TEEHEEHEE!

Door Rage has subsided. The incident has lead to me being well and truly ignored by the offending Rattler, and her suddenly being able to remember the door code and let herself in. HA.

With all this ranting about my job, I don't want people to get the wrong impression. Don't start thinking that I sit there all day in my office with a face like a smacked arse, pen poised waiting for the next thing to whinge about. In fact, because I have to listen to people who do sit there whinging about the weather, about it being too hot, too cold, the kids, the fact that you’re wearing jeans when there’s a no jeans policy, or who moan about having to stay behind for a meeting, or that what you're cooking smells of fish when it's not fish - it's pasta, actually etc, etc, I seem to go the opposite way.

I like to cause a bit of mischief. I like to run a-muck. Sometimes, if people are being particularly moany that day, I’ll goad them a little bit and wind them up to see just how much they really can whinge. Or I'll humour them and pick the most ridiculous story in The Mirror that morning, and go 'oooh, listen to this, "First class stamps go up to 38p!" isn't that awful?' knowing full well it's a load of sensationalist crap, and see who agrees because they have nothing else better to say.

Perhaps I’ll kick up a fuss about biscuits. Cause a furore over fruit. Protest against celery just as someone’s half way through a stick of the stuff. And because people assume that only the admin person can fix a photocopier (ie. read and follow instructions from a screen), my favourite weapon is a well placed post-it note, telling people ‘the photocopier is jammin’ like Bob Marley. Don’t ask Jo to fix it”.

Sometimes, however, the kids save me the effort. There comes a point when I get bored of playing James Bond with my friend the Youth Worker, which involves us (a 24 year old and a 40 year old) stealthing it round the school with our hands clasped together like guns, hunting for the good biscuits and shouting “CLEAR!” before entering each (empty) room. When I get bored of all that, I’ll go all quiet, wonder round, contemplating a cup of tea.

Then with any luck, I’ll walk into the kitchen just in time to hear the perfectly crafted, cutting tones of a 15 year old, announcing to a teacher wearing a particularly horrendous, long, patterned coat: “Miss, you look like sumfin’ out of Harry Potter today”, and the teenage monkey in me starts jumping up and down, clapping it’s hands with glee all over again.