Dispatches From a Dilettante by Paul Rowson Read Free Book Online

Given Silvano’s male posturing it should not have been as a shock that his continuing frustration was directed at his tiny Mexican wife Rosalita. He had forced her onto the roof to adjust the aerial. She had failed to improve the picture even though “I was geeving ‘er clear insrushionz from dee ground “.
    As a punishment we secretly took his salami lunch sandwiches from the staff room fridge and substituted cardboard. Although the students were challenging, the staff had clearly got more problems on the maturity front than their charges.
    Further evidence of this came in the behaviour of the rarely spotted music teacher. He had another job as a trumpet player in the resident band in a tourist hotel in the centre of the only sizable town Freeport. This meant late nights and he rarely appeared at school before noon, a fact that was tacitly accepted by the head who, you guessed it, was a relative. This meant that his morning lessons were covered by other staff and my turn duly came around.
    The music room could only be differentiated from the other classrooms by a broken down old piano in the corner. I was quite pleased, on opening it, to work out the five notes needed to teach the fourteen year olds the then current Pink Floyd hit ‘Brick in the Wall’. At the precise moment the kids were all screaming ‘We don’t need no education’ the head walked by and summonsed me to her room for a telling off for what she considered inappropriate teaching matter. Rather truculently I rejected her attempt to remonstrate with me by pointing out she was paying the music teacher for his non appearances while I, who had never had a day’s absence, hadn’t been paid for two months.
    This was causing a cash flow crisis in the Rowson household to the extent that, in order to earn a few dollars, my wife had taken up the offer to become an artist’s model for an informal art class held at a wealthy ex pat’s house. The corruption and incompetence in the education ministry often caused payment problems but was balanced out on our return to England when they still kept paying me for four months after my contract had finished. When, for the third month running, no salary arrived I too started as an artist’s model. Every Wednesday I drove to the house in the usual garb of shorts and T-shirt. I was immediately handed a double gin and tonic which I quaffed in one, reasoning that it would be easier to sit still while ‘relaxed’. Another quadruple gin and tonic was produced and drunk before the class got under way with the result that I was as ‘relaxed’ as a newt.
    At the final of the four sessions that I was booked for, I was handed some of the previous session’s sketches which looked to be of an unkempt middle aged man asleep on a lounger. As it was the last session I had added a couple of extra gin and tonics to the usual intake. Even the host was alarmed as, at the end of the sitting, I lurched towards the exit. He accompanied me to my car which shamefully I had no qualms about driving. I sat in the front of the VW as the host enquired as to my wellbeing. “Perfectly OK” I slurred as I pulled the radio completely out of its dashboard console and on to my lap, having mistaken it for the starter button.
    We had begun to tire of our landlords increasing belligerence and when the salaries were eventually paid we moved into a duplex nearby. The previous occupant had been a drug dealer. On the day of the move our three year old rushed into the lounge where we were unpacking and said, “Daddy daddy there is a man at the door with a gold spoon round his neck”. Clearly the news of our move had not got round his cocaine clients.
    There were some great times at our new home with weekend barbeques held in our garden, which was an overgrown delight of banana and lime trees. They didn’t last for long as the Bahamian Union of Teachers decided on strike action after further non payment, and a promised pay rise which never