Mike Ferguson

How do you survive teaching English when hammers replace pens and this is only the beginning of a craziness that takes over from the happy and positive normality of a job started three decades before? Do you simply survive, strike out or accept defeat? Is hiding in a classroom's false ceiling a sensible protest, and will getting rid of the Headmaster bring about hopeful change? Names are altered and a precise location concealed, but could such a school exist and have students and their teachers actually behaved like this?

From melodramatic to sensitive snapshots, the history of a lifetime's teaching in one school is revealed in candid, bizarre and comic vignettes, all linked by one teacher's experience and a core of real students and teachers who made the job impossible or deeply rewarding. There is comedy in the horror, and passion in the despair. Above all there is honesty.