Prickly nasties

".......so the bad fairy came along and took away all the warm fuzzies and swapped them with prickly nasties."

Another day, another assembly, another story with a moral that appears to bear absolutely no relation to the reality of life at school, or anywhere else for that matter.

So far this term we've been treated to:

- the man whose garden withered until he let all the neighbourhood children play in it; moral, let them in or the little b****** will vandalise it anyway

- the giraffe who only achieved true happiness by giving away all her possessions; moral - giraffes, wise up.

- the cheerful woman who refused to let untold misery grind her down and always had a smile and a quip for everyone; moral, doesn't even bear thinking about but definitely involves martyrdom, brave smiles and a national epidemic of passive aggressive behaviour, which I think is probably attributable to global warming and almost certainly spread by a new strain of horribly complacent mosquitos which fly about with their tiny heads tilted on one side in an attitude of irritating compassion and understanding. At least it makes dengue fever sound positively delightful by comparison.

The story concludes (there's something about prickly nasties being replaced by a good fairy who gives everybody warm fuzzies and is promptly arrested on suspicion of child abuse) I play the hymn with the music upside down, but nobody notices, including me, and then it's time for a staff meeting.

If the children are allowed to barbecue a sausage to commemorate Australia Day (why sausages? Why Australia Day?) will there be a vegetarian alternative?

One of the teaching assistants is going on a firefighting course. Somebody points out that as she is not in until midday, fires can only be allowed after lunch. Also that the fire brigade advocates getting the hell out of the building and leaving the fire fighting to them. "It's just for little fires," she says, looking wistfully at the smaller electrical appliances and clearly willing them to burst into carefully controlled flames.

At the 'Any other business' stage, I ask if there are any themes that the teachers would like reflected in the music lessons. There is a long pause.

"Pirates, Countries and Light," says a Year 1 teacher. "All about me," says the Reception team, "and we're doing food in the second half of the term. They could sing 'Sizzling Sausages'".

"Animals," says Sasha. There's a pause while I wonder whether to ask if this is a magisterial comment on the rest of us or a theme, then decide against it and just write it down.

Later, at home, I practise a new song. It is called: "Thank you Lord for this new day." Deborah is rolling around the carpet and screaming because I won't stop playing the piano so she can watch television and Francis is gloomily studying more documents from the insurance company that appear to read, "You're a loser. Accept it and take this derisory cheque, or else."

I look at the performance note at the beginning of the hymn.

"With quiet joy," it says.

Good with foam rubber

Assembly today is based on the fable of The Lion and Mouse and is about using your talents, however minimal.

The children are all reading out the nice things their friends have said about them. Some have had an easier job than others. "I am good at making things out of foam rubber," one reads, laboriously.

Then it's time for birthdays. The teacher quizzes David about his special day: "So you had a special party, did you? And you had a magician? How exciting. And did he have a special magic name?" "Ken," says David.

Sasha appears on top motivational form to hand out good work certificates. As their names are called, the children haul themselves to their feet, using the conveniently placed jumpers of their neighbours as grappling irons and their heads for balance.

Whether they're any the wiser about their achievements when they get to the front is open to question. "Good work on your homophones," Sasha says warmly to a baffled looking 5-year old. "You have been trying really hard with your high frequency words," she praises another.

By the time he has extolled the virtues of regular consonant, vowel, consonant practice to a third, I am sneaking furtive looks at the teachers to see if I am the only one who feels as if I've stumbled in on a teaching Klingon as a foreign language session.

But then it comes to a grinding halt. "Those two girls there! Playing with each other's hair. What do you think you're doing. Really!" They smile, uneasily, which prompts further exasperation. "You don't see me playing with your teacher’s hair, do you?" I catch another teacher’s eye and we both look hastily upwards, but the image Sasha has conjured up is so vivid that it might just as well be painted on the ceiling. It's a relief when the classes file out at the end, to the accompaniment of Mozart's Requiem. 'Je t'aime' might have been more appropriate, but there's never been much call for it before today....

Beauty ev'rywhere

It's week two, and Sasha is formalising a radical new approach to job-sharing, ditching that old cliched one person at a time system in favour of the two of us doing the same job simultaneously.

She plans my recorder lessons and so do I, and then we attempt to teach the simultaneously which I can see might prove a little stressful in the weeks to come.

This week, we arrive together. "What are you planning for today?" she asks, as we survey the children. One boy gently rocks his recorder in a hammock made from its case; another is producing staccato volleys of notes, each one an ear-drum popper while a third has dismantled and re-assembled his recorder several times and is now, with an air of mild bewilderment, trying to blow into the wrong end.

Quickly, I attempt a bit of carpe diem with a note recognition quiz but it's too late. Sasha has already advanced on the blackboard, pinned up a giant bit of music and then compelled the class to play it.

She tries to fob me off by giving me a baton and asking me to point out the notes as she plays them, but can't resist joining in. Soon it's turned into a counting competition for two mad music teachers, one wearing an expression of sullen resentment.

One of the boys comes up to me. "I've got something caught between my teeth," he complains. I suspect it may be the recorder he was trying so hard to swallow earlier on. He shoves a grimy finger into his mouth so he can show me exactly where the problem is.

"It's making me embarrassed," he mumbles. "Last time, it was so big the dentist had to get it out with a bit of wire."

As the hymn we were singing earlier has it: "Look around! Look around! There's beauty ev'rywhere." Yes, indeedy.

"You've got a good rapport with the children," says Sasha, beaming that smile again. I beam back. Little does she realise that today's 360 degree bonhomie is a desperate attempt to win them over to my side so they will support my plea of self-defence when I am finally compelled to beat her to death with my recorder while maintaining the correct left hand fingering and producing a perfect 't' sound as I deliver the mortal blow.

Putting the sick in music

The rest of the family regards my piano practice like knitting; something I do with my hands to while away idle moments until something more interesting comes along.

They treat it with the indifference it so obviously deserves. I think they feel quite sorry for me - a poor, bored, ageing woman, sitting there striking random notes and hoping against hope that somebody will take her mind off things with an interesting problem to solve.

Fortunately for me, with all these dreary hours to kill, they're always happy to oblige. The first few notes act every time as a call to arms: within a few minutes of striking up the first notes I can guarantee that there'll be somebody leaning standing right next to me or, if particularly urgent, on the keys, talking to me at length and as loudly as is necessary to drown out that dull old music.

It's begun to dawn on me that this could be the reason I'm still a terrible pianist - but I am a first rate multi-tasker. I've set Beth's algebra problems to 'Shine Jesus Shine,' paired Francis' extensive ruminations on the possible causes of the new bathroom leak with arpeggios, and accompanied Deborah's many lectures about exactly which aspects of my parenting she most despises (it ranges from most to all) with a series of two octave scales in sixths.

In fact, I'm so used thinking of playing the piano as a kind of background activity to any other task that I've begun to feel it's missing on dog walks and during meal preparation.

So you'd have thought that I'd welcome the arrival at school of Sasha, the new music-mad assistant head, with open arms. She's new, she's fizzing with energy and she wants to know all about us and, in particular me. And, more particularly still, absolutely everything about the recorder, because if there's one thing she loves, it's music-making with this age group, she tells me, delightedly, referring, I assume, to the under 8s rather than the over 35s.

She favours oatmeal cardigans and a big smile, as forced as early rhubarb.

"I can see you've got a great sense of humour," she says, when we first meet. "We're going to be a great team."

'Team' in the context of anything other than a now defunct chocolate wafer snack is a word to strike terror into my heart. Teams are for horses or relay runners, not for women fighting their corner against the dark forces of bureacracy, government and clothes shops that sell jackets so small that the only part of me they would comfortably enclose is my drink-swollen liver, making colour matching horribly difficult.

The next day, as I am about to get started on the first recorder lesson of the new term, Sasha appears, cradling a normal recorder and what appears to be its two ugly sisters. It's been pantomime season in recorder land.

"I am feeling ENTHUSED," she says. It's fair to say that she is alone in this, especially when I learn that she has re-scheduled her all her departmental meetings so she can be involved in all future recorder classes.

She speaks wistfully of her old school, where the music teacher used to 'fill the school with beauty', singing as she went. Instead they have me, filling the school with the sounds of muttered blasphemy and lost chords. "How do you want to do this?" she asks me. "On my own," I'd like to say, but don't.

I have never made a secret of my lack of previous teaching experience, which is just as well as Sasha quizzes me so relentlessly that I am thinking of getting highlights from my CV tattooed on my face. There are also moments when the minimal role played by The Arts in my life so far is so dazzlingly obvious you could stick it in the sky and use it to land night flights at Heathrow.

I put music stands together, and end up with something that looks like a minimalist Christmas tree crossed with a miniature version of 'The Angel of the North' complete with my own finger tips by way of decoration. Sasha demonstrates the recorder to the class, years of expertise apparent in every note she plays. Then I take over. "You don't use your left hand for those notes," she hisses.

Sasha’s enthusiasm extends to forming a staff recorder group. Her recruitment drive begins at break, when she attempts to infect the other teachers with her relentless energy.

"Can you read music?" she asks one of the teaching assistants, who is carefully tracing and cutting out 50 paper leaves, a painstaking task which requires total concentration and a large pair of scissors. “No,” replies the assistant, snipping carefully round a stalk. “Would you like to learn?” “No,” she says, again. The scissors tremble slightly in her hand. “What about joining a recorder group?” “I just want to sit here quietly, minding my own business and doing my leaves,” she says,in a voice of just perceptibly rising hysteria. She adds the finished leaf to the pile and starts on the next. “You’re in!” says Sasha.

By the end of break, Sasha has also recruited the caretaker, who arrives at the end of her stirring recruitment speech - "With just five notes there's any amount of fabulous 16th century music you can play," - and is so moved he volunteers on the spot. The following day I ask her how membership is progressing. There is a pause. "I'm making other plans," she says, grandly.

A seasonal sprinkling of projectile vomiting

It's the first day of term and it's been ten minutes to five for the past hour. I'm having difficulty deciding whether time really does go slower at work or if I've just died.

But no - it's flat batteries, a seasonal speciality, along with the faint sound of 'Silent Night' coming from the cupboard under the stairs: the head's patented carol singer trap, baited with glasses of sherry and mince pies, has scored a record number of victims this year.

It's cold, too, and dark, though only inside. The thermostat was buried weeks ago along with most of the light switches and can only be reached by ripping off the layers of cotton wool snowmen, angels, cards, Jesus, three kings, shepherds and the very timid student teacher on a placement who was accidentally glued on to the Nativity tableau on the last day of term and was too shy to complain before it set.

I can cope with all this, but what's getting me down is the seasonal sprinkling of Novovirus which I'm convinced is coating every surface.

"Do you think we're at risk of catching it?" I ask the head.

"What gives you that idea?" she says, busily dousing her desk, pupils, staff and lunch trolley with a pump action, industrial size antibacterial spray.

"Do you think it lives on recorders?" I ask.

"Probably, with all that warm spit to breed in," she says. "But look on the bright side. Get them to play 'Au clair de la lune,' and I guarantee the vibrations will finish them off."

I'm still not convinced. "How would you feel if I stood somewhere else for the lessons?"

"Where?"

"I thought the other side of the street would work for me."

"I've got a better idea," she says. "The hamster's dead. Let's soak the spare bedding in disenfectant and put it outside the classroom door."

"Fair enough," I say. "And I've got a leftover shepherd's crook from the Christmas play. If they get their hands the wrong way round I'll prod them with it."

I suppose it could be worse. Thanks to Novovirus' new, improved symptoms there'll be no more boring conversations in the staffroom - we can just draw a target on the notice board and play competitive projectile vomiting instead.

Away in a manger with the fairies

"Carols aren't that hard," says the vicar impatiently, as I chop my way laboriously through the rising sixths half way through "Once in Royal David's City," for the 19th time.

"They are if you can't play the piano," I reply, hands poised above the keyboard with about as much chance of hitting the right notes as a short-sighted bird of prey trying to locate a small, fast-moving vole.

He sighs. "If you play that again it'll be repeating all evening," he says, making my performance sound like a small, indigestible gerkin, and brings proceedings to a temporary halt by putting on a tape of carols at top volume.

It's the last day of term and the first parents are filing into the church to get the best seats. Jesus may bid the children shine with a pure, clear light, but it's an injunction that doesn't apply to pianos. This one is fitted with a very small clip-on beam that keeps the keyboard in deepest darkness and illuminates only the first few notes of the hymns, which is great if it's metaphors about the state of my soul I'm after but of limited use when it comes to belting out the music. I point this out to the vicar. "Did I tell you about our really excellent new director of music?" he says. "Really first class. Nothing's too much trouble. Marvellous man. He always has this light. Doesn't seem to have a problem with it."

It occurs to me, belatedly, that really competent pianists like the director of music probably don't need sight of every note at least half a bar before it's played, whereas visual clearance is an absolute necessity as far as I'm concerned.

The result, inevitably, is a sort of race, where my hands, plunged into darkness, take on an independent existence from the rest of me during the service, and I can only listen, often aghast, at what they come up with as they attempt to translate my woolly instructions into notes. As a result, carols with a lot of repetition - 'O come all ye faithful' a particular favourite for this reason - get faster and faster as my confidence levels rise, while others ('In the bleak midwinter' a prime example) are executed at the broken canter of a novice jockey confronting the hurdles of the Grand National for the first time.

Amazingly, we all finish the carols together, although the vicar, who spends much of the service cast down in apparent gloom on a seat next to the choir stalls, casts contemplative looks in my direction from time to time, especially when I attempt to add a fifth verse to the four perceived to be perfectly adequate by the rest of the congregation at the end of 'O little town of Bethlehem'.

The final chord rings out, then rings out again, this time minus the three extra sharps that had somehow crept in and I stop abruptly. The blessing is done and the children and parents leave, to the sound of five pound notes rustling into the collection plates like dry leaves.

For one terrible moment, I thought I'd never see my lovely hands again. But here they are, back in the light again, ready to come home with me for Christmas.

So let's hear it for the arrival of Jesus - not once, not twice but six - yes, SIX times. I've welcomed Him twice on the piano, once on the violin and three times as a spectator. My father would have been proud of me. Though, as he was Jewish, maybe not.

And what could possibly be nicer than those favourite old carols? After careful consideration, I’d say a double brandy would do it every time. Five renditions of Away in a Manger is enough to tip the bi-polar balance of the toughest brain cells into deep depression.

I decide to skip the staff lunch, pleading death, and leave home, trailing brain cells, spare notes and a palpable sense of relief in my wake.

Ivy F treatment (not to mention Holly)

Two exasperated new posters near the Year 2 classroom ambush me as I pass.

The first, "WE HAVE TWO HANDS TO HELP US LEARN THE TWO TIMES TABLE," is followed, two steps later by, "WE HAVE TEN FINGERS AND THUMBS TO HELP US LEARN THE TWO TIMES TABLE."

I look, without success, for a third poster which, if I read the rising mood of irritation correctly should read, "SO FOR GOD'S SAKE, WHY CAN'T YOU BLOODY WELL LEARN IT?" but it has yet to be added.

The mood of exasperation is echoed elsewhere in the school.

"Mrs Philistine is going to look after the children who are trying hard because I'm a little bit busy getting a little bit cross," says the Year 1 teacher, as I wait to take her class into music.

She is propelling 5 year olds across the floor like skittles in her desperate attempts to choreograph the class into an approximation of a Christmas tree shape, the finale to the song which they will be performing later this week at the carol service - the final event of the term.

Soon, with only a minimum of shouting and child hurling, she has achieved a series of graduated rows, smallest children at the front crouched into root-balls, tallest, at the back, standing precariously on tippy-toes with hands held high.

She heaves a sigh of relief, turns away from them to demonstrate the final pirouette and takes an unplanned step backwards, treading on much of the first row which falls backwards in surprise, bringing down the rest like dominoes.

They say Christmas comes only once a year. Not in this neck of the woods. For an aetheist, I'm spending an awful lot of my waking hours with Little Lord Jesus, and it's hard to believe that the experience is doing either of us much good.

Stop me if you've heard this before

Can't remember if have previously posted this. If so, accept my apologies. It's not new, but it scarcely matters, as it happens in slightly modified form, every year.
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At break, no doubt as an antidote to the stress of the nativity play, the staffroom is full of sentiment. Five or six teachers are watching the computer slideshow another teacher has e-mailed.

A reinterpretation of 'The Seven Wonders of the World,' it consists of 'to hear, to see, to feel, to taste' (but never bile at the back of the throat) , 'to laugh' (though never ironically), finishes with 'to learn' and 'to teach' and is copiously illustrated with pictures - a smiley baby reaching up to its mother's face, a labrador puppy sharing an ice cream with a little girl, ("I'm sure that's a health and safety issue," someone murmurs), lovers leaping through poppy-filled meadows. "It's really humbling," says one of the Year 1 teachers.

Feeling like a mad axe murderer let loose among a room full of tiny lambs, I lurch over to the coffee machine, to see if a jolt of caffeine will remove the feeling that I am having a near death experience, only to recoil at the sound of Mary, the deputy head, making running repairs to her latest bandwagon.

"Graves need to be tended," she's saying to the head. "I'm funny about things like that." Sickened, I turn away, and come face to face with a prayer bluetacked to the whiteboard. It's designed for 'all those involved in education'. "Make us more apt to teach but yet more apt to learn....with humble and thankful hearts," it says.

Just when I think I've entered a parallel universe made entirely from saccharine, with no way of escape, I hear the welcome, acerbic voice of Sally, the teaching assistant, coming up the stairs from one of the reception classrooms: "If another child sneezes on my hand, I'm going to go mad," she says, and immediately the atmosphere reverts to normal.

Intestine times

"Do you know what the word 'disembowel' means?" says the head, kicking off her pre-play motivational chat with the Year 2s.

"No? It means pulling all your insides out, bit by bit," she adds, demonstrating with a majestic hand over hand action that has the entire class goggling at her. "And, Bertie, if you sit with your legs akimbo so everyone can see up your king's gown again or fiddle with your crown during the performance today, I'll be strongly tempted to disembowel YOU."

Later on, as I triumphantly crash down my hands on the final chord, getting three out of four notes right - well above average - there's a collective sigh of relief from the teachers.

"The lovely thing," says the chair of the governors, after despatching a small child to present a seasonal basket of flowers to me and the deputy head, who wrote the thing,"is that the children were obviously enjoying every moment."

Little does he know that from my concealed position - right at the back of the hall, hidden by the children standing on rows of benches, I have long since mastered the art of hissing "SMILE! LOOK HAPPY! NO - HAPPIER!" out of the corner of my mouth while playing the introduction to 'Away in a manger.'

After the performance, we go round the school hall, collecting the parents' debris - used tissues, coffee and burger packaging. I'm half expecting to find a used condom in the back row.

"They might at least leave a tip," I say to the head. She sniffs. "A few inches of intestine stapled to the next letter home might help to reinforce the message that good manners maketh man."

Bertie, passing on his way back to the classroom, flinches and glances down at his robes, presumably praying that his mother had the good sense to make the bottom layer out of Kevlar.

No rhyme at the inn

"It's no good," I say. "I can't get them to remember it."

We're in the middle of a slightly tense nativity play rehearsal and I'm taking the children through the final song, written earlier this morning following the sudden realisation that without music, Mary and Joseph will make their entire epic journey to Bethlehem ('Circle twice round the shepherds and for heavens sake don't fall over the lamb again, Mary') in complete silence.

The parameters for the song - short, punchy and memorable - have resulted in a fairly feeble effort which does the job - but with one slight flaw. I've rhymed 'Mary' with 'weary' - a lazy rhyme that is coming home to roost, and doing a good job of mixing metaphors in the process as it lands heavily on my shoulder and utters a loud, self-satisfied squawk.

"Children, it's not 'wary' - that would mean that Mary was a little bit cautious. And she may be cautious, after all, they haven't got anywhere to stay and the baby's going to be born soon, but she's actually weary - which means tired. Can you all say 'weary'? After me. 1, 2, 3, 4 -'

"Wary," chorus the children.

"Not wary..... weary."

The deputy head who's producing the play, has already had a tough afternoon, what with moving a bunch of heavy benches for the children to sit on having played havoc with her pelvic floor, and this latest development appears to be having a similar effect on her facial muscles, which are sagging noticeably.

"Isn't there anything you can do?" she asks.

"All I can think of is simplifying the song," I say.

"How would that work," she asks, tiredly.

"I'm not sure," I say. "But the way things are going, I'd suggest lyrics on the lines of 'Christmas, Christmas, Christmas, Christmas, Christmas, Christmas, Christmas'. Then we could tweak it for the Spring term: 'Easter, Easter, Easter, Easter, Easter, Easter,' In fact," I say, "It's got almost infinite potential. Take the Autumn term."

"Let me guess," she says. "Harvest, Harvest, Harvest - "

"You've got it," I say. "Am I fired yet?"

"Oh come on," she says. "Let's have one more go at the words."

"Or die trying," I say.

Take a friend to work day

School: Hymn: Edelweiss (it's national Pantheism Day); Teachers moved to tears by beauty of singing: 1 (not me, naturally); Number of vomiting children in recorder lesson: two.

"This job isn't any good," says Francis, studying a letter with an A starred attempt at a D'Arcy sneer, though minus the britches. "It's a two hour commute."

"Why, have you been offered it?" Forget jumping guns. Frankly, if there's a water pistol in sight I can clear it by a good two metres. I am absolutely thrilled.

"No," he says. "It's just that it's a nightmare journey. No use even thinking about it."

Oh. I take a very deep breath. Then another, while praying for the Tact Fairy to tap me on the head with her biggest, most effective wand. Right this minute.

"But Francis," I say, and hear, with worry, that my voice has already climbed several semi-tones up the hysterical soprano register. "Why don't you see if you get the job first, and then let's worry about the journey there?"

"You complained enough about the last one," he replies. "If I recall correctly, you said you couldn't manage on your own in the mornings. And this one would mean leaving a good hour earlier."

At this rate, what with Francis' semi-courtroom language, and my rising voice, we'll need separate legal representation just to get through breakfast.

"I see, so it's all my fault now, is it?" We're on number 120b from the Bumper Book of Domestic Rows, now completely revised and enlarged to include an all-new redundancy spat section.

Forget 'take your daughter to school to work day'. What I need now is a 'take a friend back home day'. Think what a difference it would make. Especially now. Somebody to say, "Francis, she's very, very upset. What she needs is to go to bed now with a lovely coffee and the papers. And perhaps later on when she's feeling better, a good-looking naked man."

Mind you, I suppose it would cut both ways, and presumably, Francis would have a friend home too, and he'd tell me to stop trying to have the best of all worlds and accept my husband as the miracle-working home and life juggling expert he undoubtedly is.

Oh, well, it was a nice idea, though one undoubtedly requiring more thorough research before the national launch.

Later on, I collect Deborah from school. She hands me her lunchbag, schoolbag, music bag, recorder and coat and saunters off. "Look at Patsy," I say. "She's being so helpful and helping her mummy by carrying her own things." Deborah eyes Patsy with a jaundiced expression. "Good for her," she says, and carries straight on.