291. That's the way she's made of.
Here you have an activity I had to do, within the course to pass C-2 level of English, at Centro de Lenguas Modernas, of Universidad de Granada (Spain). I had fun when writing it and I'd feel satisfied if you liked it too. Nessie on the picture, thanks to mediabistro com.
Writing
From page
I have composed a story, inspired by the beginning of a novel. The exercise or activity has a series of the beginnings of some famous writers’ novels.
Begun on 17 February 2010.
I take Alice Blanchard’s The Stuntman’s Daughter.
NB.: As you may remember, it is the story of that tomboy girl, who used to have a lingering aweful odour although she would wash, etc.
Nola was not a mere, let’s say, action woman. Well, she then was a girl – a chick, as was named, called by her male-classmates.
Was it in May? I think to remember so – yes, definitely so, because the end of the academic year was approaching... all the kids of that class-group were certainly scared, for Mrs Fair looked not precisely ‘fair’: she was a terrible teacher, indeed.
Let me tell you the story.
She, Missis, taught us a subject on Civil Duties and Rights for the Citizens of the 20th Century. She incarnated sort of an iron-hammer, prone to claim for British female citizens’ rights, whatsoever way she would implement: an activist at the epoch of the first feminists’ struggle, early at the beginning of the 1920s.
Mrs Fair, as I have said, was not fair, she did not do fair play, so as to say, and she was... stiff as a brushstick, an eternal scowl in her face... and she had her pets in the classroom. Oh, yes she had. These classmates of ours used to flatter our ‘beloved’ teacher: ‘Yes, madam; yes, madam; yes, madam, as you wish, as you wish.’ All that chit-chat round her, like shrill, high-pitched-noise insects. This is sheer true, believe me.
Anyway. None of us, boys, dared talk to this lady, so as to try and suggest to her some things we thought were not fair.
Yet, when we the boys were at the playground, after a harsh endurance football match, us dirty with mud to the ears, used to stop for a breath... we, always, thought of the same point: someone should try to mend this dreadful situation of our ‘beloved’ teacher. No pass (this subject), meant no promotion into the next grade, into the next academic year.
Then, I was thirteen.
But right now my purpose was to tell you about Nola. You know what? All of us, the boys, beside most of the girls, our classmates, had a secret idea, a secret thought, no one daring to say out... What would you think if you saw a group of male pupils... with the firm yet secret idea of..., no way, man. We looked down, at the ground. All of us thought it would happen some day: she, Nola, huge Nola, would be the only person in Broodthorpe School, Sussex, who could up and face Mrs Fair, and tell her, in her very face, that she was doing wrong with her pupils, that most of us deserved a higher mark.
Why did we believe in this Nola’s capability of doing this way? You can wonder. What I can say is: She was a maverick.
In some classes, we, especially the boys, looked backwards, direction towards Nola’s desk, at the very buttom of the classroom – she at that moment smiled cunningly, smiled cynically at us, even she giggled, showing us, the shy boys, would never have the right guts to approach Missis, after one class and talk about the injustice we were the poor victims of.
One day, definitely in May, Nola stood up, stood up! In the middle of Missis’s class!
‘Yes, Miss Brighton?’ (Nola’s unmarried surname then, when a girl, when a chick).
‘Misses, I’d like to have a word with you, right after your class...’
All of us thought that was the beginning of the end, about Mrs Fair’s despotic conducting. Or maybe we thought a hell-raiser storm would break out in our classroom... Misses at that moment looked more stiff-brushstick-like than ever, and stayed so for an eternal (for us) while.
Was it so simple and easy? Were we going to achieve relishing on Misses’s fall, decay, from her high plinth? You cannot make out an idea of what some youngsters, like we were then, may suffer in circumstances that sort, during her classes!
Some day I´ll let you know about the end of this story...
(I just want to thank Alice Blanchard for ‘letting’ me borrow a bit of her novel. Well, I hope not to have spoilt too much that piece of the novel. Just one more thing: the story I have written here is simply a story, not the ideals or methods I hold, as a teacher myself).
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