Head Kid. David Baddiel

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СКАЧАТЬ really, was why Ryan spent so much time and energy devising pranks. Because it made school a tiny bit less boring.

      He went back to clicking keys on his laptop keyboard. Every so often, he took a bite out of the frozen pepperoni pizza next to him. (Not still frozen: his mum had cooked it, but it had been frozen. I don’t quite know why I’m explaining this.)

      Tina looked on, worried. She knew that, really, Ryan should spend a bit less time on the internet. She wasn’t sure, in fact, that he should be spending any time on it, as she thought he might be watching things not suitable for his age.

      But sometimes Tina was so busy that she let her son play on it to keep him busy. Idle hands are the devil’s workshop, her mum used to say, which isn’t quite as difficult a saying to understand as the one about butter not melting in the mouth. It means that if people, especially naughty boys, are left on their own with nothing to do, their hands will probably soon start doing naughty things – like ringing people’s doorbells and running away, or putting Cup-a-Soup powder in the bathroom shower head. (Which had been funny, though Tina did sometimes worry that her laughing quite so much at the sight of her husband’s head covered in instant leek and potato may have been one of the reasons he’d left.)

      That was always part of the problem. Ryan was naughty, but sometimes his naughtiness was really funny. Even most of the clips that he watched on the internet – when he showed her – were funny, and rather than telling him off, she ended up laughing with him. It was one of the things she loved about being with Ryan – sometimes it felt more like being with a friend than a son.

      But she did worry that although she was always his mum, and sometimes his mate, the one thing she couldn’t be was his dad – and that he might maybe sometimes need one. Not least to make him do up his school tie properly. By the afternoon, it was always halfway down his shirt. She sometimes wondered if he just pulled it down as soon as he got out of the door.

      “Crip! Crip! Crip!” said Holly, pointing at a bag of salt-and-vinegar crisps on the table. Holly in general missed out at least one letter of every word. “Yan!” she continued, to Ryan. “Crip!”

      “You won’t like those, Holly,” said Tina. “They’ve got a really strong taste. I’ve heard he’s really strict.”

      Ryan, gathering that his mum was no longer talking about crisps, or to the baby, shrugged.

      “Your point is …?”

      “Well, Ryan,” said Tina, getting up with Holly’s bowl, “I think we know what my point is. If the new head teacher is really strict, you might need to watch yourself.”

      Might I? thought Ryan. Hmm. A really strict head teacher? That’s a bit of a challenge.

      He didn’t say that, though. He said, “OK, Mum. I’ll be as good as gold.” And handed Holly, who was still straining with both arms towards the bag, a salt-and-vinegar crisp. In his defence, her face when she tasted it screwed up in a way that was really funny.

      

      Ryan’s mum, Tina, however, was right.

      Mr Carter, the new head teacher, was very strict. Perhaps that’s the wrong place to stress. Perhaps it should be: Mr Carter, the new head teacher, was very strict.

      Either way, strictness, in fact, was exactly what the Bracket Wood board of governors had been looking for. OFFHEAD was coming soon and they needed a head who could turn the place round fast. And if that meant dealing with naughtiness – meaning Ryan Ward – with an iron fist, so be it.

      All this was pretty clear at the new head’s first assembly. As the children filed in, the teachers – Mr Barrington; Miss Gerard, the head of the lower school; Miss Finch, who taught Reception; and PE teacher Mrs Wang, on crutches (she, if you remember, is the one who slipped up on Ryan’s butter prank outside the staff room) – were sitting at the back of the tiny school stage.

      Then Mr Barrington stood up and said, “Quiet, please!”, which he always said, and was always needed, as the noise in the Bracket Wood school hall during assembly was always crazy.

      Normally, though, he had to say it about seven times, getting louder each time until he was basically screaming at the top of his voice, his face as red as a tomato. After which he could finally take a deep breath and say, “Good morning, everyone!” and the cross-legged children would reply, “Good morning, Mr Barrington!” or, in Ryan’s case, “Good morning, Mr Bummington!”

      But on this particular morning he only had to say it once. And everyone, even Ryan, went quiet.

      Because after he said it once, Mr Carter, who had been facing the wall adjusting his jacket, turned round.

      He did look like a head teacher – he had short, neat hair and was dressed in a black suit with a black tie (very much done up properly, right to the top button) – but also a tiny bit like a gangster. There was an air of menace about him. His eyes, which were also black, were narrowed and his head was moving slowly round like a searchlight in a prison camp.

      Silence.

      When he did eventually speak, it was very slowly and deeply. It was as if Batman had walked on to the school stage and said, “Good morning, everybody …”

      Although, as it turned out, Mr Carter was Scottish. And so far there has not been a Scottish Batman. Having said that, the accent did somehow make his voice even more frightening. There was a pause when the whole school seemed too scared to reply.

      Mr Carter blinked slowly and then repeated, just a little louder.

      “I said, Good morning, everybody …”

      And then, too quickly, falling over each other to say it, the whole school replied:

      “Good … good … morn … morning … good … ing … yes … good morning … morning good … Mr Car … Mr … ter … Carter!”

      Mr Carter looked into the crowd of children and said, “Yes. Well. We can work on that.” He left another long pause. You could almost hear the sound of the children starting to sweat. Then …

      “This school. It has a reputation, doesn’t it? What is that reputation for?”

      All the children either looked confused, scared or at the ground. Mr Carter nodded to himself, as if expecting no answer.

      “Well, I’ll tell you, shall I? RUBBISHNESS.” He said this word much louder than the others. Which is why I’ve written it in capitals. He said it so much louder that some of the Year Ones began to cry.

      This didn’t seem to worry Mr Carter, who continued: “It has a fine, longstanding reputation for being rubbish. It really has won all the awards that don’t exist for not being very good. And there’s a problem with that, isn’t there? Do you know what that problem is, Bracket Wood?”

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