If not for Miss Dicks,

school would have been nothing but a waste of time for me.

Not to say I didn’t enjoy the time locked in a classroom,

some teachers positively nice, doing their job, as Mrs Gray

did, with enthusiasm in the face of permanent adversity

but there were others

for whom teaching was surely just a way to spend a few hours

away from home and the drudgery of living

in 1970s Britain.

 

If not for Miss Dicks,

I would have gone on to senior school