Mental tangent....

Yes, I should be doing homework. In fact I am doing homework and that’s the reason I’m posting. I was just starting my English essay, grumbling about The Colour Purple and how Martin would never have made us do this book – in fact he ranted at length on how much he hated it. Then I started thinking about Martin’s lessons and wondering why the whole situation with him leaving had bothered us so much and why we’d felt the need to cause so much chaos at losing him – he is after all *just* a teacher. I remember I think it was about the fifth lesson after he’d left and the whole class was talking before Caroline arrived, saying “Do you remember when Martin did this” and “I bet Martin wouldn’t have done that”. Trixy suddenly said “Guys, we’re *reminiscing* about a *teacher*! We’ve got to stop!”
But as I was thinking about it and half listening to my music, ‘The Power of Goodbye’ by Madonna came on and I suddenly was reduced to tears because it is the *perfect* song for the whole situation. It was so incredibly weird – the whole thing happened about two months ago and I can *still* get all emotional about it. We just lost a teacher! So I lost the enjoyment of going to English. So for a few weeks I actually looked forward to analysing poetry, something I’ve always hated before. So maybe when we analysed ‘Tyger Tyger’ it was so brilliant that I’ll never be able to read it in the same way again. So maybe I lost the amazing connection with a whole class of people, most of whom I would never have liked had I met them in the street. It was just a teacher after all. Only a teacher right? Now I barely talk to the rest of the class, Trixy’s left, other people never turn up to lessons, we’re writing essays on the one book Martin hated more than anything and Jan is talking about re-analysing ‘Tyger Tyger’ because she doesn’t agree with the way Martin analysed it.

And Caroline said she was getting the feeling ‘I wasn’t enjoying English anymore’. Can’t think why.