Watch Out For the Gardener

I had just spent a couple of weeks at a school in the suburbs that came to be known to me and my family as Nutbush Community Hell-Hole (real name withheld to protect the guilty) and I was ready for a change of pace.

Having managed to land myself a position for a term in a very nice little preparatory school, I was feeling pretty pleased with myself. This school was more like it. Here the children smiled, opened doors for you and offered to help carry your books. I had to keep pinching myself every now and then to remind myself that I was not on a movie set in a re-make of “Goodbye Mister Chips”. The staff room was infused with the smell of freshly brewed coffee and my colleagues went off to classes looking relaxed and happy. Ah, this was a bit more like the English teaching experience I had imagined before leaving Australia.

The school had been owned by the same family for three generations and was steeped in tradition and quaint customs. The boys were required to doff their caps when they passed he Headmaster’s office window. Boys below Grade Six were not allowed to wear long trousers because, as I was told when I asked why, “Knees mend more easily than trousers”. All misdemeanors had to be entered in the “pink” book. The book was actually green, but for some reason it was known as the pink book. Some things had no explanation and others were just because it had always been that way.

One day, I was sitting in the staff room enjoying my second cup of coffee when the bell went to signal the end of recess. Before I could move, there was a tap on the window. When I looked out, the gardener was standing there pointing at his watch and jerking his thumb in the direction of the classrooms. I thought this was a bit presumptuous and indicated that I was on my way. The gardener continued to stand there as if to make sure I hurried along. I made my way to class thinking the gardener needed to be put back in his place and wishing I had told him what to do with his watch. After all, this school was an exemplar of the British class system and it didn’t seem right for the gardener to be getting uppity with the teaching staff.

Later that day I was chatting with the headmaster over another cup of coffee and I related the story of the gardener. The headmaster chuckled and said, “That’s my father; he used to be the headmaster here, before he handed over to me.” I silently congratulated myself on resisting the urge to tell the gardener where to go. I quickly commented on what a wonderful job he did with the gardens and scuttled away to the safety of my classroom.

The lesson here is that just because a gardener looks like a gardener, it doesn't mean the gardener isn't the headmaster in gardener's clothes. I'm not sure if that's a lesson or just a badly constructed sentence. The real point is you shouldn't judge a gardener by the way he looks at his watch without checking to see if the watch is a Rolex.