Mr Calow the teacher

Mr Calow our teacher was a little bit wayward, he stuttered and I would deliberately goad him by splattering ink on my exercise book. He would call me up to his desk and yell “what’s this mess in your book”, I would look him straight in the eye and say “sir sorry about the marks on the page sir, but my pen slipped sir”, I would keep my eyes firmly fixed on his eyes, this had the effect of making him stutter and stammer causing all the lads in the class to crack out laughing. I would wind him up more by saying “I still can’t see anything wrong with it sir, apart from the ink marks sir”.

Mr Calow cracked you with the ruler and would make you say ‘thank you’ as if you’d received a present, is this what he thought punishment was, some kind of pleasure?
I told my mother about this teacher and his antics and asked if I should say thank you for hitting me with the ruler, “don’t you ever dare say thank you for any punishment”.

I went to school with the sole aim of ‘getting him going’ with a sarcastic comment about him, “you think you are very funny Foulds, hold your hand out”, so I did and just as he was about to make contact with the edge of the ruler, I’d snatch my hand away, he tried again and the same thing happened, now he’s really stuttering and my mate says “Roy hold your hand out or this time he’ll just about kill you”, so I took my punishment.
“Now what do you say for a present Foulds?”. I retorted “my mother says I have not got to say thank you for hitting me with a ruler”
“What did you say?”
“You heard!”
“I’ll sort you out lad” and he proceeded to pull the chairs out of the way so he could get at me, it was a very large class and all the desks were close together. He had completely lost his cool, red faced and stammering, he’s getting closer and my mate tells me “if he touches you I will drop him”, at the last minute he came to his senses and cracked out laughing, I had won that day, but I was left in a lot of pain for my troubles, it felt as if my finger ends were broken and I never did say thank you for his kind present.

The smokers were Mr Calow’s main targets, he always ran out of money mid-week, so he would borrow money from the lads who smoked, saying that he would not betray them to the headmaster and to prove he was genuine he would pay them back with interest.
“Who’s going to lend me two shillings and I will give you half a crown back next week, we’ll do it as a lesson on the blackboard and I will show you how much interest you’ve made in a week”. That’s how we learnt to do percentages. He always paid them back but like all good crooks there is always a catch, some of the lads had lost all the money they had lent him when the gym cage was rifled, all the shorts and slippers went missing and the headmaster had to call the police in to investigate.

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