Long Leggety Beasties  

by Alienora Taylor

Free download!

“…resembled nothing so much as a brace of hamsters in a particularly vicious blender.”

This simple phrase sets the tone for pages of untold delight in the creative misuse of imagery. To say the contortions of Miss Taylor’s mind resemble those of a pretzel would be, I feel, both a gross understatement and a deep injustice. She is utterly twisted.

A sense of the ridiculous pervades this book, with deep appreciation of the lunacy of her fellow man, woman and child… keenly observed and relayed with loving laughter. It does not lampoon lunacy, it celebrates it.

The school appears poised between St Trinian’s and Bedlam, the staff as Miss Taylor says, the archetypes of teachers we have all known. Nor does Miss Taylor hide behind the role of heroine. Though not strictly an autobiography, there are clearly Moments. Those familiar with her blog may well recognise the location of an odd bush or two.

Half hidden between the comedic cameos nestle moments of deep sadness, a fragility as a young teacher comes to terms with a world that is neither funny nor pretty.

There are the tragedies of forgotten and abused children, the ludicrous system within which a teacher must work, the politics of personality in the staff room….

Yet through it all is a deep sense of satisfaction and joy as the author condenses a career into a highly readable and hugely funny tale.

Worth every penny (even when you have to pay for it!) and the box of tissues.

Sex, education, goats and bizarre Art teachers… from Alienora Taylor

I have decided to organise a five-day free download (from Amazon,  18th -22nd February 2014)of ‘Long Leggety Beasties’! But, I am aware that people are, understandably, reluctant to read something ‘cold’ (even if it is free) if they have no idea what it is about. For all you know, it could be the dreariest piece of unmitigated crap ever written. I have to look at appearance versus reality here. The novel is set in a school (YAWN! BORING!), features teachers (sorry: couldn’t resist that little rhyme!) and pupils – and deals with the protagonist’s first two terms as an English teacher…

Thinly veiled autobiography? Well, yes and no! Yes, in the sense that some of the things I describe actually happened – though I have, of course, taken them up to the fine line between the surreal and the grotesque; some of the teachers are loving semi-portraits of colleagues now gone; one or two of the children may bear a passing resemblance to an amalgam of kids taught over thirty years…

But pyramids? Chickens? The Holy Goat? The Caterwauling Dinner Ladies? The Craft Department’s penchant for firing arrows from the battlements? The gorgeous builders – and the repulsive Grandad? NO! ‘Fraid not! Though how I wish life as a teacher HAD been that colourful and Barking Mad!

 So, here, for your delectation, is a wee taster – the very beginning of the novel, which starts, as few other novels do, with ‘Buttocks!’ 

CHAPTER ONE

‘Buttocks: heaving, thrusting, sinewy yet taut: Imagine them all on the job. Takes away their power, you see. The inherent silliness of human posteriors prevents awe from setting in too seriously.’

As I sat outside the Headmaster’s office, waiting to be called in, I reflected upon this well-meant piece of advice. Cracking bit of theory, I have to say – but, having had a sneak preview of the Interviewing Panel, I was far from sure that I could put it into practice: Gargoyles to a man – and that was just the Deputy Headmistress – the Head himself looked like a corpulent vulture. The thought of any of them making the beast with two backs was more than my delicate stomach could cope with; I feared, indeed, that such thoughts would cause me to park the albatross, probably all over the carpet.

I’ll spare you the interview, except to say that the buttocks didn’t work and I was forced to adopt the Porcelain Throne Strategy: the one where you imagine your tormentor struggling with a particularly recalcitrant number two. It worked a treat and calmed my nerves most satisfactorily.

I got the job. This surprised me: I’d felt that the other five candidates were all far more grown up and professional looking than I. The only bloke had a four foot long cardboard tube stuffed with Visual Aids; that and his red sports car made me suspect that he was probably somewhat lacking in the underpants department.

When I’d received the letter inviting me for interview, I’d immediately been fascinated by the word ‘castle’ lurking in the somewhat florid description. Whoever had written it had not just gone to town; he or she had shopped Harvey Nicks within an inch of its life and taken in a West End show to boot. I took it with a large bidet of salt accordingly and assumed that the Tennysonian excesses of language suggested faux fortification rather than Camelot.

I was wrong, at least in part. It was clearly both genuine and ancient though not, I’m afraid to say, romantic. Forget Sleeping Beauty, this was more the sort of place where you’d find gaggles of wicked stepmothers and evil fairy-godmothers holed up. I shouldn’t imagine it was a highly sought after des.res even in its prime; now it was frankly hideous, squatting obscenely on the cliff edge as if some misshapen beast had, aeons ago, got its giant stone leg over the rock face and created this stone abortion.

To be fair, it had all the right parts – keeps aplenty, a bristle of battlements and a sluggish looking moat – but each bit looked as if it was more the product of some mad geneticist than your common or garden stone-mason.

I loved it on sight. This was in the dying days of Punk Rock. I had never quite dared to go the whole rat-and-multiple-piercings hog, so a working environment the Sex Pistols would have felt at home in was a definite plus.

There were four keeps, each containing numerous classrooms. Each housed a quarter of the children and was governed by the quaintly named Captain of the Keep, or COK as this person was known for short, an acronymic infelicity which could, I feel, have been avoided with a little more thought. To complete the peculiar nature of the pastoral system each keep was known by the surname of its leader, in itself a sound enough scheme, until I met my designated COK that is, and discovered that he was called Bart Hogg.

Bart, a stunning example of the Easter Island style of manly good looks, could have been Ted Hughes’ twin brother, as long as he kept his mouth shut and vocal cords still. While Hughes’ timbre put one in mind of planets creaking their way into creation mode, Bart resembled nothing so much as a brace of hamsters in a particularly vicious blender.

Amazon UK and Amazon US for Kindle.