Hugh Reilly: Dunkirk spirit rises as temperature drops

Published on Monday 6 December 2010 18:56

I don't work Wednesdays, part of my work/life balance arrangement with my model employer. Last midweek, I had planned to watch repeats of Homes Under the Hammer but, on receiving a cabin-fever induced phone call from mother, I trudged through the snow to clear her path.

My good deed took the best part of an hour, thus the reader will understand my discomfiture when, over a coffee and Jammie Dodger, mater concluded that it was, after all, too cold to venture out. To her obvious alarm, I subconsciously began staring at the kitchen knife rack. But before I morphed into Norman Bates, I managed to make my excuses and leave.

Back home, I stared out the window of my igloo at the pretty postcard scene of crisp snow lying on the rubble of what had been the local primary school. My reverie was somewhat interrupted by the sight of a rather attractive neighbour struggling to disinter her car from a snow drift.

As a proponent of active citizenship, I hurriedly put on my coat and after-shave, but before I could do some chivalrous shovelling, a rival suitor posing as an innocent passer-by came to the damsel's aid.

That's the one good thing about a freak weather crisis, be it a flood, a storm or the dreaded three days of constant summer sunshine that triggers a hosepipe ban; it generates a Dunkirk spirit. Good Samaritans fall over each over - literally, in some cases - to help push a stranded vehicle. Confirmed curtain-twitchers pop next door to see if the old codger living there is a) alive or b) in need of anything.

Unfortunately, this outbreak of Big Society bonhomie does not extend to teachers. We are the nation's snow fall guys, hated because our workplaces often close when flurries become blizzards. In my view, the thousands of unemployed teaching graduates should seriously consider retraining in psychiatry because the public's obsession with what it sees as backsliding dominies is now a collective mental illness. On a midweek news item, a leader of the CBI out sledging with his kids in Dunblane stated that he had not gone into his office due to treacherous road conditions. He had, he said, done some work from home. As a teacher, I'd love to be able to remotely access my school PC. Snow-bound students could e-mail me homework which I would correct and return.

Angry parents and the anti-teacher brigade are under the impression that teachers decide to close schools. Even some daft kids think this is the case.

There's always a teenage budding health and Safety expert who claims that the school should close because it's too cold. I inform him that, according to the relevant legislation, the headteacher can only shut the school if it's "very cold" and, at the moment, it's only "quite cold". More often than not, this satisfies the shivering dullard.

Sadly, the decision on whether or not an educational establishment stays open is made by the headteacher, in consultation with the local authority.Logic - and indeed, demo-cracy - dictates that local decisions are best made, erm, locally. However, when Glasgow Council closed all its schools and nurseries last Wednesday, a consequence of the best meteorological information at hand, the blanket closure led to gnashing of gums at Holyrood.

Like the vast majority of teachers, I journeyed to work by car. Call me unlucky, but where I live the amount of salt that fell on the road was less than that which fell from Lot's wife as he dusted her down in the first lay-by out of Sodom and Gomorrah.

Having risked life and limb, I was slightly miffed when only one of my 22 Higher/Intermediate 2 section turned up. To be fair, she benefited greatly from the one-to-one tuition and I gained much valuable insight regarding the classroom stress a teacher on a remote Scottish island endures on a daily basis.

After lunchtime, pupil numbers melted faster than a snowflake on my steaming bald bonce. By no means, however, was it a wasted day: I caught up on paperwork, prepared some lessons and watched an exciting snowball fight from the safety of the staffroom.

With the cold snap set to continue, we could be in for an avalanche of school closures.