The Dean’s ‘Number 50 Jubilee’ Blog – ‘Kaffipause!’

23, 24, 25, 26, 27…31, 32…“STOP! KEEP TO THE SIDE! CAN’T YOU SEE THE COFFEE? YOU’RE STEPPING IN IT! WHY DOESN’T ANYONE AT LEAST PICK UP THE CUP?” Pretty loud this, odd noises crescendo con brio growing to fortississimo grandioso. As I remarked in my last blog.

The maths was me counting the senior students walking up and down the stairs at lesson change through a dripping lake of cafe latte that was making its own independent way down the narrow stair case in the DSC. It was still warm. It was a full plastic cup, well had been a full one. Now it was on its side, a bit stepped on, with the lid on the next step down.

Of course, they looked at me as if I was from a parallel and frankly far less developed universe. Get off the stairs they did not. Walk to one side they tried but as there were four classes of our gigantic teenagers on the deck above out of sight (out of earshot I do not entirely think) they kept turning the corner and pushed from behind came down into the mess.

A teacher had discovered this event a minute or two earlier and grumbled, rightly, about the lack of clearing up responsibility by the coffee dropper. So I went to see. I was actually rather shocked (see a previous blog at the end of last year on nickydarlington.blogspot.com, again about senior kids busy not clearing up their lunch mess as it was not their job, and again my proto-apoplectic reaction.) Trouble is that they are so big they eat huge amounts all the time and leave tons of evidence in the form of crumbs and spillage, packets and boxes, cups and cartons, plastic forks and teaspoons, tissues and wrappers everywhere!

Ok, there’s some hyperbole there – maybe – a bit. But you want to know what happened back at the stairs. Well…

I pushed through hundreds of vast adolescents carrying jumbo sized bags full of bulky packs of teenage stuff, to get to the bathroom and grab handfuls of paper towels. These I dumped in the brown lake, having pushed through the ever increasing throngs of big kids anxious to get up or down that staircase in order, obviously, to help it in its endeavour to get an entry in the Guinness Book of Records for the greatest surface area AND number of stairs ever covered by a one half litre of cafe latte. (They have such stupid entries now.) The paper disappeared sadly into the thick gluey beige morass and Mr Schlehuber and Mr Malcolm gallantly and energetically helped contain the spillage that started to look like a recent ecological disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. Bits of us got stepped on but eventually paper vs. coffee was won 1:0 by us, the paper wielders. The combined skills of the coffee, the staircase and the kids lost. We teachers, battered, exhausted, bespotted and bespeckled in Migro’s finest, moved on in triumph to our next class.

But I do have a serious point. We teachers felt very depressed for a moment after this incident because of the reaction of the students – nonchalance. And only one student stopped and offered to help. It was a girl. The Co-Chairperson of the Student Council. Bravo to her, I say!

nickydarlington.blogspot.com