Hugh Reilly: Going back to the past to turn over new leaf

The writing enterprise had been largely funded by a cash settlement I’d received from the insurer of a social worker who’d knocked me off my bike (after the initial pain, compensation set in). At the book’s launch, I confess to being a tad nervous – surprising since I was sitting in my living room signing a copy for my short-sighted aunt with mild dyslexia.

Having exhausted the sympathetic-sales-to-family-members market, I was compelled to widen the net of potential purchasers to shift the boxes of pristine copies under my bed. This involved traipsing round bookstores and negotiating contracts with buyers, or more correctly, walking into Waterstone’s feeling like an upmarket Big Issue seller, begging the manager to place an order.

This year, months after I’d retired from teaching, I received a letter from Ian McDougall, of the Scottish Working People’s Trust, asking me to write a book recording the lives of elderly ex-teachers for posterity. Rather magnanimously on my part, I waived any monies due to me from film and TV rights, happy to accept a five-figure advance and a generous royalties. Ian informed me it would be unpaid, although out-of-pocket expenses would be met by the charity. Sensing little wriggle room, I agreed to his terms.

I enjoy talking to the elderly about the auld days. In my first job, as a trainee rates and valuations surveyor with Glasgow city council, I trod the streets of the leafy West End, chapping on doors to gain information for the 1975 rating revaluation. While most middle-aged householders virtually demanded DNA evidence of my credentials, lonely old folk ushered me into their hallway before I had time to show them my identity card.

To say I am looking forward to my task would be a gross understatement. Since leaving the teaching profession, my life has lacked purpose; a Nile cruise, a three-week holiday in Turkey and attempts to appear pseudo-intellectual by drinking overpriced cappuccinos in art gallery cafés have proved to be mere vacuous activities. Truth be told, I applied to work for Voluntary Service Overseas but, in the end, balked at the idea of committing myself to a minimum of two years good work in some sub-Saharan African failed state. Rather disconcertingly, declining to be the next Mungo Park greatly upset my girlfriend.

Putting this tome together will be much-needed brain food. It’s my intention to travel the length and breadth of the country, and, if my security can be guaranteed, even North Ayrshire. Of course, I’ll experience a degree of apprehension crossing the threshold of a spinster ex-teacher; any male writer who has seen the movie Misery is bound to fear having both his ankles broken by a mallet-wielding mad wummin.

It will be interesting to talk to those who taught during education’s Golden Age (whenever that was). I’ve heard that, on marrying, a female teacher had to resign her post; given the current dearth of teaching vacancies, this may be a policy education secretary Mike Russell will wish to revisit. Doddery ex-dominies will doubtless regale me with tales of formal dress codes for teaching staff. As late as the Seventies, a teacher of my acquaintance was hauled into the headmaster’s office to be upbraided for arriving in school wearing a bunnet.

I am certain some ex-teachers will mention the existence of gender-specific staffrooms. Fraternisation with the opposite sex was considered unseemly and females were expected to dress demurely in a long skirt, a sort of tweed burqa. Any man who embarrassed the profession by wooing an attractive co-worker ran the risk of having his elbow patches unceremoniously ripped from the sleeves of his jacket by outraged male colleagues.

The worrying thing is that in a decade or so, a writer may appear on my doorstep asking me to contribute to a book on what life was like for a teacher in the old days. I’ll have him sitting in my lounge sipping tea before he knows it.

(If you or someone you know is an elderly former teacher and would like to be interviewed for the book, please e-mail me at [email protected])