Three words I hate

Hate is such a strong word, but when I first started hating these three words I was much younger. And, because the words are associated predominantly with marketing, then I’m going to stick with the word ‘hate’, even though I would rather there was no such thing.

What I hated was that no sooner had school broken up for the summer, the shop windows were suddenly filled with “Back to School” adverts, usually floor to ceiling, you couldn’t avoid them.

Did they not understand that I hated school? Did they not realise that I had six or seven weeks of summer to look forward to, but already on day one they were reminding me that summer would end soon, and I would have to go back to school.

In my opinion, this phrase of three independently innocent words should be banned! And while there are, for better and worse, fewer shops in the high street, those same damned words now follow me online!

I’m sure lots of kids had a good time at school, but I didn’t. And I’m sorry, Mum, I’m sure you’re reading this, but I really didn’t like school. I’m trying to think of that one teacher who inspired me, or that one lesson I looked forward to, and I mean really looked forward to, but, alas, no, I pretty much hated all of it.

Which, dear reader, kind of begs the question, why on earth did you train to be a teacher, Chris?

Well, the short answer is I never wanted to be a teacher. When I started my first degree in Ambleside, Cumbria, I read the small print, that I would be studying Outdoor Education and Environmental Science. I missed the large print that stated said course was a Bachelor of EDUCATION, and primary school to boot.

Maybe I should have paid more attention during class in school?

But wait… I hated school, so that kind of explains that then, doesn’t it. 🙂

This reminds me of a lovely quote from A.A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh. Pooh has gone to see Owl to ask him to write a birthday message for Eeyore on an empty honey pot.

‘Can you read, Pooh?’ [Owl] asked a little anxiously. ‘There’s a notice about knocking and ringing outside my door, which Christopher Robin wrote. Could you read it?’

‘Christopher Robin told me what it said, and then I could.’

‘Well, I’ll tell you what this says, and then you’ll be able to.’

So Owl wrote…and this is what he wrote:

HIPY PAPY BTHUTHDTH THUTHDA BTHUTHDY

Pooh looked on admiringly.

I read a lot of A.A. Milne during my one year at teacher training college. And I have to admit, Pooh let me down when I was reading Winnie-the-Pooh aloud to a class of… I don’t know… twenty five-year-olds? It doesn’t matter, because Pooh is not a loveable bear to a five-year-old. Pooh is poo, which in British English means shit.

Lovely.

Fits of giggles, I tell you.

And there I was, aged eighteen, in my own private hell, studying to be a teacher, to spend the rest of my days teaching in, you know, a school, which, if you remember, I hated.

Perfect.

So I dropped out of teacher training, and with the help of a very supportive mum, explored other avenues to get into Outdoor Education, and then on to a BA, not a BEd. and the beginnings of a career in the outdoor industry.

Until I met Jane, and we moved to Denmark, and I needed a Danish qualification, and ended up as a… you guessed it, a teacher.

Now, my first job as a qualified teacher was in Greenland, and seven years later, we know how that turned out, and I have something like 50 novels, 100 novellas, and over 100 short stories to show for it. So teaching is not all bad. At least, not in Greenland.

Back in Denmark, however, the Danish advertising bureaus do like to spice things up with English words. And, you guessed it again, they love, absolutely love to use the English phrase, Back to School, when encouraging parents to spend lots of money at the beginning of the summer in preparation for the end.

The end of summer, I should add.

Although going back to school was pretty much apocalyptic for me. So, same same.

The summer starts at the end of June in Denmark, so I get hit with Back to School a month earlier than I would in England. And then, because I consume English media to the same degree as Danish, I get hit again in August.

Fantastic! I love it. Really, I do.

Again, I ask for a ban, or at the very least, to wait with the whole Back to School psychological trauma marketing campaign until a week before school starts. How about that?

Anyway, when Jane and I were paddling the Yukon River, I would send letters to myself from remote villages such as Beaver, Alaska. Sometimes I sent postcards. But inside the sealed envelopes I wrote a long letter to myself, reminding the future me that when I got back to Denmark I should not, under any circumstances, return to teaching. I even wrote a version of “Do not open before Christmas” on the front of the envelopes but with the words “Open if you are thinking of teaching”, instead.

This was back in 2016.

I still have the envelopes, unopened, but when we came back to Denmark I needed a job, and, you guessed it thrice, I went back to teaching.

However, fast forward to 2024 and I’ve been out of the teaching game so long now, that even when I apply for a teaching job, I don’t get a look in.

This, I’m sure you can agree, is good, i.e. it’s good for the kids. The only problem with this whole damned situation is that I was and am, actually, a pretty good teacher. I have a good rapport with the kids, about a 100 creative ways to engage them, and I think we have a common bond, in that we – me and the kids – both hate school. 🙂

But then, when I include a link to my website in my CV, and there are posts such as this one on the blog, is it really any wonder that I don’t get an interview for the teaching jobs I apply for but don’t want?

Which brings me to the next three words, that I love.

At age 50, soon to be 51, and having strategically booted myself out of the teaching industry, I can honestly, and finally say: