heads for me to translate into Latin. For example:
Gag me with a spoon. Fac me cocleario vomere.
My Jacuzzi is filled with Perrier. Meum balineum calidum verticosum cum aqua scintillante fontana Gallica impletum est.
Of all the ruses I’ve tried, this last one has been the most popular, but it is the one that leaves me feeling most upset, most depressed. I end up feeling like a performing monkey, a dancing bear.
One day after one such session, Jenny came up to me at the end. Bless her, I think she finds it quite painful to see me scraping the barrel in this way.
‘ Summergimurne , Miss Singleton?’ she asked. Are we sinking?
‘ Ita vero, summergimur ,’ I said. Yes, we are sinking.
None of it has done any good, and this last year, as I’ve said, there has been only Jenny, and next year, there will be no one.
I have begun to think, Perhaps I am wrong? Perhaps it is more important to know how to make a flashing LED nightlight than to read Manilius on the Vault of Heaven, or to discover that Salmacis and Hermaphroditus are each one half of a seamless whole. Perhaps it is more deeply satisfying to shape and file a piece of blue acrylic into a name plate for one’s desk than it is to unpick the ending from the beginning of a single word and unravel its meaning. Perhaps I have clung on too long to the wreckage. Perhaps they are right and I am wrong, perhaps it is a useless, impractical language and there are no circumstances left in which you would ever need it.
Perhaps.
Three weeks ago, I bumped into Peter Tracey outside the staff room.
I was standing close to the wall in the small space between the staffroom door and the mineral water dispensing machine.
‘Patricia,’ he said.
I jumped when he spoke my name, the shock struck me like a physical blow. It is so long since the two of us have exchanged even one word. We have settled over the years, while his star has risen and mine has fallen, into what most people here think of as a kind of silent truce.
Peter Tracey is tall and handsome, he wears quite good shirts in a range of pastel colours. He has brown curly hair and a strong prominent nose (which I can only describe as Roman). I would guess he is roughly half my age. He is generally adored, he is thought to be a very fun teacher.
‘Patricia,’ he said, touching his mouth with one of his large, practical hands, as people do when they are about to deliver some unpleasant news, and informed me that he’d been told by the Head that his department would be taking over the last remaining Latin room (my room, where I have been teaching Jenny) from the following Monday, and that I would be given the use of the vacant storeroom in the art block for my few remaining classes.
I tried to accept this piece of news with dignity, but I am no Marie Antoinette, and I found it impossible to withstand this final death blow, inevitable as it was, without bursting into tears.
Tracey blushed slightly and looked at his feet. Perhaps men like Peter Tracey are too young to carry a handkerchief. Anyway, he didn’t offer me one, he just sort of sauntered off and away through the double doors at the end of the corridor.
I couldn’t sleep that night, nor for several nights after that. I felt so crushed after what had happened in the corridor. The night before I was due to move into the store cupboard I lay awake until four, when I finally got up and wrote Peter Tracey a note.
I used a sheet of my best writing paper—laid, cream, A5—and wrote the message neatly in ink, folded it into quarters and wrote his initals, PJT, on the front.
Vae, da mihi veniam vitae , I wrote. Well, pardon me for living.
And felt a little better.
When I arrived at school, I popped it into his pigeon hole before beginning the task of moving my things from my old room into my little cubby in the artblock.
My next note, the following day, took a slightly more assertive tone.
Potes currere, sed te occulere non potes .
I liked this one much more
Gag me with a spoon. Fac me cocleario vomere.
My Jacuzzi is filled with Perrier. Meum balineum calidum verticosum cum aqua scintillante fontana Gallica impletum est.
Of all the ruses I’ve tried, this last one has been the most popular, but it is the one that leaves me feeling most upset, most depressed. I end up feeling like a performing monkey, a dancing bear.
One day after one such session, Jenny came up to me at the end. Bless her, I think she finds it quite painful to see me scraping the barrel in this way.
‘ Summergimurne , Miss Singleton?’ she asked. Are we sinking?
‘ Ita vero, summergimur ,’ I said. Yes, we are sinking.
None of it has done any good, and this last year, as I’ve said, there has been only Jenny, and next year, there will be no one.
I have begun to think, Perhaps I am wrong? Perhaps it is more important to know how to make a flashing LED nightlight than to read Manilius on the Vault of Heaven, or to discover that Salmacis and Hermaphroditus are each one half of a seamless whole. Perhaps it is more deeply satisfying to shape and file a piece of blue acrylic into a name plate for one’s desk than it is to unpick the ending from the beginning of a single word and unravel its meaning. Perhaps I have clung on too long to the wreckage. Perhaps they are right and I am wrong, perhaps it is a useless, impractical language and there are no circumstances left in which you would ever need it.
Perhaps.
Three weeks ago, I bumped into Peter Tracey outside the staff room.
I was standing close to the wall in the small space between the staffroom door and the mineral water dispensing machine.
‘Patricia,’ he said.
I jumped when he spoke my name, the shock struck me like a physical blow. It is so long since the two of us have exchanged even one word. We have settled over the years, while his star has risen and mine has fallen, into what most people here think of as a kind of silent truce.
Peter Tracey is tall and handsome, he wears quite good shirts in a range of pastel colours. He has brown curly hair and a strong prominent nose (which I can only describe as Roman). I would guess he is roughly half my age. He is generally adored, he is thought to be a very fun teacher.
‘Patricia,’ he said, touching his mouth with one of his large, practical hands, as people do when they are about to deliver some unpleasant news, and informed me that he’d been told by the Head that his department would be taking over the last remaining Latin room (my room, where I have been teaching Jenny) from the following Monday, and that I would be given the use of the vacant storeroom in the art block for my few remaining classes.
I tried to accept this piece of news with dignity, but I am no Marie Antoinette, and I found it impossible to withstand this final death blow, inevitable as it was, without bursting into tears.
Tracey blushed slightly and looked at his feet. Perhaps men like Peter Tracey are too young to carry a handkerchief. Anyway, he didn’t offer me one, he just sort of sauntered off and away through the double doors at the end of the corridor.
I couldn’t sleep that night, nor for several nights after that. I felt so crushed after what had happened in the corridor. The night before I was due to move into the store cupboard I lay awake until four, when I finally got up and wrote Peter Tracey a note.
I used a sheet of my best writing paper—laid, cream, A5—and wrote the message neatly in ink, folded it into quarters and wrote his initals, PJT, on the front.
Vae, da mihi veniam vitae , I wrote. Well, pardon me for living.
And felt a little better.
When I arrived at school, I popped it into his pigeon hole before beginning the task of moving my things from my old room into my little cubby in the artblock.
My next note, the following day, took a slightly more assertive tone.
Potes currere, sed te occulere non potes .
I liked this one much more
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