved one suffering over some agonising and wasting disease at the time, I see
no other explanation for such behaviour on her part. Time was suddenly an
excruciating and protracted thing as my emotions veered from a sort of horrified
incredulity, mixed amusement, contempt, and self-contempt, over her sarcastic
humour, and the wish I could slink between the space in the floorboards along with
the almost imperceptible and forbidden thought of what it would be like to walk out
onto the floor and inform her she should go and fuck herself. Because what with all
this self-reverential grimness and hollow humour I could really do with a bit of
cheering up, a song and dance perhaps, in contrast to this bizarre in the extreme
assertion of one person’s personality, headmistress or not; hey, there was a whole
world out there.
 Of Batman, and camaraderie with your friends, and beautiful girls, (as here, only
we had to keep shtum and listen to egomaniacal prattle) and woods and fields and
music and the future. I watched her as she prattled on in her concise and icy way, in
her old woman’s fashion sense with her dull skirt and tan tights and quaint little
shoes, with her pinched little features and tight lips. A part of me felt like the nothings
were supposed to feel, awed by her authority, powerless in the knowledge we had no
say in it. Another part saw it as absurd; that it was obvious she was an anachronism, a
dinosaur in a world of Science Fiction and Marvel Comics and Mungo Jerry and Joni
Mitchell and Smokey Robinson. Chart favourites. I knew at a glance that she would
hate them all by extention, me along with them. It seemed increasingly outrageous we
had to be here at all, having to listen to this vacuous egotist who so clearly detested
us; or was it directed only to certain members of the class? My own thoughts and
feelings were surely all the conformation she needed to justify it. As if all her
implied menace were directed at me. As for her occasional and lame humour, it
wasn’t fooling anyone, and perhaps it wasn’t meant to and that was the overtly
sinister aspect of the whole charade.
Because the born conformists didn’t have anything to worry about. It was the
kids who saw it for what it was who knew it spoke to them as it was meant for them.
A spark of individuality, an original thought or honest emotion was synonymous with
seeing oneself as a troublemaker, a marked man, the guilty party. The very set-up had
the effect of making me feel guilty. Not that I was capable of articulating any of this
to myself or was in a position to. In these situations I tended to go into myself and
examine my own troubling feelings and emotions. And as much as my fear would
negate my sense of self there would still be that part of me that looked to see the
situation as objectively as I could, the humorous, mischievous, intelligent aspect, that
saw it as ludicrous this frail middle-aged woman would think she could browbeat me
– and us – into seeing ourselves as nonentities by comparison. Try it out in the street
you old bag and we’d pelt you with eggs – of it weren’t for that she knew us. I knew
that on some level she was a coward as well as a bully. That in some way she was no
different from how she tried to make us feel. Because she threw away or merged her
own personality with her job and status and used them as an excuse to indulge and
exaggerate the more venal aspects of her personality in the guise of moral instruction
while everything about her patronising, condescending tone and attitude told us she
was better than us, even the pupils, girls, she supposedly revered, compared to grubby
little oiks like me. There was something seriously awry here. I hoped that one day I
would come to grips with it.

I saw her years later when I helped run a small disco in a church hall when I was
eighteen. The year punk exploded on the scene and I was also exploring heavy metal
as well as more classical. Beethoven was a favourite. Ivor would sell his dad's
elpee's to me. They'd been sitting in a box upstairs for years. There were also some
Sibelius but I'd never heard of him. I would later. I'd left home the year before and
lived with a girlfriend; we were as unsuited to each other as was the work/job I'd met
her at. My mother had picked that one up for me to bring in some cash. My own
interests were irrelevant. The job was now gone as was having to directly tolerate
her. The girlfriend had asked me out through someone else and I'd stupidly let things
go on from there. It was a way of escape. From one stupidity to another. That and I
could indulge my book habit and had accumulated another 500. I kept them in a big
box in the small flat. They were as irrelevant to my silly big-boobed girl-friend. I'd
recently read That'll Be The Day after I saw the movie, and Colin Wilson's The Killer.

Anyway, we were setting things up, or rather, Ivor and the rest were, as I didn't
understand the technicalities and it was mostly their 'do' anyway. The place was still
empty except for a couple of old women near the entrance, packing something into
boxes, doing their bit for the community. I recognized one of them and it was
Ramsden. What to say to her? Funny how these people who had formerly seen
themselves as omnipotent fell far short of omniscience. Otherwise it might occur to
them that life has a way of lining up unexpected coincidences. Murphy's Law. Life
goes on. Maybe she would turn out to be as formidably mouthy and full of herself
and own self-importance now as she was then. It could be interesting. Or
embarrassing. I didn't have the ruthless, one-dimensional outlook of these people.
And what if I upset her, embarrassed her in front of her friend. I had to be furious,
that was the trouble, and the events were so long ago, relatively speaking. I doubted
she was still teaching now. Easier to make excuses for the liberty taking petty-
minded little Nazi homunculus. Not that I was particularly worried about what she
might try and do about it. We all knew the rector of the church next door ran the hall
and I was a minor fixture in this place. Nor would it've been any great loss. I'd have
felt I was picking on some harmless old woman. And that's how she'd present
herself. And they always had their excuses and justifications. It was the way of the
world, as then. I didn't have to be like her, any of them. She was a deluded fool and
now just an even older deluded fool. It was all too tedious and boring to deal with;
just not worth the effort.