Report for The Baron
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SummaryExemplary Child

Near my home is a road called Penns Close. Some time in the 70s, when I was a child, its sign was amended with white paint to Penis Close. This gave us a laugh for, Christ, about 20 years, until the sign was eventually repainted by the council. Shortly after, some clever sod tried to return it to its former state. However, declining educational standards being what they are, they managed to change it to Peins Close. The twats.

Nearing pensioning age, Mr. Faulkner's erratic behaviour was excused and explained by other teachers with a roll of their eyes and a long-since-stopped-caring 'It's his last year'. He taught metalwork.
Whereas once we would have to provoke him into sharing his war-time heroics as a parachutist / frogman / desert fox / commando / codebreaker / astro-soldier to avoid working, it eventually dawned on us that he wouldn't give a toss if we just sat there and did our own things for an hour.
After a whole year of learning no metalwork skills at all, and practical assessments looming, a more attentive pupil recalled that we had, at some point, been told to make a trowel. Another child had actually bothered to make one, so those of us who cared about getting a mark dutifully presented this one trowel, in turn, to Mr. Faulkner. He returned the compliment by dutifully giving us all a completely different mark for it.
He also set a written exam which we had no hope of passing but during which I did discover that, apparently, there is a kind of file called a 'bastard' - the only piece of hard metalwork information that I picked up in the whole year. And he probably made that up to take the piss.