Thursday 17 March 2011

Back To The Grindstone - Little Changes

So it's back to same old, same old. Great. I've missed it.

It's 6am and I'm on a bus being driven by my equally tall companion, to pick up another bus; then to drive in convoy and pick up a school somewhere near Teeside and drive them to an outward bound centre.

We found the school, drove up narrow lane to the school gates, before the other driver remembered that he had been to the same school last year and it had been so narrow that it had taken him one hour to turn round and he had nearly removed the gates. So we didn't try again. Preferring to reverse into a side road and park on the main road.

"I thought another driver was going to do this run," I said, as we relaxed and waited for the school to come out.

"No, he's retired again," replied my colleague.

"Again?"

"Yes, he's always retiring. But he'll be back, he's made more comebacks than Frank Sinatra." There was a loud knock on the bus door. A traffic warden was standing there looking displeased. He was a hi-tech warden wearing a yellow fluorescent waistcoat and on the lapel was printed: RECORDED ON CCTV.

"Would you gents mind moving," he said politely. "After half past eight we will have to issue you with a ticket, if you don't." That was three minutes away so we revved up the engines and shot off down the road in a puff of smoke.

The school came out twenty minutes later and off we went. Ten minutes later a boy's voice came from the back:

"Sir. Sir. Are we there yet?"

"Well, Gerry, I suppose in a way."said the head teacher. "We are here but we are not there."

There was a brief silence and you could feel the children digesting this riddle. Then the same voice replied:

"Oh yeah, Sir. Right, Sir. I understand.....I think." He never asked another question. The head teacher had obviously being reading books written by the late well known child psychologist Haim Ginott who said:

"Children are like wet cement. Whatever falls on them makes an impression."

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