Trivial Tales... Ramsden, Sweet Ramsden

Thoughts on class of Mitchell Street and ptetty tyrants, or, Bunter Thinks It Over. Coming back to my earlier musings I knew this was only some aspect of my personality I had grown up with, that it wasn’t really me. I could blame it on others, my mother, who were quick to point out my (apparent) inadequacies, who would endeavour to convince me I was lacking in something everyone else on the planet was born with; common-sense, according to her. Presumably it was her common sense that informed her of this. She and her common sense were on very good terms, and were as unanimous in their opinion and contemptuous hatred of me for not having any to speak of as she was of my equally blatant stupidity. A circular and conveniently impregnable onslaught, a paradoxical viewpoint as vice-like, as inflexible as one of those stiff penknives where I might chip a nail trying to prise it open. Sometimes it was as if the world was trying to provoke me beyond all endurance: that most of the time it felt as if I was in a state of suppressed anger and frustration; that the natural response of any sane and reasonable person would be to strike out. Daily stupidities and assumptions and humiliations minor and major that if I were to respond to them as I felt and knew them to be for what they were, I knew my relations with others, with home life, with school, would shift from sullen or closed-lipped tolerance to outright war. That there was conflict wasn’t in question. Their often-unwarranted contempt and tyrannical outbursts and even demeanour made that clear enough. What was almost just as intolerable was the complacent assumption I could see on their faces, of their place in the status quo as they went about in their trance it and so they could never seriously be called to account. The system worked for them as it was on their side. I only had to think of the casual and threatened nastiness, of dire consequences for anyone who such as hinted they might have an ounce of selfmotivated thought or humour, when our class had the honour of being visited by one Miss Ramsden, some crazy old bint, bitter with bile and hatred and hatred of us because we were young and powerless but we still had our whole lives before us. But for the time being, this merciless, odious dingbat had us in the clutches of her harpy talons and she would relish it as long as she could make it last. Short of some loved one suffering over some agonising and wasting disease at the time, I see no other explanation for such behaviour on her part. Time was suddenly an excruciating and protracted thing as my emotions veered from a sort of horrified incredulity, mixed amusement, contempt, and self-contempt, over her sarcastic humour, and the wish I could slink between the space in the floorboards along with the almost imperceptible and forbidden thought of what it would be like to walk out onto the floor and inform her she should go and fuck herself. Because what with all this self-reverential grimness and hollow humour I could really do with a bit of cheering up, a song and dance perhaps, in contrast to this bizarre in the extreme assertion of one person’s personality, headmistress or not; hey, there was a whole world out there.

Of Batman, and camaraderie with your friends, and beautiful girls, (as here, only we had to keep shtum and listen to egomaniacal prattle) and woods and fields and music and the future. I watched her as she prattled on in her concise and icy way, in her old woman’s fashion sense with her dull skirt and tan tights and quaint little shoes, with her pinched little features and tight lips. A part of me felt like the nothings were supposed to feel, awed by her authority, powerless in the knowledge we had no say in it. Another part saw it as absurd; that it was obvious she was an anachronism, a dinosaur in a world of Science Fiction and Marvel Comics and Mungo Jerry and Joni Mitchell and Smokey Robinson. Chart favourites. I knew at a glance that she would hate them all by extention, me along with them. It seemed increasingly outrageous we had to be here at all, having to listen to this vacuous egotist who so clearly detested us; or was it directed only to certain members of the class? My own thoughts and feelings were surely all the conformation she needed to justify it. As if all her implied menace were directed at me. As for her occasional and lame humour, it wasn’t fooling anyone, and perhaps it wasn’t meant to and that was the overtly sinister aspect of the whole charade. Because the born conformists didn’t have anything to worry about. It was the kids who saw it for what it was who knew it spoke to them as it was meant for them. A spark of individuality, an original thought or honest emotion was synonymous with seeing oneself as a troublemaker, a marked man, the guilty party. The very set-up had the effect of making me feel guilty. Not that I was capable of articulating any of this to myself or was in a position to. In these situations I tended to go into myself and examine my own troubling feelings and emotions. And as much as my fear would negate my sense of self there would still be that part of me that looked to see the situation as objectively as I could, the humorous, mischievous, intelligent aspect, that saw it as ludicrous this frail middle-aged woman would think she could browbeat me – and us – into seeing ourselves as nonentities by comparison. Try it out in the street you old bag and we’d pelt you with eggs – of it weren’t for that she knew us. I knew that on some level she was a coward as well as a bully. That in some way she was no different from how she tried to make us feel. Because she threw away or merged her own personality with her job and status and used them as an excuse to indulge and exaggerate the more venal aspects of her personality in the guise of moral instruction while everything about her patronising, condescending tone and attitude told us she was better than us, even the pupils, girls, she supposedly revered, compared to grubby little oiks like me. There was something seriously awry here. I hoped that one day I would come to grips with it. I saw her years later when I helped run a small disco in a church hall when I was eighteen. The year punk exploded on the scene and I was also exploring heavy metal as well as more classical. Beethoven was a favourite. Ivor would sell his dad's elpee's to me. They'd been sitting in a box upstairs for years. There were also some Sibelius but I'd never heard of him. I would later. I'd left home the year before and lived with a girlfriend; we were as unsuited to each other as was the work/job I'd met her at. My mother had picked that one up for me to bring in some cash. My own

interests were irrelevant. The job was now gone as was having to directly tolerate her. The girlfriend had asked me out through someone else and I'd stupidly let things go on from there. It was a way of escape. From one stupidity to another. That and I could indulge my book habit and had accumulated another 500. I kept them in a big box in the small flat. They were as irrelevant to my silly big-boobed girl-friend. I'd recently read That'll Be The Day after I saw the movie, and Colin Wilson's The Killer. Anyway, we were setting things up, or rather, Ivor and the rest were, as I didn't understand the technicalities and it was mostly their 'do' anyway. The place was still empty except for a couple of old women near the entrance, packing something into boxes, doing their bit for the community. I recognized one of them and it was Ramsden. What to say to her? Funny how these people who had formerly seen themselves as omnipotent fell far short of omniscience. Otherwise it might occur to them that life has a way of lining up unexpected coincidences. Murphy's Law. Life goes on. Maybe she would turn out to be as formidably mouthy and full of herself and own self-importance now as she was then. It could be interesting. Or embarrassing. I didn't have the ruthless, one-dimensional outlook of these people. And what if I upset her, embarrassed her in front of her friend. I had to be furious, that was the trouble, and the events were so long ago, relatively speaking. I doubted she was still teaching now. Easier to make excuses for the liberty taking pettyminded little Nazi homunculus. Not that I was particularly worried about what she might try and do about it. We all knew the rector of the church next door ran the hall and I was a minor fixture in this place. Nor would it've been any great loss. I'd have felt I was picking on some harmless old woman. And that's how she'd present herself. And they always had their excuses and justifications. It was the way of the world, as then. I didn't have to be like her, any of them. She was a deluded fool and now just an even older deluded fool. It was all too tedious and boring to deal with; just not worth the effort.