Mr Pindar
I could never forget Mr Pindar. It’s not easy to forget someone so bizarre. He used colourful language, sometimes crossing the line, and spoke both English and Italian with ease, often combining the two. He would push us to extend our vocabulary, saying, ‘Italian will eventually become almost obsolete – and will only be spoken in a small part of the world. Learn f*****g English before it’s too late, and then travel around the world.’
At that age, we didn’t know any better. We were just teenagers at the mercy of our hormones. Now I understand why our teachers would make us open all the windows when we got back from PE. They’d say, ‘Open the windows, it’s really stuffy in here.’ Stuffy? Seriously? We smelled like old fish!
Before becoming an English teacher, Pindar spent his lif
