We have two new substitutes starting today. Like junior infants on their first day, they sidle in the front door looking disoriented and vaguely traumatised. If they're traumatised now, I'm dying to see them by first break. Thirty-two five-year-olds each should just about have them heading for either the valium or the vodka.

Of course, you'll say, they're trained for this. Three years in college and a BEd. And they'll at least know where to start. And therein lies the rub. One has a degree in marketing and the other is a mother with her Leaving Cert and six years spent working in Dunnes Stores.

Who'll get Trevor, I wonder.

Trevor! With his ADHD diagnosis and his dysfunctional family background and his recommendation that he have the services of one-to-one teaching with a resource teacher for an hour every day. As if! Where would you get a teacher willing to work for just one hour a day when you can't even get an idle trained teacher to work full-time anywhere for love or money.

And we consider ourselves lucky in a perverse kind of way. Naa-Naa! We have someone to supervise our classes, if nothing else, and perhaps prevent the children from causing grievous bodily harm to one another. Forget the fact that they have taken to hiding in the space under the teacher's table and jumping out of the toy press at whatever unsuspecting sub is theirs to act up upon on any particular day. Or that teaching in the adjoining classroom is near impossible due to the alternate piercing screams and raucous laughter.

As we restore the energy levels with equally high doses of caffeine and gossip at break, we await the arrival of our new recruits. Will the marketing graduate have grasped the nettle and got down to the level of her charges? But the law of diminishing returns has been re-defined, it seems. Sarah arrives with the news that the graduate has sworn never to come back near our establishment again after today. Her exact words were something to the effect of "Not with a bargepole". Trevor, it seems, produced his party-piece. He ate and regurgitated his worksheet. On her red leather boots. Ouch!

I wonder would the other "Mother" have reacted less violently? She arrives to hear the end of this story, grimaces and announces "I'd love a go at him!" It can be arranged - he's all yours, a ghra. Good luck!