Mrs Foster

I had a teacher called Mrs Foster. She had buck teeth and an eager
face, but no, she didn't look like a beaver or a rabbit; her eyes were
big and blinky, and her hair was curling all over the place. One of the
things she did, to get us interested in life outside our little world,
was to give us a blank postcard every week, first thing monday morning.
We must of been about eight. She called it our People Card. Along with
this she would give us a name, just a first name. It was usually a
foreign-sounding name, like Hedwig or Chang.

When we had a spare moment in the week we had to write or draw anything
we liked on the card. We could write about ourselves or what happened
to us that day, or write a story, or draw a cartoon, whatever we liked.
We would put their name on it, and then sign it with ours. On Friday
Mrs Foster would gather them up. She wrapped a couple of elastic bands
round them, like she was doing a magic trick. Then they would go into
her carrier bag. At the end of the day she said "Goodbye class" and we
said "Goodbye Mrs Foster" and we walked out. I never saw her walk out
with the carrier bag but sometimes, on my way home, she went past in
her car.

Do you know, my dad used to take me out for walks in the fields round
the back of our estate. And I used to ask him what this flower was, and
what that tree was, and he never knew. Sometimes he would say "I don't
know, Craigy, look it up when you get home." Sometimes he would
bullshit, "That's a flowering banana plant. Don't know what that's
doing there, you usually only get those in temperate regions," and so
on.

I would riffle through a tree book when we got home. Usually it made no
sense, there were always several trees with similar leaves. And flowers
- forget it. Mum was no help, because she was dead.

At the end of half term Mrs Foster would bring in a bag-load of replies
to our postcards, from children all over the world, drawing pictures
just like ours, or writing words we couldn't even understand. It was
fantastic.

I've got kids of my own now. Two of them, one girl and one boy, six and
eight. I took them to the fair last weekend. There was a lot of
screaming coming from the Ghost Train so we went on that. It was a con.
All they did on the way round was squirt you with water, to make the
kids scream. When we got to the end of the ride my eldest said "fucking
Gippoes." He must of heard me saying that some time. The bloke shunting
us out of the carts said "What was that your kid said?"

"Nothing mate," I said, lying, because I couldn't think of anything
else to say.

"Funny cos I thought I heard him say 'fucking Gippoes.'"

"No mate, I swear he didn't. Did you son?"

"No dad," says Pauly.

The bloke came up close to my face and said "I suggest you make
yourself scarce mate. If your kids weren't present I'd..." And I didn't
hear the rest because he was clearing out the next cart.

We left after that.

We were parked in a back street by a river. On the way back to the car
we heard a commotion going on down the road. A man, pissed up I
suppose, was crying, screaming his heart out, "She's taken my baby,
she's taken my baby." His voice was so hoarse that it took me a while
to cotton on to what he was saying. He was scrabbling at the railings
like a toddler, trying to get over them to jump in the river, while a
couple of blokes held him back. It was a terrible sight to see a grown
man in such a desperate state. We watched for a while until the police
turned up, and then we got in the car.

I don't know where Mrs Foster is now. I didn't keep in touch with
anyone from that school. I've been on Friends Reunited and seen some
familiar names, but it's only the successful ones that put their
details up there. They say "I work in the City" or "I went travelling
for a year and ended up getting a job in Japan." For mine I put: "After
I left school I went into the Ministry of Defence and now work abroad.
That's all I am allowed to say."

The other night I watched a Panorama programme about life in
Afghanistan. Do you know some people out there don't know what a camera
looks like? The photographer was swarmed with people as he pointed this
thing at them. And when they saw that he could play it back to them, on
a tiny screen, their little faces looked like they'd just seen magic in
front of their eyes. The biggest, most brutal thugs became children as
they stared at this thing.

By the way I made that up about Mrs Foster. We didn't have a teacher
like that, but I wish we had.