Headlong Into Chaos

The Diaries of a Primary School Headteacher

De: Peter Jeffcock

Narrado por: Virtual Voice

Now a No1 Best Seller!! It is the late 1990s in a North Midlands former mining town, a place populated by wholesome, genuine characters. If they warm to you, they will treat you as they would treat a member of their own family. Alternatively, if they take a dislike to you, they will treat you as they would treat a member of their own family. On balance, it is best to hope they like you. I had finally realised my ambition of becoming a head teacher and being in charge of my own school. And this was perfect except for one small irritation; I was never going to be in charge of anything remotely related to the school. I would spend my days fixing surreal problems, responding to crazy requests and attempting to remain sane. On the third point I pointedly failed. The first days in the job led me to believe that most people with whom I came into contact were mad. I then decided that this was incorrect; they were all mad. Then it dawned on me that as the common denominator, perhaps they were all normal and I was mad. It made little difference, since every day offered its own plot for a situation comedy and I grew to realise that the only predictable part of the job was its unpredictability. The story takes the reader on a week-by-week journey through a school year and describes what goes on in behind the scenes in a primary school. It is festooned with crazy characters; a technophobic secretary, a cook who can’t cook, a caretaker whose language is more colourful than the result of a paint factory exploding into a springtime garden, and an alarmingly pompous chair of governors. In this, the first in a series of three books, our journey takes us through the first term of the school year, ending at Christmas. It follows the new head’s introduction to the school and his realisation that his life will never again be normal. During the first few weeks the new head is almost arrested, helps to rescue a cook on a flat thin roof, has to deal with an influx of new age travellers who terrorise the pupils, breaks up – or at least attempts to referee – a fight between two angry mothers and begins to oversee a building project in which a new classroom would be built with the absolute minimum of competence. The term ends at Christmas and describes what could be the world’s most stunningly bad nativity play - it can never be good when the Christ Child's head takes flight and lands in the audience! There are two further books in the series, one for each of the remaining two terms. Readers of a strong disposition who have coped with Walt the Caretaker’s language in this first book may wish to drag themselves even deeper into the gutter by reading these further forays into this surreal parallel world.