Wednesday, April 02, 2008

Smoke gets in your eyes

I was doing a simple experiment with the kids yesterday and, as part of it, I demonstrated what happens when magnesium burns. Normally this demonstration is accompanied by a chorus of "Ooh!" "Aah" "Cor, do it again, sir!" This time, however, there was the additional sound of the fire alarm! The smoke detectors in the new school seem to be more sensitive than the ones in the old school.

As a result, the entire school (including the principal who had just left my room with some visitors she was showing around at the time) evacuated to the playground. I was a bit shame-faced as you can imagine but I thought that if I said nothing then I might just get away with it. Not so. Every class has a blabber mouth and before long it was around the whole school that I was the culprit. OK, so it was a bit chilly, but there was no need for the staff to take it so personally and issue me with more death threats than Salman Rushdie.

8 comments:

Ali said...

ha ha ha ha!

were you in 'the other place' on any of the two occasions the HE dept tried to burn it down??

no personally guilty your honour!

Pluto said...

This is my first count of attempted arson. No, wait a minute, there was that other time when .....

Ali said...

... the school had to get the emergency services out because of the spilt chemicals on a colleagues desk ...

Oh wait, that was someone else ...

Pluto said...

Definitely not guilty in that case. In fact, I wasn't even in the school then.

Dana said...

Tell them it was a nice break in the routine...

Can I ask, what does it mean when you say "cor"?

Just curious...

Pluto said...

Dana, "cor" is simply an expression of surprise, like "wow". I'm always happy to teach Colonials how to speak the Queen's English. (Oops! Did I just think that out loud???)

Ali said...

that'll be quite something, seeming as how you don't speak it ...

Pluto said...

Ali, any more comments like that and you're banned from "The Ramblings"!!