The wrong way

When I was at primary school I once wrote a story, or maybe it was a poem, about the wind and the rain and an umbrella being blown inside out. My teacher asked me whether I’d ever seen an umbrella blown inside out. I told her I hadn’t. ‘Well, write about what you know,’ she said, ‘not about silly things that don’t happen’.

We remember the things that mortify us.

Umbrellas aren’t so robustly made now, and every time I see one blown inside out I remember her dismal failure to acknowledge the value of reading beyond your experience or to encourage imagination.

When I became a teacher she was my anti-role model.


My extra will make your screen wet.