In and Out?

There are some principles in life that can generally be relied upon. They may not be hard and fast laws, but as a rule of thumb one can generally trust that what goes up must come down, what goes forth will come back and what goes in must come out. My belief in the latter, however, has been sorely tested this year.

One particular incident springs to mind when considering the reliability of this principle. It all started during breakfast when one of the little girls got up from her seat and started prancing around as if possessed of the proverbial ants in her pants, a pained look etched across her face. ‘Matron, Matron, I really have to go to the loo.’

I gave the required permission and she scuttled off. Ten minutes later the whole scenario repeated itself, at which I raised an eyebrow. When the curtain rose on the same drama a third time, I began to get suspicious.

Being equipped with a mere Art History degree I sought advice from someone further up the medical food chain, before quickly escorting the little girl over to the doctors. Having been instructed by the nurses that she would need to have drunk plenty beforehand in order to provide a urine sample, I took a water bottle with me. The nurses sent her off to the bathroom to provide her contribution. No joy. ‘Matron, I can't do a wee-wee in the cup.'

'Yes, you can, Sweetie. Just hold it underneath you as you go.'

‘Oh, oh, oh, but what if I miss it?’

‘You won’t, just give it another try.’

A minute later she reappeared, still unable to produce her pot of gold. By this stage I was unsure whether it was the suspected bladder infection itself, the pressure of having to aim at a target - a feat that does not come naturally to us girls (nor some boys for that matter…!) - or the sheer fact she'd already been to the loo three times during breakfast. Whichever the cause, it was time for me to provide a solution. And that, dear reader, is how I found myself crouched beside the loo, with a water bottle in one hand being directly administered to her mouth, and a plastic cup in the other hand, at the other end, hoping to catch the first fruits of the endeavour. Working on the afore stated principle that what goes in must eventually find its way out, I decided that the simplest plan of action was to treat the child as if she was a giant version of a Baby Wee-Wee doll. I don’t know if your childhood was blessed with one of these toys, but back in the good old days you simply squeezed the dinky toy bottle into the doll’s mouth, the water trickled down a concealed internal tube and then made its presence known at the other end. I am reliably informed by Google that, as with all our simple childhood pleasures, the Baby Wee-Wee has evolved and not only yelps at you when it needs to go, but is also now designed with much more “vividly” realised nether regions. In fact, I was horrified to find out that with one mutation of the Baby Wee-Wee, the Paul Drink&Wet, you are required to squeeze the tummy of the doll in order to produce the piddle. Do spare a thought for the poor real children of girls who were given that little number to play with when it comes to potty training time!

In my humble opinion the simplest toys are always the best, and in this instance I was proved right. Both you and the Child Protection authorities will be relieved to hear that no tummy pressing was required as the water squirted in at the top end did eventually make its way out of the bottom end and into the cup. However, I still can’t quite see the principle as infallible. Many will tell you that the extent to which you give or put in to an endeavour dictates how much you receive in dividends. Indeed, one of my mother’s favourite and oft-quoted maxims is that you reap what you sow, yet I’m learning that this doesn’t always naturally follow in quite the way I’d like it to. If I’m being truthful, I’ve found myself really quite disheartened on occasions where I’ve put a lot of time and effort into fun activities with the children only for none of them to appreciate it. There’s nothing that quite kills your inner warm and fuzzy feeling like a good whinging round of, ‘Why won’t you let us do it for longer?’, ‘How come he got a bigger slice?’, ‘Why do you never read us more than a chapter?’ I often think to myself that a simple “thank you” would suffice and my sense of well-being would be easily appeased, but a simple “thank you” is not always offered.

A friend recently recounted to me how he had helped a girl he knew only slightly move house. It ended up taking him far more time than he had anticipated and he admitted to me that, despite her effusive gratitude, he didn’t feel that the level of benefits received was anywhere near the amount of effort put in. This got me thinking that it must take more than registered thankfulness on the part of the beneficiary to make what we do in life feel worthwhile. In fact, it probably has nothing to do with the reaction of the beneficiary and everything to do with our own attitude to giving. If we take the Karma-esque view that we will receive in direct and obvious proportion to what we give, as soon as the benefits fail to materialise we will give up on the giving of ourselves. However, if we choose to find our cosy sense of inner satisfaction in the knowledge that what we did needed doing if the world is to be a better place, then perhaps we won’t be so disheartened when the world itself doesn’t recognise this.

Hold on, Hope.

Children are tenacious little critters.

Exhibit A:

7.38 a.m.

“Matron, I accidently got the wrong cereal and I really don’t like it so can I go and get some toast instead?”

“Why don’t you try and have a few bites of the cereal first for me? Just so it isn’t wasted. Then you can have some toast.”

“Oh but Matron, it’s really giving me a tummy ache.”

“Hmm, really? It’s just normal cereal, Poppet, I think you’ll survive a couple of mouthfuls.”

“But the sugar on it really makes my teeth hurt.” (Side note: Never have I ever heard of a child complaining that their cereal had too much sugar before.)

“Right, I see. Is there any part of your body that it’s not affecting?!”

“Well, actually, now you mention it, I do have a bit of a headache too…”

Needless to say, she got her toast eventually.

Exhibit B:

10.28 p.m.

Knock, Knock.

“Matron, I can’t sleep.”

“Oh dear, Sweetie. Why don’t you snuggle back down into bed and think about which Disney princess you’d like to be? Sometimes when you try too hard to fall asleep it can make it worse so it’s good to have something else to think about. Hope you get back to sleep soon. Night, night.”

11.36 p.m.

Knock, Knock.

“Matron, I still can’t sleep and I miss my Mummy.”

“I know you do, Lovely, but you’ll feel much better in the morning if you get a good night’s sleep. If you’ve thought all you can about Disney Princesses, why don’t you think about your top ten favourite animals. That should help take your mind off it, and you can tell me which ones you chose over breakfast. Sleep well, night, night.

12.25 a.m.

Knock, Knock.

“Matron, I still can’t sleep ‘cos I’ve got a song stuck in my head and it keeps going ‘round and ‘round…”

As you can imagine, I’ve had special training in getting songs out of children’s heads, so it was a good job she woke me up to tell me this.

My favourite incident of this childish ability to hold out against the odds happened at supper one evening. There’s a little boy in my boarding house who is in the fortunate position of being unbearably cute. He has a round little face, impeccable manners and a tiny Manchester United onesie to sleep in, the sight of which would melt the hardest heart of even the staunchest Manchester City supporter. This propensity for rotund cuteness has earned Jack the nickname of ‘The Bundle’ amongst us staff. He’s usually relatively quiet and doesn’t often volunteer conversation with adults. However, this supper time was different. Just beforehand I’d been tasked with the daunting prospect of rehearsing the National Anthem with the children ready for Remembrance Sunday. As I’m about as musical as a cow and the children can be unenthusiastic about House Prayers, I realised that, like the Americans in the Vietnam war, I was going to have to focus on winning hearts and minds, before I dropped the bomb on them. I sat down at supper in between Jack and Graham with a great big smile plastered across my face and said, with no small measure of forced eagerness, “Boys, you should be very excited as I have something super-fun planned for House Prayers this evening!”

            The Bundle dropped his fork in glee, “Great! Are we getting a dog?”

            “Er, no. Not quite.”

            “Fireworks?”

            “No, not that either.”

            “A dog and fireworks?”

            His hope simply refused to die. How could I tell him that it was just going to be a few strained verses of God Save the Queen?

People often talk about ‘holding on to hope’ when life goes pear-shaped. Everything from self-help books to inspirational fridge magnets implore us to hold to hope, Mumford & Sons amongst others have sung about it, and I have even heard the word ‘hope’ used as an acronym, standing for ‘Hold On, Pain Ends’. This is all very well, but what do you do when hope slips from your grasp? When the cords of the lifeline you were holding onto fray and split, what keeps you from drowning?

In seeking to answer these questions, it has become apparent that I, along with many others, have misunderstood the tenacity of hope. Although I have, thus far, lived a relatively charmed existence, occassionally I've found that neither cheesy mnemonics nor my own attempts to be positive really cut the mustard. It seems that it is only when things go utterly tits up and holding on to hope is no longer a possibility that we learn how tightly Hope is holding onto us. Just as a child may think it is holding on for dear life to its mother, you can be certain that the mother is holding on much more securely to the child. The child may be distracted and let go, or grow tired and loosen its grip, but the mother’s hold is sure and strong. So it is with hope. 

And so, when the big mean Matron in the boarding school of life has nothing to say but ‘no’ to your hopeful suggestions, don't exhaust yourself further by trying to hold on to the impossible. Trust that hope, like sand, will slip through your fingers if you try to grab it, but place your feet firmly upon it and you'll find that it can more than hold your weight.

A Valentine's Confession.

I'm going to let you into a secret. I love St Valentine's day. I know this isn't the customary position for one who is as single as I am, but I find something rather lovely in the sight of men strolling down the street clutching large bouquets of roses to present to the lady in their life. Feminists everywhere would be horrified, but being quite a traditionalist when it comes to courtship, I side with Helena from a Midsummer Night's Dream, 'We cannot fight for love as men may do, we should be woo'd and were not made to woo.' As such, men in possession of posies speaks to me of everything being right in the world, the natural order of romance being observed, and delighted wives and girlfriends being treated as they should be.

I do sometimes wonder, though, is this the only day of the year which these men bring flowers and appreciation to their women? Once the wooing is complete, do they continue to pursue the heart of their lady, or are the flowers that are brandished on February 14th the one perfunctory display of affection for the year? Considered in this light, Valentine's perhaps becomes the enemy of couples rather than singletons. If one romantic day a year is successfully observed then can one get off scot-free for the other 364, without so much as a whiff of a rose?

I spent some of Valentine's day this year with a good friend. We discussed the idea of love a lot: our friends who are in love with each other, past loves of our own, the reason why neither of us is in love with anyone at present. We came to the conclusion that he should tell the male race to stop being badly behaved, whilst I would inform my fair sex to be less complicated.

This, however, is a terrible conclusion. One which must be halted in its tracks before it spreads its poison further abroad. It allows both sexes to demonise the other and expect the worst from them, regardless of whether that is warranted or not. It is precisely this type of thinking which ruins my quiet joy on Valentines day, and causes me to cynically question whether these men have bought their bouquets in order to express to their girlfriends that they really love them, or as a disguised apology for being such a terrible boyfriend the rest of the time.

Working with children has taught me that if ever there was a false dichotomy between human nature and human behaviour, it is that of categorising other people. Human nature is such that no person is bad in their entirety, yet instinctively we box and label people as being either a 'goody' or a 'baddy' and treat them as such. Recently, the Year 4 girls have been at constant sixes and sevens with each other. Only the other week, an argument took place outside the door to my room, in which one impassioned little girl could be heard shouting, 'You'd rather be friends with HER, the NAUGHTIEST GIRL IN THE SCHOOL, than ME?'
I didn't even have to look outside to see who she was referring to, as I have the very same child labelled as the naughtiest girl in the school too. Since then I've had to stop and check myself to ensure that, despite her bad behaviour, I don't see this girl as being without good in her. Often I'm at risk of missing her redeeming qualities that, at times, shine far brighter than the label I've given her.

I'm no proponent of Eastern Mysticism but I think there's something to be said for the philosophy that in everything bad there must also be something of good. Perhaps it's time we stop categorising people, whether they're members of the opposite sex or badly behaved children, and instead make it our mission to seek out the good in everyone, however well disguised it may be. If we cease to label people and spend the time getting to know them instead, we may find a far richer and better world out there than we could have ever dared hope for.

Treading Softly.

I sat down at school supper last night, feeling refreshed after a couple of hours off which I had spent in the gym with a friend, followed by a nice hot shower (not spent with the friend), only to be greeted by ‘Wow! Matron! You look ILL!’ from the child sat opposite me.

This is just one small example of the way in which childhood observations are differentiated from adult observations by the noticeable lack of tact. The small cranial filter that sits somewhere in between the place where the thought first occurs and the place where it is verbalised simply hasn’t developed yet. The result is brutal honesty. Having been working with children for five months now, I’ve begun to learn how to grow a thicker skin and let these comments role off my back, rather than racing to the nearest mirror to see if I need to invest in a facelift, or at least better makeup. Nevertheless it remains somewhat galling when children tell you how tired you look, considering it was often them who forced that state upon you in the first place. On one particular occasion, a very sweet little boy asked me how I’d slept the night before to which I cheerily replied, ‘Oh very well thank you, Fraser, it’s just never long enough though, is it?’

He looked at me, thoughtfully, for a moment before declaring,‘Yes, I can see that on your face’.

            Often I have to remind myself that the children are just as blunt with each other as they are with me. I have two girls in the house who are constantly falling out. Lizzie, who is a prodigiously intellectual child, is in possession of the brains of Einstein and – bless her – the social skills of a gnat. Kara is the opposite end of the spectrum, being much less intelligent, but still endowed with a remarkable talent for rubbing the other girls up the wrong way. I was in the habit of laying the blame at Kara’s door for their spats, until I had the proverbial ‘little chat’ with them both. I explained that life is so much easier if you seek to be nice to each other and encourage one another, rather than bickering and irritating each other. The cockles of my heart were warmed later that evening when I observed Kara trying to broach friendly conversationwith Lizzie. ‘My favourite kind of fish is a starfish, Lizzie. What’s your favourite kind of fish?’

The cockles of my heart were rapidly cooled to absolute zero as Lizzie, without raisng her head from thebook she was reading, replied, ‘Actually, Kara, a starfish isn’t, in fact, a fish. It’s an invertebrate.’

Correction, when it comes as bluntly as that, can be hard to take, but the manner in which it is delivered doesn’t necessarily negate the veracity of what’s being said. One of the constant battles of my life is not to take things – whether they be comments or actions – personally. Being told you’re wrong is a hard pill to swallow, even when it’s administered with the recommended spoonful of sugar, but it is all the more unpalatable when the sweetener is denied you. However, the choice remains you own. Will you allow the lack of sweetness to turn you sour, or will you take the rough with the smooth and enable yourself to learn something? Perhaps one of the most important lessons that can be learnt is how to be tactful yourself when found in a similar position. It is a wonderful gift to be able to correct and encourage people in the right direction without them even realising it has happened. 

Lizzie, whose imagination sometimes runs away with her, went through a brief stage of speaking to me,somewhat sarcastically, as if I was the Queen. I asked her to tidy her area, to which she replied, ‘Yes, oh great Matron’. On requesting that she make her bed, I was treated to a curtsy before she responded, ‘Of course, oh mighty Matron of all dorms.’ She once even addressed me as ‘Matron whose name will rumble down the ages’. As I once overheard another child asking my boss if Matron was one of her servants, this made quite a pleasant change from the way the children usually see me. Perhaps I let it go to my head. Maybe I began to see myself in a Cinderella role, my royal gentility unrecognisable under my Matron’s clothing? However, with the extreme lack of tact only a child could muster, Charlie soon brought me back down to earth with a bump by informing me, ‘You’re not a Princess, you’re just a Matron’. And that was the end of that.

True it may have been, but, to quote W.B. Yeats, I would advise you to tread softly young Charlie, for you tread upon my dreams…

Missing Out?

Fear of missing out. Or, to use the vernacular acronym, FOMO. We all suffer from it from time to time. The sinking feeling that somebody somewhere is having more fun than you. Since the advent of Facebook fomo has become all the more prevalent in our society as it provides irrefutable evidence of what exactly it is that we're missing out on. Friends at parties we weren't invited to or couldn't make, holiday snaps that cause us to turn a delicate shade of green-with-envy as we scroll through them from our work desk, status updates about successful job offers in exciting places. These days, every cup of frothy topped latte has to be instagramed and uploaded in order to demonstrate that we are not missing out, that our own life experience is just as fulfilling and exciting as the next person's.

I'm just as guilty of this as anyone. As much as I try not to get sucked into it all I find myself needing to validate my day, to share with the world that I'm a participant in the fun of life, essentially to boast to anyone who will listen that I too am having a wonderful time, or at least enjoying a cup of tea and a custard cream. In my current position it can often feel like all my friends are off forging successful, glamorous careers for themselves in the big city whilst, for me, all hopes of glamour died along with my hairdryer, the moment I melted the end of it attempting to dry out a child's rugby boots that had been left out in the rain the night before a big match. As much as I love this job, occasionally fomo can hit, and hit hard. However, something has happened which has made me decide to hit back. I've come to the conclusion that it's time to bash fomo on the head and squash it back into the box where it belongs. Let me tell you why.  

If you read my last post you'll now be acquainted with Charlie, the youngest child in the boarding house. However, what I didn't tell you last time is that Charlie is Chinese and, whilst his English is almost impeccable, occasionally his grasp of the language fails him and the correct word eludes him. A couple of weeks back I went to the boys bathroom to collect some laundry bags which are stored there. I knew there was a high probability that the boys might be undressed so I knocked at the door and announced that Matron needed to come in. 
'No!! Not decent!' came the reply from several little voices the other side of the door.  

'Ok, you've got until the count of three to make yourself decent and then I'm coming in to collect some laundry bags. One...two...three...' 

In I went to find the three little boys who were waiting for the shower grasping their towels around their middle as if their lives depended on it, mumbling 'Don't look! Don't look!' 

A veritable picture of modesty. 

'Don't worry, I'm not looking,' I reassured them, as I made a swift beeline towards the laundry bags in the corner.  

'Matron?' asked Graham, one of the cheekiest boys in the house.  

'Yes,' said I, turning to face him, only to find him with an impish grin on his face, whipping his towel open and closed as he wiggled his mini-Graham at me. Before long all three of them had let their inner exhibitionist roam free, all the while continuing to admonish me not to look. Soon they were giggling so hard they could barely stand up.  

Meanwhile poor Charlie had been in the shower, hearing the raucous laughter outside, yet ignorant of its cause. Fomo struck and before long, I could hear his little voice above the others' laughter, squawking indignantly from the shower, 'What's so happy out there!? What's so happy??' Except in his delightful little accent it sounded more like, 'Wass so happy ow there? Wassso happy??'  

I would have laughed to myself and thought little more of this event had there not been another minor ruckus a couple of mornings ago. I came down to the boys' floor to check on them before breakfast. As if on cue, Charlie flung open the door of his dormitory and fled down the corridor, shouting in disgust, 'Stuart just showed his bad thing!!'

So horrified was Charlie by the sight of Stuart's 'bad thing' that it made me think that Charlie might not have liked to find out what was so happy out there in the boys' changing room the week before. He might not have been missing out on anything after all.  

These two events, silly as they are, have cemented in my mind as proof that fomo is a decidedly false friend. It's so easy to hear the frivolity outside of your door and be gripped by an unshakeable sense that the grass would be greener on the other side. But shake it off we must, and live in good faith that we're where we're meant to be for the time being. To try and be anywhere else would far more likely result in missing out. And that, undoubtedly, would be a very 'bad thing' indeed. Celebrate where you, however ordinary it might seem, rather than looking longingly towards somewhere you're not.

The Circles of Life

Do you ever feel as if you're going around in circles? I certainly do. Being back in a boarding school environment has reminded me of many of things I learnt as young boarder myself. How hard it can be to live away from home for the first time, how tricky it can be to negotiate relationships when suddenly you spend 24 hours a day amongst your school friends, how boarding with all its challenges can have the most wonderful payoffs in terms of constant companionship. Most pertinent of all has been the realisation that Matron is always right. The great joy in relearning this little nugget is that I am now Matron. Ha.

Other circles of learning have a less cheerful ring to them (no pun intended!). I have these moments where I feel as if I'm stuck on a roundabout, endlessly searching for the correct exit, but in reality I just return to the same place again and again, never learning my lesson. On the rare occasion that I do manage to escape down a slip road, I soon realise that I am merely on the life lesson equivalent of the M25, making my way repeatedly around a major ring road, only pausing every now and then to sit stationary in the odd traffic jam, wondering how I escape.

Term has just restarted and so my experience here has just done its first full loop. As much as I thought I'd learned last term, I find myself in a very similar position to where I was at the beginning of Michaelmas, coaxing the children back into boarding house life again, mopping up tears of homesickness, seeking to regain their trust as they try to establish dependent relationships outside of the natural parental ones. Gone are the days of unbroken night’s sleep which I was becoming pleasantly accustomed to. They have been replaced by knocks at the door in the wee hours (although in this job, anything past 10pm counts as a wee hour!) and little be-onsied bundles plaintively telling me that they can't sleep. 'How kind of you to rouse me and tell me,' I long to cry, 'that now makes two of us! Let me get my magic sleeping wand and put you back to the land of nod!' In reality though, the learning circles of childhood that they're wandering around in must seem far more daunting to them than they do to me with my adult perspective.

However, there is hope. And I tell you why I know that there is this hope: because of Charlie* and his underpants.

Charlie is the most delightful little boy. He is the youngest of all the children I look after and, rather than being a full boarder, he only stays with us on Wednesday and Thursday nights as his mother has to work late. Charlie and I have been trapped in a circle of our own, a little Wednesday ritual that we repeat every week much to my combined amusement and frustration. On Wednesday afternoon Charlie has games as his last lesson, afterwhich he returns and has a wash. After this he invariably appears before me, his hair wet and spiky from the shower, and his face split in two with an enormous, impish grin.

'Maaaaatron. I can't find my underpaaaaants.'

'Have you tried looking in your drawer Charlie?' I ask in return. Charlie dutifully disappears in search of his undercrackers. He soon returns empty handed. (Or should that be bare-bottomed?)

'Maaaaatron. I still can't find my paaaaaants.'

'Right, Charlie, shall we go and look in the drawer together then?' Off we go to his room, open his drawer and - oh, would you look at that! - nestling on top of his clothes, one neatly folded pair of dinosaur print y-fronts. Further proof that Matron is always right. 


And so this little farce continued every Wednesday, seemingly ad infinitum, until this week. As you may have noticed, yesterday was a Wednesday. Not any old Wednesday though, but the first Wednesday of a new era. A new era in which Charlie has learnt to both locate and don his own underpants. Hurrah.

I can't help feeling that if Charlie and I can break out of the underpant-cycle, then I must live in good faith that no circle is without escape. Perhaps rather than seeing these seemingly repetitive experiences as circular, it helps to envisage them as spirals. Although it may feel as if I'm walking a route that I have trodden many times before, I have, unconsciously moved into a slightly wider circle of learning. It might appear to have the same view, which I may not have liked that much the first time, but ultimately each step is taking me further away from the original state of ignorance and, hopefully, nearer towards the wisdom that I so long to live by.

*Names have, understandably, been changed to protect both the child's identity and my job security. My boss reads this blog...

The Art of Being Secretly Incredible.

And so 2012 slips away and 2013 is ushered in. If you’re anything like me, you’ll prefer to make qualitative rather than quantitative resolutions. Quantitative good intentions - such as eating less chocolate, eating more fruit, going to the gym regularly, refraining from buying unnecessary shoes, remembering to polish already purchased unnecessary shoes so that they last longer and one is not mistaken for a tramp when wearing them, getting more sleep – very easily fall into either the pass or fail category. Usually the latter in my experience. With qualitative good intentions – being more patient, being less judgemental, seeking out good in all situations – your success is less immediately measurable, making it far easier to tell yourself at the end of the year that you have accomplished what you set out to do. Technically, it doesn’t make keeping them any easier though, and caution should continue to be exercised when making New Year’s resolutions. Here is the story behind my resolution for 2013…

A while back I was chivvying one of the little girls out of the door of the boarding house. As she was putting her coat on, she stopped and looked at me before asking, ‘Excuse me Matron, what are you going to do as your job?’
‘I have a job, don’t I, Lovely? I’m your matron. I look after you and all the others.’
‘But don’t you want a proper, interesting, important job?’

Ouch.

Well, yes, actually, yes I do. I, like most people on this earth, would quite like to think that what I’m doing is important. Even if this child doesn’t think so, I see the time I’m spending with them this year as very important. Yet the catch is, how much do I want others to recognise the importance of what I do? How much do I do because I know it’s important for it to be done, and how much do I do because I want others to recognise that not only my work, but also that I as a person, am important?

On the night of the boarders’ Christmas dinner I had a little personal meltdown in this area. The Christmas dinner is one of the highlights of the year for the children. They bring in special, smart outfits from home and there is much excitement in the days leading up to the occasion. The girls in particular had been practicing their different hairstyles and trying on their dresses for weeks beforehand. On the day itself, I began curling hair at around 4.30 in order for them all to be ready on time, whilst attempting to prevent the boys, who had naturally got ready in around three minutes and thirty-seven seconds, from strangling each other with their bow ties. When we finally arrived in the dining room, I made my way over to my house’s table in order to take my seat for the meal. There was, however, no seat for me with my house. Confused, I looked around and made some enquiries. I eventually realised that I had been moved due to lack of space and relocated to sit with the older boys’ house. And so I did what any sensible, rational woman does in that situation. I burst into tears. The boys looked with unconcealed horror at this demonstration of womanhood at her most unstable, whilst I tried to disguise my snivelling as a bizarre and unconvincing coughey-sneeze. This was not the way I had intended to end my first term at the school, by revealing to all and sundry my deep-seated inability to cope with life.

In my defence, I’d been up two nights running at around 3am with a little girl who had earache and thus the thought of trying to make conversation with pre-teen males whom I’d never spoken with before was completely overwhelming. I’m sure many of my fellow females can sympathise with those times when tiredness, emotion and, I suspect, a generous helping of misplaced hormones conspire against you and cause you to appear like a completely unbalanced loon. In fact, these moments occur not infrequently in my life, being the mercurial character that I am, but if I am being truly honest with both myself and you, there was also a little bit of me that felt hard done by. After all, who had spent hours helping the children get ready for this special evening? Who was the one who had herded them about, ensuring they arrived at the right place at the right time, in the right outfits? Who was the one who had mopped up the tears of the little girl who was worried that her dress wasn’t pretty enough? Indeed, where did my insanity-inducing fatigue come from if not from being up in the night with ill children?

As these thoughts rushed through my head, I realised that I had lost perspective on the situation. It both amazes and horrifies me how quickly my sense of self-importance can inflate and inflate until it threatens to engulf and smother me. I didn’t apply for this job as I wanted to be recognised as the all-important patron saint of hair curling and ill children. I did it because I wanted to make sure that these important things were done for the children to the best of my ability.

As I reflected on this over the past couple of weeks I’ve been reminded of a blog I once read by the writer Donald Miller. In it, he talks about being ‘secretly incredible’, living in such a way that you continue to serve others and work tirelessly for their good even when there is no audience to admire and congratulate you. As you can see from the incident recounted above, I am still a long way from achieving this, but it can’t hurt to try.

And so I find myself at the beginning of 2013 making the resolution that this year is the year that I will seek to be ‘secretly incredible’. That, and get a proper, interesting, important job, of course!

* * *

‘Her full nature…spent itself in channels which had no great name on the earth. But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.’
-George Eliot, Middlemarch