My junior school headmistress - Miss Beauchamp. Nasty, hypocritical woman who couldn't bear to be proved wrong and who never failed to find a way to blame the kids for her own shortcomings.
Every year, on the last day of summer term, she'd announce in assembly which teacher each class would have next year - "1G will become 2Ro, 1A will become 2Ru", etc. The teachers were all present at assembly too, and we learnt pretty quickly to keep our faces blank and our reactions to ourselves.
As we came towards the end of third year [what we now call Year 5], the two fourth year teachers were Mrs L and Miss T. Mrs L was younger, much more hands-on, got good academic results and led by example - she actually put on a tracksuit and did PE alongside her class, instead of lounging on a bench with a ciggie on the go and yelling instructions at them. Miss T was nearing retirement, was rather dowdy, her only outside interest appeared to be bird-watching, her previous pupils' academic performance had been unremarkable, but she was a close personal friend of the headmistress. Obviously, both third year classes hoped and prayed they'd get Mrs L...
The final day of summer term arrived. We sat through a long and dreary farewell assembly for the departing fourth-years, and finally Miss Beauchamp got on to the announcements. She told the current first-years who their second-year teachers would be; then the second-years who their third-year teachers would be; and then our turn came and we all tensed up waiting to hear our fate...
As soon as she said, "3A will become 4L - ", a muffled cheer went up from 3A...and simultaneously, but more loudly, a dismayed groan from 3H. Miss T was visibly crushed and humiliated by the reaction.
Assembly ended abruptly and the school was dismissed, teachers and all - "But the third year will all wait back!"
My goodness, the bollocking we got from Miss Beauchamp - she raved like Hitler at the Nuremberg Rally. How dare we so grossly disrespect Miss T with our appalling cheering and groaning?! How could we fail to appreciate her long service to the school, her vast experience, her comprehensive knowledge of British birds and her interest in astronomy? The girls of 3H were very lucky indeed to be getting Miss T for their final year, and yet we'd all displayed base ingratitude in reacting as we did in front of the whole school...
Fifty years later, I'm probably the same age Miss Beauchamp was then, and I find myself thinking: she absolutely knew how those two teachers were regarded by the girls. If she genuinely cared so deeply about Miss T's feelings, why didn't she instead come to each of our third-year classrooms beforehand and tell us privately, "3A, you're going into 4L next term; 3H, you're going into 4T". At least that way, Mrs L and Miss T would have been spared the embarrassment and thunderous atmosphere that pervaded the school for the remainder of the day.
...That was in 1974, when adults were always right and 10-year-old girls were always wrong. We endured a four-year catalogue of spiteful and discriminatory treatment from Miss Beauchamp, all of which I can now see was fuelled by her poor people management skills...but of course, 7-to-11-year-old girls weren't people. Only adults were people. Therefore, we were in the wrong. We were always in the wrong.