"Eee made their glowin' colours, Eee made their tiny wings...
Aww fings bright and beaut-ee-fuw - aw creech-aahs grate ain' smaw..."
The school choir really wasn't on form today Sarah thought. For months she had been trying to make them say the words correctly let alone get them in tune or, god forbid, use a harmony. Anita Murphy, the tubby year nine girl in the front row centre was singing as flat as a pancake again, and louder than the rest. But she was such a nice girl Sarah just didn't have the heart to tell her or throw her out of the choir.
With a final "Lawd Gawd may 'dem all", sang with all the gusto the twelve to sixteen year olds could manage, Sarah Wells closed the lid of the piano and pushed her shoulder length chestnut hair away from her face and breathed a slow sigh of relief.
The Head teacher stood and smiled at the Choir and raised a sympathetic eyebrow to Sarah.
This he figured was probably going to be a one off; he'd been a teacher for twenty two years, a head teacher for five and he didn't know anyone that had ever had to give a message out quite like this one.
He'd had a letter from the County Education Service on Tuesday, a confirming phone call the next morning, then a visit from not only the Head of the Education Department but also the accompanying politician and some poor just-graduated kid from the Public Relations Department that was the only person around that late on a Thursday afternoon. This was going to be good and one not only for his retirement speech but also his memoires.
"Thank you very much Choir!" he said in his ebullient way. He raised his hands in applause and the assembly joined in without enthusiasm, there was no need to rush this. "Now boys and girls, I have a surprise for you on this bright if unpromising Friday morning." He lifted some notes from the desk, with an accompanying press cutting from the local newspaper, "Unless you have spent the last few weeks on the moon, you will know about the Hollywood Actor Bruce Young and his case at the Magistrates Court. Mr Young has been ordered to undertake community service." He waited for the rumble from the children to quieten, "Well," he looked down at his notes and read '200 hours' underlined twice in black pen then once more in red, "He'll be coming here to teach for a while..."
For a split second his audience sat stunned, then the clamour of more than seven hundred excited voices rose. "That'll do, settle down now!" he shouted. The head teacher never shouted, not ever.
The voices quietened sufficiently for him to carry on speaking. "Mr Young will be starting in school on Monday morning," the clamour rose again and several of the fringe male teachers stood threateningly, but doing no more than stare and point at individuals. "This will obviously create serious interest from the press and media," The head teacher hammered on the dais, "This will not effect the running of this school!" He shouted in a voice that few had ever heard from him. "Their will be no speaking with reporters or horsing around in front of the inevitable television cameras, I do not wish to see St Johns made to look like a bunch of idiots by that sort of thing. Hopefully we can get through this period with as little disturbance as possible. Dismiss from the back please Mr Taylor!" The babble rose again, "Quietly thank you!"
Sarah moved to the three columns that contained her class when the head called her name in his referee voice, "Miss Wells?!"
Oh no, what now. He couldn't be going to pick her up on the performance of the choir surely. She told the lead person to wait for her and nervously walked up onto the stage where the head was waiting. At twenty-six Sarah had only been teaching full time for two terms, having started the previous September from a variety of supply jobs. She was finding her feet without making too many mistakes but was still in awe of the head, relatively harmless as he was. It wasn't the best school on the planet but she had worked hard and was proud of what she had achieved since leaving University.
"Ah Sarah," he said when she reached him, "It's about when Mr Young joins us."
"Yes?"
"Well, bearing in mind his present employment it seems only natural that he joins your happy ranks in the music and drama department."
"What!" That was all she needed. She'd be babysitting some Prima Donna with an attitude, as well as looking after the class. The classes - she wouldn't get a stroke of work out of them all the time Bruce Young was there! Damn!
"Don't look so upset Sarah, I'm told he's quite personable once you get to know him."
"But Frank, how am I... What will he do?" she sighed exasperatedly.
"He will perform as directed, I've had very strict instructions. He will do exactly what you tell him to do, or its back to the Magistrates with him and porridge, slopping out and mailbags for a month. Look, don't worry about the superstar; I'm sure it'll all work out just fine. He has 200 hours to do at 25 hours a week it'll be done before you know it." He smiled and left her on the stage feeling mightily unsure of the next week's work. She took her class back to her workroom and the business of the day began.
Sarah's classroom was bright, airy and spacious as befitted a performing arts studio. The massed teenagers could talk of little else but the impending arrival of Bruce Young the next week.
"OK listen, Bruce Young is not the topic of conversation today; if you remember we were discussing Shakespeare - get your books out!" The usual Friday morning groans of 'oh Miss' and 'that's boring' were becoming like water of a ducks back to her now and she smiled indulgently at the class.
The group she had this morning was in fact her own class, and she had rather a soft spot for them. They were not high flyers by any means, some were quite wilful and disruptive, but they generally responded to her gentle kindness and knew exactly how far they could go. In fact her encouragement and simple faith had got several of them onto GCSE exam courses that they would not have taken ordinarily.
This particular morning the class would not settle into the usual routine and Sarah was forced to raise her voice a few times, which she always hated to do. She was pleased when lunchtime came and she could escape the school and its worries and spend a pleasant hour in her small flat drinking tea and playing with the cat.
Thanks to social media and the resulting press release, word of the newcomer had spread already and by the time she returned the school gates were blocked by men and women with cameras, microphones, notebooks and all the other instruments of torture used by the British Press.
She left it until the last minute to indicate her patronage of the school before she plunged into the ranks of people, head down mumbling 'excuse me-excuse me'
"Do you work here miss? - What do you think about 'the Brute' coming to your school? - Will you be working with him? - Do you think he can be trusted around all these children?"
She ignored all the questions and pushed through the throng. She had to fight the mass for control of her large shoulder bag with its books and papers. Eventually with a yank she managed to free it from whoever was holding it. The zip was a quarter open but nothing was missing
Bloody Bruce Young! Why did she have to put up with all this aggravation because of him?
He was the 'wild child' of the English stage - nicknamed 'Brute' Young because of his widely reported episodes of temper off screen. His last 'incident had made the headlines because his management had been unable to buy off the owner of the hotel room he had wrecked and he had ended up in court looking very cross. Wanting to make an example the town magistrates gave him community service, as much as they were able, and a smart probation officer suggested that seeing as he had no record of 'physical violence' and he was very well qualified he could go to Sarah's school, the nearest and largest state comprehensive.
The Coffee shop copy of The Times on Saturday morning had a small by-line that mentioned Bruce Young's misdemeanour and his punishment. As she flashed through the side article skimming over some mention of him teaching before, she went straight to the mid-section that stated that on his average fee for appearing in movies and on TV, the school should be paying him almost £3.3 million for his 200 hours.
Over three million pounds for 2 months work! She barely made £5,000 for that amount of time and she just knew that he'd be watching the clock the whole time and his chauffeur would be waiting in the staff car park for him once he'd whined and bitched his way through his few hours of what he would laughingly call 'work'.
At her parents' house for Sunday lunch she scanned through one of the tabloids that Mum read just for the gossip and it calculated that he was losing over a million and half for his little 'mistake' in the hotel. Dad's vast Observer which was much more her particular taste featured an 'unofficial' interview with his friend and confidant the crime writer Russell Andrew and the paper's Celebrity reporter, where he insisted that the superstar didn't damage hotel rooms and it was some kind of strange plot against him. The editorial suggested, slightly tongue in cheek, that this was really strange that such a conspiracy should follow him across the globe, ending with the advice that if he reduced his vast consumption of alcohol he might be able to get the bottom of it.
Handing around the coffee, her mother asked why she looked so annoyed.
"This man," she almost spat out, "I'm stuck with this bloody man for eight bloody weeks. I'm going to get nothing done with him around, and I'll get the blame for the kids not learning anything."
"Oh Bruce Young!" said Mum looking at his pictures in the colour supplement, "He's one of my favourites," she looked at a second picture of the dark hunk - a still picture from one of his recent movies showing him bare-chested and on horseback, "He's very attractive isn't he."
"Oh God no," said Sarah, "He doesn't do that much for me I'm afraid."
"This report he says he didn't do it," said her father stirring sugar into his coffee.
"And you believe him?" said Sarah.
