04 Village Teacher Read Online Free Page A

never be the same again.
    A mile away in the Ragley School office I was looking at a typewriter, the like of which I had never seen before.
    ‘It’s an ergonomically designed, golf-ball head, IBM Selectric – and a bargain at three hundred pounds,’ said Mr Joy, the salesman, with a voice like a machine-gun. He was clearly ex-army and looked very smart in his white shirt, grey suit and military tie. Unfortunately, his straight black, Brylcreemed hair, parted on the right, and his toothbrush moustache gave him an uncanny resemblance to Adolf Hitler.
    ‘There’s no carriage return,’ I said, looking puzzled. ‘So how will my secretary know how it works?’
    ‘Don’t worry, sir,’ he said confidently, ‘we have ways of making it work …’ He was even beginning to sound like Hitler. ‘The platen remains stationary, Mr Sheffield,’ he added with a stony face. ‘It’s the golf-ball that moves side to side.’
    ‘Platen?’
    ‘The round rubber cylinder,’ he explained, pointing. ‘It’s a state-of-the-art machine, Mr Sheffield, guaranteed to make your secretary’s work the envy of the village.’
    I nodded in agreement but secretly guessed Vera would have preferred her bramble jelly to be the envy of the village. ‘The young lady at County Hall said, if I came in to school to receive delivery on Saturday morning, you would give a demonstration.’
    ‘Ah, not exactly, sir. I’m the advance troops, so to speak.’
    It felt like I was undergoing military manoeuvres. ‘So will someone come to show our Miss Evans how it works?’
    ‘Certainly, sir. Never fear, reinforcements will be here,’ recited Mr Joy. ‘Mr Grubb, our customer-service engineer, will visit next Wednesday at nine hundred hours precisely. He will provide installation and basic training.’
    ‘Oh, well, thank you, Mr Joy,’ I said, staring uncertainly at the strange machine.
    He added a note in his diary and shook my hand firmly. ‘So thank you for coming in at the weekend, sir. I’m sure you’ll find everything to your satisfaction.’ He locked his black executive briefcase and walked out to his car.
    When he drove off, it occurred to me that Joy was an unfortunate name for a Hitler look-alike with no sense of humour.
    I looked at the sleek, classic grey typewriter and decided to carry it through to the staff-room coffee-table ready for examination by Vera and the rest of the staff on Monday morning. Then I replaced Vera’s Royal Imperial typewriter exactly where it had been on her highly polished desk, adjusted the photograph of her three cats, locked the school and drove home to Kirkby Steepleton.
    On Monday morning we all gathered in the staff-room and stared at our new marvel of the modern world.
    ‘It’s fantastic,’ said Jo, our resident scientist, who loved new technology. She was itching to get her hands on it.
    ‘There’s no carriage return,’ said a bemused Anne, ‘and it’s not as tall as Vera’s typewriter. Makes you wonder how they fit it all in.’
    ‘It looks sort of … squashed,’ said Sally reflectively, ‘as if someone’s sat on it.’
    ‘Is there an instruction book?’ asked the eager Jo.
    ‘No, and we’d better not fiddle with it,’ I said pointedly. ‘There’s an engineer coming on Wednesday to show Vera how to use it.’
    We all looked at Vera, who shook her head. ‘Progress,’ she muttered and walked quietly down the tiny passageway to the school office. Everyone exchanged glances but said nothing. Soon we heard the familiar tap-tap-tap of Vera’s trusty manual typewriter as she typed out the agenda for Wednesday’s PTA Annual General Meeting, followed by the
ker-ching
as she swept the chromium arm of the carriage return. A few minutes later she wound out the Gestetner master sheet from the typewriter, smoothed it carefully on to the inky drum of the duplicating machine, peeled off the backing sheet and wound the handle to produce the copies of the agenda. It was a routine Vera could