Striking out

10:45am Monday 28th April 2008

Comments (0)   Have your say »

NO one does fury quite so furiously as a nine-year-old boy with a bee in his bonnet (or his baseball cap, depending on what he happens to be wearing that day).

The particular nine-year-old who lives in my house was absolutely apoplectic when he discovered he had to go to school on the teachers' day of action last Thursday. He waved the letter confirming his fate in my face, he scowled and he growled like a bear with a sore head and no honey for tea, and he generally stamped about the place harrumphing until we all got sick of the sight of him and locked him in the shed.

All that would have been just about bearable if his sister hadn't been furious as well. She was more pout than person for a good hour or two and could be heard throughout the house loudly telling her many and varied dolls and stuffed animals how unfair life was.

"I don't know about you Baby Anabel," she could be heard squawking in the kind of voice that only an exceedingly miffed five-year-old can muster, "but I just can't believe it, and neither can Big Bow Tie Bow. He's very, very angry."

And who can blame him when he's forced to wear a dress and pink ribbons round his ears?

If the truth be told though, the little one wasn't actually furious about having to go to school; she was furious about having to stay at home.

I'm sure last week's strike caused similar ructions in houses across the land. It was inconvenient, it was irritating, it caused more hoohah than a knees-up in a hoohah factory, but it was not wrong.

No one goes on strike on a whim. It's never a spur of the moment, "hey shall we have tomorrow off for a laugh?" kind of decision. It is the last resort of people who feel they have a valid case that is just not being given a fair hearing.

Why should teachers have to make do with what is in effect a pay cut? They are put under huge amounts of pressure by the Government, league tables, head teachers, governing bodies and us parents.

Why shouldn't they expect to get a decent pay rise - any pay rise in fact - for their trouble?

A number of the national tabloids berated teachers last week for not feeling guilty about taking strike action, as if it was somehow unseemly behaviour for good upstanding members of the community.

But the teachers weren't doing something irresponsible such as lighting up a spliff in front of the kids, they were showing them that if you feel you are being unfairly treated then you should stand up and say so. Which, if you ask me, is a very valuable lesson indeed.

* Children are strange creatures. Maybe it's something to do with all the E-numbers they scoff or the mind-numbing amount of The Chuckle Brothers they watch, but they just don't think in a straight line like the rest of us.

This was brought into sharp focus for me the other day during a particularly competitive game of charades with the kids (there wasn't anything on the telly and the shops were shut).

While normal human beings mime obvious things such as telly programmes, books or films (I can always be relied on to do The Colditz Story by shivering and pointing at my boobs), the smaller members of my household choose the most obscure things imaginable. The top three, in no particular order, from our most recent Give Us A Clue session were: "wiping an elephant's bottom"; "a speccy idiot playing the piano"; and "Elvis doing PE".

Even Lionel Blair would have had trouble with those.