Post by Harry Barry on Apr 18, 2007 16:35:27 GMT
48 | Posted by: SMT dude at 18 Apr 2007 10:46
The Middle Eastern site offered by ‘Itsalltrue’ is no red herring, but germane to the question, ‘would you recommend working abroad?’ Its response is raucously negative, although it portrays the academy from hell with Rabelaisian relish. The futile circularity of life in an ex-pat commune is deftly drawn, although of course there is no reason why a school could not turn just as sour in Dorking, as this one has in Doha.
I have just devoured the site during sleepless small hours, with the guilty pleasure one always feels on coming across something truly hardcore on the net. At first it seemed just another example of modern British humour, obscene playground p*ss-taking masquerading as comedy, but in fact the drama is constructed with wit and verve. It is clear that although recent events at this all too easily identifiable school have dealt a hammer blow to a certain department, the academy still boasts a talented screenwriter.
Here, in loathsome detail, is a school gone all the way wrong: a witless, spineless SMT, a staffroom of prurient, cynical bottom-feeders, a board bursting with bullshootting businessmen, and a Year Ten teeming with tartlets. But as with all good satire, beneath the disgust lies, implicitly, a glimpse of what it might be like at the other moral extreme, in an environment blessed by intelligence, culture, generosity and love (well, anyway, that’s what they taught us to say about Swift when I was at Uni in the Pleistocene era).
There is even some concession to sentimentality, as when we see the rank-and-file heartwarmingly engaged in their humble selfless tasks while their incompetent officers patrol the golf course.
My favourite episodes were the clash of spiteful vanities when the new Head of English took on the board’s hit man, and of course the timeless tragedy at the Rugby club. But we need less of the monosyllabic Bobby, and perhaps more of Carla, Moscow-cockney being my favourite accent.
Readers who find the story too fantastical, may visit the school’s web site, to discover that ‘Harry Barry’, like Shakespeare, has embroidered but not invented his tales. May Allah spare and preserve him to offer us more, and let us hope that the board, already worried about recruitment policy at the academy, do not find their way to the pantry.
The Middle Eastern site offered by ‘Itsalltrue’ is no red herring, but germane to the question, ‘would you recommend working abroad?’ Its response is raucously negative, although it portrays the academy from hell with Rabelaisian relish. The futile circularity of life in an ex-pat commune is deftly drawn, although of course there is no reason why a school could not turn just as sour in Dorking, as this one has in Doha.
I have just devoured the site during sleepless small hours, with the guilty pleasure one always feels on coming across something truly hardcore on the net. At first it seemed just another example of modern British humour, obscene playground p*ss-taking masquerading as comedy, but in fact the drama is constructed with wit and verve. It is clear that although recent events at this all too easily identifiable school have dealt a hammer blow to a certain department, the academy still boasts a talented screenwriter.
Here, in loathsome detail, is a school gone all the way wrong: a witless, spineless SMT, a staffroom of prurient, cynical bottom-feeders, a board bursting with bullshootting businessmen, and a Year Ten teeming with tartlets. But as with all good satire, beneath the disgust lies, implicitly, a glimpse of what it might be like at the other moral extreme, in an environment blessed by intelligence, culture, generosity and love (well, anyway, that’s what they taught us to say about Swift when I was at Uni in the Pleistocene era).
There is even some concession to sentimentality, as when we see the rank-and-file heartwarmingly engaged in their humble selfless tasks while their incompetent officers patrol the golf course.
My favourite episodes were the clash of spiteful vanities when the new Head of English took on the board’s hit man, and of course the timeless tragedy at the Rugby club. But we need less of the monosyllabic Bobby, and perhaps more of Carla, Moscow-cockney being my favourite accent.
Readers who find the story too fantastical, may visit the school’s web site, to discover that ‘Harry Barry’, like Shakespeare, has embroidered but not invented his tales. May Allah spare and preserve him to offer us more, and let us hope that the board, already worried about recruitment policy at the academy, do not find their way to the pantry.
