A story to cheer up teachers everywhere

Slumped on the staffroom sofa, sick of mock exam-marking, management ultimatums, performance-related gubbins, assessment week threats, that bloody 8th year, seasonal affective depression and Norovirus or is it Govovirus?

Well, let me perk you up. I too was feeling glum, trudging the arctic wastes of West London, when I chanced upon a snow-covered fellow in a Russian hat. “Sir!” it said. It was Seth. Seth Whitehawk – a bit of a legend. I’d not seen him, since 2004. He nearly got us both run out of town. Well, the classroom. An idealistic, dreaming, curious adolescent, for whom the National Curriculum was always a foreign country. He preferred the more gothic worlds of Gormenghast and looked like Titus Groan. This, of course, wasn’t good. Teachers kept finding him tediously immature and bohemian. He kept finding them tediously dull and funny.