Sorry, wrong number...

My phone is apparently hotwired to some black hole of bitch calls. I think you must be able to enter any public phone booth in the country, hit a number and get put through to me. In fact, I think if you mutter the word 'complaint' to any receptionist you must be automatically transferred to my desk.

Today I had to spend twenty minutes listening to a parent complain about a school dinner lady. This happens often as we all know, school dinner ladies or 'meal time assistants' are absolute hags. I can truly believe most of the stuff I hear but my tolerance wears thin as one, it has fuck all to do with me and two, dinner ladies were placed on this Earth much like Post Office workers and builders - to screw you over and teach you life isn't fair, so people should just learn to deal. I drilled out the usual, "Sorry, this isn't an admissions issue", and, "Désolé, je ne parle pas anglais". The woman continued - this was a serious, serious issue and something needed to be done immediately by superior powers. I could tell that this woman was what I like to call a 'Suiter'; the type of parent who likes to make the Council accountable for everything only when it suits her particular current cause. The type who'd be perfectly encouraging of throwing class size regulations out the window to get her Yoga pal's son, Darcy in the school, but would protest at the school gates with all the relevant rhetoric if the Council tried to squeeze a one-eyed, limping, Polish orphan in there too.

And the dinner lady's crime this time? When serving fishfingers to the kids at lunch she'd said, 'Hurry up and eat your Nemo'. 30 to 40 children were left devastated. So was I.

Sure Start

I've been reading the blogs of doctors, nurses, teachers, bus drivers, EMTs, police officers and backpacking sheep for a while now and I always wondered how much literary mileage I could wangle out of my job. Would people find what I do interesting?

I work in school admissions. About three years ago, Tony Blair and his merry band of bumchums introduced 'parental preference', (I promise to start a glossary for this crap), and now, up and down the country, it needs a team of thick-skinned, heartless bastards to administrate the process. Like all good government policy, it's about a thousand times more complicated, but exactly as absurd, as you'd think.

My job isn't as admirable or as high octance as the aforementioned professions (excluding bus drivers, unless they regularly get themselves into some sort of Speed scenerio then...kudos), but it is becoming more and more high profile and after some half-arsed research, I don't think anyone else is blogging about this - so here goes.

My aim with this blog is to provide a little insight into what happens behind the oft' padlocked and chain bolted door of school admissions. My tales be merry, unbelieveable, tragic, frustrating, wrist-slitting and true. And hopefully, if any of you have unwisely sprogged off in recent years, I can provide some advice and/or the contact information for your nearest private prep school.

schooldazeblog@yahoo.co.uk

//Dogberry//

P.S I think I'm probably now on the sex offenders register after typing 'school boys' into Google to get that picture in the banner so if you never hear from me again, it's because my computer has been seized.

P.P.S I know my blog title is lame but...meh.