Imaginitive composition

Where, when, why, and how.

My English teacher in secondary school told me to always launch my essays using that springboard. He wasn't one for the experimentation like, but then again, who was I to argue the toss on aesthetics? He was six foot six in height, built like a brick shithouse, had JCB scoops for hands and when you misbehaved he was wont to lift you from your chair using your sidehair for leverage. His arms were so long he could clip you around the ear from the neighbouring classroom for some misdemeanour you weren't actually going to do until the following week. Oh, and he wore the jumpers that even Timmy Mallet would throw out.

Crucially, however, he was the first person ever to encourage me to write humorously and irreverently, always saying "a bit of laughter is a Godsend, God knows..." and I'd always think how, if anyone would know it'd be him, because surely he was the most boring man on the planet.

With respect to Duncan Stewart.

My old teacher was so dry he was actually named as a mitigating factor in the Ethiopian Famine of the mid-eighties, you know. The poor man, despite good intentions, was like a beermat for soaking up the moisture of fun; put him anywhere near a bit of craic and he'd sponge it up in seconds like the amiable water-carrier he was.

Despite this, I have only fond memories of him. There's nothing like a bit of praise to sweeten aspiring writers, so when he whispered conspiratorially to my mother at a PT meeting that he'd always put my weekly essays last in the pile, so he'd have something to look forward to reading having sifted and waded through all the other boys', well suddenly he went up in my estimation.

Like a rocket.

"The ink flows freely from your pen," he would boom from the top of the class when handing back the copy book of a Monday, and classmates would start making slurping noises and flicking their tongues at me, in the time-honoured Cavanese for "ya big fucking lickarse hoor ya."

I could handle this unwanted labeling as a teacher's pet though, deep down I knew people were jealous or admiring in the only way being a teenage bloke allowed them to do. Besides, you can call me anything you like as long as you follow it up by telling me I wrote something that you read and liked.

I'm an ould whore me, you know.

When the teacher took to reading out my jokes in class, however, I was somewhat in fear of my life because it did seem like the man was becoming just a little over-enthused about me. I recall one I'd written about the problem of littering with a quip about cool-as-fuck gum-chewing cornerboys spitting their spent Wrigleys out while trying to look mean and dangerous, remarking that they tried to "put the chewed in bad attitude." Ho ho. He liked it anyway, what can I say.

Today, none of this would be hugely relevant really, or at least would just be more flotsam and jetsam in my mind, save for one thing that this teacher did for me on the final day of class in 1994. He handed me back my last ever essay and told me he'd enjoyed it and wished me luck in my exams and future life, and told me he'd tucked something extra inside the pages for me to look at later and maybe even keep for life.

"Ah Jasus," I thought, "he's not after giving me a pair of his underpants as a keepsake or something, is he?"

But thankfully he hadn't. Outside in the corridor I found some photocopied pages folded neatly with a simple note atop saying: "I thought you might like this." It was an essay, this essay.

I accidentally googled my way to that very same essay earlier today and was catapulted back through a lot of years, and a lot of the shells of my former selves. You might need to read that last bit back again if, like me while checking spellings, you thought I said shelves.

Anyway, that's the reason for the rambley post. I expect a lot of you have seen this essay before, or won't have time to go through it all. Ach but if just one person reads it and is wide-eyed and excited at it in the same way I was, as an awkward youth of 17, (wondering what in the world I'd ever do with myself besides draw willies on the pictures of the Saints in my religion book), then I'll have accomplished something.

Why I Write, by George Orwell. Big brother was watching me.

I only wish I'd kept those old copy books from school.