Sandwich-makers flatter to deceive. In the staffroom, that great chamber of pretence, they are the great imposters. Stepping in from the sub-zero temperatures of the playground, somebody needs only to be charring the externals of a tuna butty for you to believe that you are really sidling into Giordiani's Trattoria in Montesilvano to enjoy your favourite Canelloni di Tonno.
Only the other day, so heavy was the air with Italian aromas that I thought for a moment that I would be confronted by a roomful of tanned bodies sitting around red-and-whit check tablecloths, betopped with bottles of Ramitello. Instead, I was confronted with a staff almost silently ruminating over The Agenda.
For this is the season of the AGM, that annual extravaganza of local union activity that brings out the best, and worst, in teachers. Say what you like about us as active trade unionists, but nobody can remain unmoved about some or all of the facets of the Annual General Meeting.
The agenda, one initially perused, is put on the back-burner while an animated discussion erupts about who is up- - or not up - for election. "I see Millie's running again," someone ventures raising a general titter. Millie is the local hon sec whose seven-year term ended three years ago, but nobody has had the guts to remind her.
She is, by common accord, a sort of Servus Servorum Dei, begrudged her honoraruim by those of us too pusillanimous to seek her post. She'll be there, probably, all the way to her lump sum, blithely reeling through another couple of seven-year terms in the service of her colleagues.
And, now, it's time to consider the motions proposed for Easter Congress. Turn the page and, presto, before you are the hardy annuals - lunchtime supervision, pensions, tax reform, salary, an Ghaeilge and so on. A sort of Dad's Army of Congress campaigns for a dozen or so Easters of yore.
Nobody interrupted their toasties to debate the thrust or subtext of any resolution: if they were in any way impelled to, they were keeping their powder dry for the moment. One colleague, though, a stickler for grammatical rectitude and known to all here as "the Pendant of Portumna," is appalled by the wording of a particular motion. "For heaven's sake," he intones, the CEC is a committee and, therefore, singular, and cannot legitimately be followed by the verbal plural . . . "
Contentious stuff, eh? But, in the last analysis, there are enough of us who will trek along next week to do the good work when all sense would dictate that we stay at home at the fire watch the cricket on Skysport. It reminds me somewhat of what Dr Johnson said one about the dog begging: the amazing thing is, not that he does it badly, but that he does it at all. Motion carried.
