A Somerset Lad

To be a head teacher must be the most thankless of tasks, when students do well, it is to their credit, when they do badly, the school is to blame. There seems to be a lot of blame being attributed at the moment, parents who, through the government restrictions, have lost control of almost every area of their life, seem to find that school is an area where they can vent their frustrations. The most insignificant matters can become issues of principle.

Walking from a school gate with the head teacher, I commented that it must be difficult to be the recipient of a constant barrage of complaints. He believed a good sense of humour got him through each day, helped him keep things in perspective.

Thinking about a loss of perspective, a magnification of a matter to an absurd extent, I recalled a story I first heard in the 1900s:

“A lady took my seat in church a while back. It’s not that important really. She is a very nice lady, kind and considerate. A good friend, in fact. There were several other seats available. I can sit anywhere. The people in our congregation are as friendly and caring as you will find anywhere in the world. A person should be comfortable sitting anywhere. It’s no big deal.

My seat is in the seventh row back from the front of the church. I’m sure she didn’t intend to take my seat. She just wouldn’t do that. Nor would anybody else in our fine church. It doesn’t make that much difference. My seat is on the end of the pew, on the north side by the windows. On your left as you come into the sanctuary. I can rest my left arm on the end of the pew. It’s a good seat. But I would never raise a fuss about a seat. She probably didn’t intend anything personal by taking my seat. I would never hold a grudge ….

Actually, it was about three months ago when she took my seat. I really don’t know why she took it. I’ve never done anything to her. I’ve never taken her seat. I suppose I’ll have to come an hour early now to get my seat. Either that or sit on the south side.

She really took it because it’s one of the best seats in the house. That’s why she took it. She had no business taking my seat. And I’m not going to go to church two hours early to get what was rightfully mine from the beginning.

This is the way great social injustices begin: abusive people taking other people’s seats in church. This is the way the seeds of revolution are sown. A person can only stand so much. Where is it going to end? If somebody doesn’t stand up and be counted, nobody’s seat will be safe. People will just sit anywhere they please. And the next thing they’ll do is take my parking place, too. World order will be in shambles . . .”

Zean Carney, Editor, The Banner-Press

David City, Nebraska, 9 May 1991

It seems a tale well-fitted to the absurdity of the current times.

The unmistakeable scent of spring, freshly cut grass. The driver of the ride on mower cut the verge in neat swathes. The engine was barely audible above the sound of passing traffic. The machine was a far remove from mowers of the past.

Even if there had been money to spare, which there never was, my father would not have parted with cash for something he could improvise for himself.

For a number of years, there was a heavy rotary mower. With a 325 cc 4-stroke Briggs and Stratton and a dodgy exhaust pipe, it announced its presence each time it was used. Priming the engine was a precise art, too little fuel and it would not start, too much and it was flooded and would not start. Turning over the engine put the starter cord under severe strain each time the machine was started, it demanded frequent repair. There were no neat swathes, but the blades seemed capable of cutting anything set in their way: grass, weeds, thorns, all were sliced without hesitation. Had the mower gone over the user’s foot, boots would not have offered much protection. Pushing the mower up and down the garden was physically demanding. Heavy and with a handle that vibrated constantly, it was a tiring job to complete the cutting of the lawns.

Easier days came when my father was driving home one day and saw an old cylinder mower beside a dustbin awaiting collection. Calling at the house, he was told the mower didn’t work and that he was welcome to take it. Bringing it home, he had it working within a couple of hours. It had a grass box and was self-propelled, mowing the lawns had never been so easy.

Lawn mowers seemed to be fertile ground for improvisation.

Calling one day about ten years ago with Bill, a man who was about ninety four years old at the time, I  discovered that newspaper had been laid neatly across the kitchen table and on it there were two engine parts. He had noticed my quizzical expression.

“Magnetoes,” he said. “I have a 1947 lawn mower I use for cutting the grass; an air cooled four stroke engine. The magneto has gone on it; I’m looking for one that works. If one of these doesn’t work, I’ll have to get one on the internet.”

Not only was a ninety-four year old repairing an antique lawn mower, he was happy to order parts online. How much easier cutting our lawns would have been if there had been lawn mowers online in the 1970s.

Like a marathon runner whose knees go wobbly in sight of the finish line, the struggle to reach Maundy Thursday when school closes for Easter feels like a wobble from side to side.

Sitting at my desk this morning, gazing blankly at the monitor, my colleague  placed a mug of tea in front of me and said, “what you need is one of these.” He handed me a pack of two rice cakes. “Low calories,” he said.

“That’s good,” I said.

“They only have chocolate on one side,” he replied.

“Good, I have got my weight down to twelve stone. I need to be careful what I have with my tea.”

Something with my tea led me into trouble in 2013. Undergoing an angiogram in a Dublin hospital, the cardiologist had turned the monitor around to point out obstructions in the coronary arteries caused by a build up of cholesterol.

“Too many church hall teas,” I had commented.

“No,” he said, in his soft German-accented English, “it is not the tea; it is what you have with the tea that is the problem.”

There are undoubtedly numerous studies into the psychology of “comfort eating”, numerous articles in learned journals on why people choose to eat food that only does them damage.

Of course, the choice could have been worse than chocolate coated rice cakes. I might have bought a bar of chocolate on the way to school, or a bag of cookies or doughnuts from Sainsbury’s on the Tewkesbury Road.

The chocolate covered rice cakes did make the classrooms that awaited me seemed slightly more welcoming, the lessons slightly easier  to deliver. Perhaps the boost of enthusiasm was more due to the burst of caffeine from the mug of very strong Yorkshire Tea than to any energy boost from the two rice cakes.

On Wednesday evenings, I buy cookies for members of the faculty, enough for one each at break time on Thursdays. On Friday mornings, my colleague goes to Sainsbury’s at opening time and buys a bag of doughnuts or yum-yums. On such boosts of bad foods we get through the week.

Someone would probably make a fortune if they could produce a comforting foodstuff that had no detrimental effect. It could be especially marketed in schools. “Feeling ground down?” the advertisement might ask. “Feeling tired and weary? Then we have the very thing you need. No calories, no artificial additives, no bad side effects”. It would undoubtedly not taste as nice.

In the home of someone who was a keen gardener and maker of jams, marmalade, pickles and chutney, it was odd to find a bottle of manufactured sauce. Perhaps it was because my grandmother had come from Chiswick in west London that she was happy to buy OK, a sauce that was made by George Mason and Company at their Chelsea factory.

Being a child who avidly read everything available, I would read the labels of things on the table and was always intrigued by the label of the OK bottle.  I remember that it said that OK was a term that was used by one of Indian tribes. It was fascinating for a small boy that the sauce from London that we used with bacon and sauages might have had a name from such an exotic source.

A search of the web revealed that the memory was not one that had been imagined. The Alamy site says:

Mason’s ‘OK’ sauce bottle, c. 1915. This condiment was made by  in London, England. Its contents are described as piquant, appetising, pure and of ‘digestive merit. It is possibly the first product to appropriate the American abbreviation OK. On the side of the bottle is explained that the derivation of the acronym OK is from the Choctaw native American ‘Oke’ or ‘Hoke’ meaning ‘it is so’ and a play on the abbreviation letters of ‘all correct’ (‘orl korrect’). The term’s popularity is credited to President Andrew Jackson who used ‘OK’ extensively in his presidential campaign of 1828.

The sense of need to verify the childhood memory arose from a radio feature that suggested the term “OK” was first published on this day in 1839, in the Boston Morning Post, and simply derived from the misspelling of “all correct.”

The source of “OK” seems more nuanced than either the sauce bottle or the radio feature would suggest. The History website suggests that the term gained popularity as part of the political banter of the time and had arisen from a fashion among younger people to deliberately misspell words. It concludes, “whatever its origins, “OK” has become one of the most ubiquitous terms in the world, and certainly one of America’s greatest lingual exports.”

My grandmother was not a woman who would have thought “OK” was an appropriate term to use in conversation. Perhaps she thought it was too much associated with the American servicemen whom she thought were loud and brash. OK was less obtrusive on a sauce bottle.