Creative writing - this week I have been writing about schooldays...

My latest Open University Creative Writing module is three weeks in and I am gradually starting to remember how to string a sentence together.  This blog was always going to be about me finding the balance, as well as the kids. So here's a little bit of writing I'm proud of.  The prompt was very confusing, but essentially you had to write a passage of prose in which the viewpoint of the listener is implied by what the speaker says, and the way it is said.  A few echoes to my past as a teacher here, but I was never this quick off the mark:

‘In the “real world” Jack, I have to break it to you - this work of conceptual fiction to which you dedicate so many of your waking hours, staring out the window dreaming of lie ins, pints, pasties, pubs, girls and proper work - in the “real world” there are rules too.  One day you will no longer be a caged monkey in my classroom, in this place you term, so endearingly, forgive my translation, “excrement hole”.  One day you will scale the dizzy heights of one of your father’s scaffolding towers, or perhaps scramble under the bonnet of a broken down car, my little grease monkey.  Well then, I don’t think anyone - to paraphrase your language, how shall we describe it ‘gritty realism?’,  ‘pared down prose?’ - well Jack, my dear, in those “real life” circumstances, if you will forgive my application of a thesaurus to your delicate words, I don’t think anyone will give a ‘flying fornication’ or even an “excrement” as to whether your shirt is tucked in.  But they might care that you forgot to secure a guardrail or wear your hard hat.  And if you forgot to test the brake pads, now that would be a small disaster would it not?  And before you say “That’s testicles Miss” can you please leave Sophie’s hair alone, turn to page 46 and give myself and your classmates a chance to discuss something other than your shirt, which given that you say you don’t give a “female dog’s bottom” about it, is taking rather a lot of our time today.’

Not sure where it is going, but I had fun writing it.  Maybe some teaching demons I forgot to exorcise...there was another piece about a dodgy caretaker...