Dear Mrs Herriman … or should I say ‘Jane’?
OK, this may mean nothing to someone I have not been moaning to recently. Mrs Herriman is the head teacher of Daisy’s school and disliked by many.
For several months I have been in touch with Daisy’s class teacher, Mrs McDonald and her maths teacher, Mr Winful. We have got along just fine to the point we were not friends but on a first name basis.
After a very preachy session in the school on Wednesday evening during which Mrs Herriman spoke at length about how wonderful the staff were at the school I wrote in to feedback my experience. It was positive in places but also constructively critical in others. One point I was making was that the school had asked parents and carers to share their email addresses as this was a very good form of communication yet, on none of their letters did they list the email address of any teacher. I happened to give the email address of ‘Kizzy’ McDonald as an example.
The reply letter I received back had as an end piece an instruction never to refer to teachers by their first names as it is disrespectful and that the students are not allowed to do it … bloody cheek, since when did I become a student?
I wrote to the two teachers concerned copying the relevant text from the heads letter into the body. I got a call earlier on from the deputy head saying she’d been instructed by the head to ‘tell me’ to stop inciting her staff into descent. That in future ‘I must’ never say anything disrespectful about Mrs Herriman to any staff member.
I got a little cross!
Moving on …
Back in December we pre-booked a rental car for our holiday in a week or so time. I viewed two vehicles, both appeared to be the same except one was automatic and the other was a manual. I paid the extra for the auto. I found out earlier on this week that they don’t do automatics, never have. They want me to drive around in the equivalent of a Transit Van! I shall be getting discounts obviously, that’s the way I work but a Transit Van? It’s going to die on the hills, make a right racket and rattle everyone all over the place … bugger that!