Please, Sir‪!‬

There were two reasons why I went into teaching. The first, that I rather liked the look of the columns of red ticks in teachers’ registers – the second, that I couldn’t think of anything else to do.

I’m antique now. Not one of the valuable sort, I’m afraid. But a few memories may amuse you of those far-off days: a child who accidentally called me Daddy; a teacher who lost his false teeth down the loo and found them again; a parent who thought a book we were about to study in 6th Form was Chinese; a girl who asked in all earnestness, “Please, Sir! how do you spell pissed?”

At times teaching was like a game of snakes and ladders – the ladders, a few strokes of luck and chance, the snakes, certain people who writhed themselves into the profession, troublesome, ignorant, sometimes venomous. And, with luck, now extinct.

But mainly teaching was about youngsters, the people who became the men and women of the England we knew, Please, Sir! is about them.