Chlorine, scunge and waving

I would not normally be home in time to find the Principal licking my wife wherever he could find exposed flesh, nor to find him doing likewise with the Head of Animal Care, the Finance Director, and the Chaplain & Multi-Faith-or-None Facilitator. You may think that the fact that these are all the same person doesn’t make it any better, and the fact that the Principal is a cat called Fruitcake may not seem any improvement. It’s all quite demure though. On Thursday’s Cho goes swimming, and cats love chlorine. The way he licks her hand is frenzied, but the point is I’ve never witnessed this before.

Redundancy brings some big shocks and changes. You worry about money. You find yourself hoovering in your pyjamas at coffee time. But it’s the little changes, and the things you realise aren’t there anymore that pull you up short. For instance, yesterday I put on a shirt. I was standing where I would normally stand looking out at the garden (no changes so far). I had the collar up and did up the top button. Then I remembered I wasn’t going to put a tie on, undid the button and put the collar down. The shirt was unironed, so there’s a silver if crumpled lining: redundancy means less ironing, and no tie.

Then today I remembered someone I only ever said ‘Good morning’ to. On my way up the road at around 8.00 he would be riding his bike the other way. Over the years we went from recognition, to nod, to smile and nod, to full-blown thumbs up cheery grin and ‘Good morning.’ Being British, it took a good few years to get there. All that patient body language has gone to waste.

Another difference, a chrome lining if you like, is that there is definitely less scunge in the bathroom. You may remember the black goo monster I battled with some weeks ago. Scunge is it’s baby cousin. 'Scunge' exists in Australia, the US, and in New Zealand, though not necessarily always meaning the same. In my own mind if not in reality, there’s a connection with scum and grunge, and there is some scunge music on You Tube. At Fruitcake Miniature College, ‘scunge’ is a noun (but not a verb) meaning ‘accumulated grime, possibly crusty or slimy’. There is also the adjective ‘scungy’, and a variant spelling, favoured by the Head of Animal Care, with K rather than C.

The main thing, though, is that when you are redundant the base of the handbasin tap is less scungy. Also your unironed workshirt is unbuttoned at the neck, and the man on the bicycle is waving at the ghost of you going to work. That is, if he’s still got his job.

The wrong trousers

Today I had to go and see someone in an office. So no scruffy jeans then. The trouble is, seeing as there's an economy drive on in the Turing household, I haven't done my annual hour or two of frenzy in the summer sales. What to wear? How about work trousers and a work shirt but no tie? Go for casual smart, like an estate agent for example?

By the time I had attended to Fruitcake's byzantine hierarchy of needs (drink outside, meat blob inside x 2, biscuits, poo in tray, milk, pee in tray, fuss and combing) and  was showered and attired, I was struck by three things simultaneously. The first was wonder how at how I ever got  out of the house, sometimes with a poached egg inside me, neatly dressed, lunch packed, by 7.50.The other two concerned the trousers.

It felt very strange. The last time I had worn those trousers I was a teacher with a job. They felt so familiar, like ballet shoes, maybe, to a retired dancer. Did they sparkle slightly with that old magic? If I put my hands in the pockets, board pens would come out and turn into doves. If I strode in your direction perhaps the fog hanging over sentences with 'if' in them would lift a little for you. If you saw them coming, you might be suddenly motivated to practise irregular past verb forms with your partner by means of an amusing game. And if I went out in them, would they march me to a Further Education college and into a classroom as a lesson plan sprang fully formed into my brain?

Then I stood at the mirror and saw myself. The third thing struck me. Those trousers were Uncle Bill's trousers. From the side they were perhaps passable, for polyester in navy blue, that is. From the front they were baggy in all the wrong places. The belt (a necessity) served only to accentuate their irredeemable uncle-ishness. What must I have looked like to all those multi-coloured, attractive, lively young people that it was my delight to teach? What had I come to in twenty years at the college? Those trousers were wrong. The trouble was, now I was in them, and like the red shoes in the story, I couldn't take them off. There wasn't time.

As luck would have it, when I got to the office, the person I went to see was wearing nealy the same outfit. True his trousers looked better cut and more expensive. The shirt (sleeves rolled up a couple of times like mine) had come out of a box marked £45, but it was essentially the same kit. I probably had 25 years on him, but my magic teaching trousers had a little of their sparkle still. OK, a shiny polyester kind of sparkle, an uncle-ish kind of magic, but he probably didn't even guess that I was out of work