Life with Miss Lake

After a year with the tyrannical Mister Potts, life in Miss Lake’s class was wonderful. One of the Upbury’s younger teachers, Miss Lake was good looking, good humoured, fair minded and instantly likeable. She could be firm when she needed to be, but the necessity was rare for a teacher whose control of the class came from goodwill fostered in lessons that were fun and enjoyable. Hers was a happy classroom. Some of us were never going to excel at French, but it was impossible not to make some kind of effort for a teacher like her.

Once a French lesson began we had to abide by Miss Lake’s rule that we only spoke in French. If there was anything we didn’t understand we only had to say ‘Je ne comprends pas.’

‘Fermer la fenêtre.’

That meant close the window. Easy to remember because it was similar to fermer la bouche, which meant shut your mouth. A playground variant of this was fermer la cakehole.

‘Mille neuf cent soixante sept.’

I knew that one too, it meant 1967.

‘J'arrive à l'école à huit heures et demie’.

And that one – I arrive at school at half past eight. And I could say Octobre with a rolling R. Piece of piss, n'est-ce pas? No, not really. I flogged through the pharmacies, boulangeries, bureau de postes and la ru Marlborough, but when it came to stringing sentences together, je suis came unstuck. While Helen Gales answered every question with a bloody monologue, I fell back on je ne comprends pas.

Miss Lake gave everyone a brand new, fresh smelling, glossy covered paperback. ‘Pick any passage from the book and write an English translation into your exercise books’ she said. After flicking through many pages of uninspiring pictures and great wedges of text, my eyes lit up when I came to a picture of England winning the World Cup. That was as far as I needed to go. Knowing what I was translating gave me a head start. Having names like Roger Hunt and Nobby Stiles in the text was a big help, but honestly, what did the frogs know about football?

Another song Miss Lake taught us…