Diary of a Head
‘I am just going outside and may be some time’
What fond memories do snow days have for you? Stuart Mcleod has
So, on 5 March 2009 I set out determined to
an aversion to snow that goes back a long way...
succeed. Perhaps I should have followed King
Wenceslas and let some other poor sap deal
with it, but that’s what the National Standards
‘T
he north wind doth blow, and we to enquire. Hilarity ensued as I became the butt for Headteachers are all about – being a lead-
shall have snow, and what will poor (literally) of their humour. The ultimate indig- er! I reached the bottom of the Hill of Doom
headteacher do then, poor thing? nity came soon afterwards in the shape of my only to be confronted with a huge refuse lorry
He’ll set out to school and look quite a fool, teacher, Miss Beamson, spinster of the parish that had jack-knifed. When the driver engaged
while listening to Snow Patrol on the CD play- and aged 103, with a pan of lukewarm water his gears it began to perform a Jane Torvill-
er, poor thing!’ to detach me from the toilet of torture. Can you style double-axel towards me. Time to get out
Any idea what Wednesday 17 December imagine the merriment that caused in the staff of the car and ring staff. No mobile signal.
1997 and Thursday 5 March 2009 have in room? Ever since then the mention of school People abandoning their cars on the hill and
common? No? The answer is they were the two toilets has precipitated a rush for the Ventolin walking. After an hour of no police or coun-
occasions in recent memory when it snowed on inhaler. That is why I now have my personal kit cil support, I performed an uphill run weaving
our island and we had to close our school. Not of drain rods … and in school colours! to and fro that Clarkson and The Stig would
such a big deal in the Lake or Peak Districts, but Fast forward to December 1997, and my have been proud of.
to a small island poking its way into the English deputy rings me from school to say there’s no At school the janitor and a teaching assist-
Channel these are big events for our commu- chance of the staff getting up the hill (the Hill ant greeted me. The phone was red hot with
nity… and for me in particular. of Doom on Portland) so we’ll have to close. parents demanding to know if we would be
I have an aversion to snow. That is why I I agree, ensure all staff are told and spend an open. Once we’d been told no hot meals would
confess to driving a 4×4 at all times just in case afternoon at home building an enormous snow- be delivered, the decision was easy. I made the
I get caught out. The loathing goes back to the man (or snowwoman if I had had my way). The necessary phone calls to local authority and
evil winter of 1963. I was seven and my prima- kids asked if Daddy would lift the snowthingy’s radio station, informing them that Southwell
ry school playground in Blyth seemed to have head on to the body. The head went up but I School was closed. Five minutes later the radio
acquired its own winter wonderland vista. One went down, on to my back with a gargantuan informed listeners that Southill School on
dark morning I bravely slid across the play- snowball on my stomach pinning me to the fro- Portland was open!
ground to the unheated outside toilets. On that zen grass. I couldn’t move, and the kids, highly So what have I learned? Well, from mid-July
day even Captain Oates might have had second amused, were too young for me to tell them onwards I should keep a large can of antifreeze
thoughts and pondered, ‘No, you’ll catch your how to call 999. Immobile and no mobile, no in my trouser pockets, learn the ability to say
death out there!’ I sat down on the cold wooden chance of respite and no Miss Beamson when to kids, ‘No, let’s make Anne Boleyn instead’,
seat only to discover after a very short while that you needed her. I had put out three discs in my and keep pigeons in the car because, come the
it had become frozen to my backside. After an back, which resulted in an operation the follow- storm, they’re the only reliable means of com-
eternity of biblical proportions of wailing, sob- ing June and my needing day surgery every six munication.
bing and gnashing of teeth, two prefects came months ever since. sbmcleod@tiscali.co.uk
Tel: 01254 680 575
Made in the U.K.
32
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