{"id":114,"date":"2018-12-04T08:04:40","date_gmt":"2018-12-04T08:04:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/bridges\/?p=114"},"modified":"2018-12-04T08:04:40","modified_gmt":"2018-12-04T08:04:40","slug":"rhona-tolchard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/bridges\/2018\/12\/04\/rhona-tolchard\/","title":{"rendered":"Rhona Tolchard"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hating Miss Harper<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"

Illustration by Kasia Grzelak, as it appears in the anthology Bridges<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cOff me clean sheets, you little divils!\u00a0 I\u2019ll tell your mam, mind! I will!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0We\u2019d been in the back lane, me and my little brother Neil, running in and out of the sheets hanging on the line. Old Mrs Kennedy had appeared at the top of her back stairs, shouting at us over her wall. We dodged inside our yard.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ll have to put it somewhere they won\u2019t look.\u201d\u00a0 Neil\u2019s voice was quiet.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know that, you stupid git!\u00a0 What I mean is, where?\u201d<\/p>\n

I could see him biting his lip.\u00a0 I was sorry I\u2019d lost my temper with him.<\/p>\n

\u201cUnder the shed at the allotment?\u201d he suggested.<\/p>\n

\u201cMam might look there. She was talking about letting Mr Pringle have it, so she\u2019s bound to check before she gives it to him.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe meter cupboard?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cShe\u2019s always in there to check how much money the Board\u2019ll want off her at the end of the month. \u00a0Anyway, Dad said never to touch that.\u00a0 It\u2019s electricity.\u00a0 We could get killed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Neil chewed his nails.\u00a0 He did it a lot, especially when he was thinking.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the outside bog?\u00a0 In the thing on top with the lid that lifts off.\u00a0 Nobody ever uses it except us.\u201d<\/p>\n

I thought.\u00a0 Since the new bathroom got built on to the old scullery, he was right – nobody ever used the outside bog, and now, nobody was thinking about getting rid of it either.\u00a0 Mam had too much to think about, what with her new job and everything. \u00a0\u201cIt\u2019s got water in it, though.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBut it\u2019s in a plastic bag.\u201d<\/p>\n

I nodded.\u00a0 He was learning.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019d have to make sure nobody sees us hiding it,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI could go in.\u201d<\/p>\n

He could.\u00a0 Nobody expects little kids to behave like other people.\u00a0 And they always want to pee, and if Mam saw him go in the bog from the kitchen window, she\u2019d just be glad he wasn\u2019t doing it in the back lane.<\/p>\n

\u201cAye, all right, take it.\u00a0 And don\u2019t be ages.\u201d<\/p>\n

He took the bag off me.<\/p>\n

\u201cUnder your jumper, stupid!\u201d<\/p>\n

II<\/strong><\/p>\n

The next day it was raining hard, so we had to stay in the classroom for playtime.\u00a0 We were supposed to be reading or making models out of Plasticine, but somebody started talking and after that it just got louder and louder.<\/p>\n

I hate our new classroom. It\u2019s cold, and sometimes the roof leaks. There\u2019s glass on both sides, so anybody passing in the corridor can see in, and it smells of scruffy kids and disinfectant and sour milk. Sometimes I look out the window into the yard, and it\u2019s got nowt in it except targets painted on the brick walls for PE classes.\u00a0 We hoy balls and beanbags at them.\u00a0 The walls are high as well.\u00a0 We say it\u2019s to stop kids getting out.<\/p>\n

In the old class, I used to really like Art, and some of my pictures were stuck on sugar-paper on the board round the back of the classroom.\u00a0 But now, since we got Miss Harper, I\u2019ve stopped trying so hard.\u00a0 She had a go at me for covering a picture with black raindrops.\u00a0 We don\u2019t see much black paint, so I wanted to make the most of it \u2013 but she didn\u2019t like it, and now I don\u2019t bother much with Art.<\/p>\n

\u201cSteven Turnbull, trust you to spoil a nice picture.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was how she said it, as if I never did anything right.<\/p>\n

Mr Martin would\u2019ve said something nice about it.\u00a0 Neil gets him in a couple of years, but by that time I\u2019ll be in the big school.<\/p>\n

Harper came back into the classroom and we all stood up and shut up.\u00a0 She has that effect on people. She\u2019s tall and wrinkly, and she has pale eyes that look through you, not at you, and she only likes the good kids, the ones that do what they\u2019re told and understand her without her having to explain things. All she wants to do with the rest of us is make us look stupid and slap us around.<\/p>\n

\u201cBooks away, please.\u00a0 Susan, collect the Plasticine in.\u201d<\/p>\n

Susan Ramshaw, one of the class monitors, came to squash the Plasticine back into the empty margarine tubs.\u00a0 We\u2019ve got three colours, brown, green and blue.\u00a0 The brown is red and green that got mixed by mistake: Thomas Drake got hit with a ruler for doing that.<\/p>\n

In Mrs Gregory\u2019s class, I made a green dragon, and me and Dad went to Felling Fair to see it on display.\u00a0 I had to cut flames out of a Fry\u2019s Turkish Delight wrapper for its nose.<\/p>\n

\u201cArithmetic books out, please.\u00a0 Steven Turnbull, stop dreaming and look at the board.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s always me she picks on.<\/p>\n

Harper likes arithmetic.\u00a0 Bloody boring sums, \u201cproblems\u201d, she calls them. So many apples and so many pears and so much money.<\/p>\n

Sometimes, I think: if you pick on one kid ten times between ten-thirty and twelve o\u2019clock, and make him come to the front to do a sum on the board he can\u2019t do, and slap him, and tell him he\u2019s a stupid boy twice, what do you get?<\/p>\n

Trouble, that\u2019s what you get.\u00a0 Something nasty you didn\u2019t expect.<\/p>\n

———————————————————————————<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This week, we are going to introduce a new author every day with examples or extracts of their work as it appears in the anthology Bridges. Today we introduce an extract from an engaging story written by Rhona Tolchard.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

She is a mature student who did my first degree at Newcastle.\u00a0 She is interested in all kinds of prose writing, and her ideas for stories often come from biographies or histories. Additionally, her fiction often overlaps with other subject areas – here, the non-violence theology of the Civil Rights movement in the late 1960s. When writing about fictional characters, she is usually trying to explore an idea for herself, so there is always a subtext. The influence of David Almond, a Tyneside writer, can be seen in the style and setting of this story.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hating Miss Harper \u201cOff me clean sheets, you little divils!\u00a0 I\u2019ll tell your mam, mind! I will!\u201d \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0We\u2019d been in the back lane, me and my little brother Neil, running in and out of the sheets hanging on the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7691,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"gallery","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-114","post","type-post","status-publish","format-gallery","hentry","category-prose","post_format-post-format-gallery"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/bridges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/bridges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/bridges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/bridges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7691"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/bridges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=114"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/bridges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":121,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/bridges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114\/revisions\/121"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/bridges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/bridges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/bridges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}