Too truant

OPINION: Wearing my pearls slung over my shoulder like Chewbacca's gunbelt is the only thing that has got me through today, writes Sarah McCarthy in this week's Uptown Girl.

Since the weather is disgusting I have had to resort to wearing a giant pair of black socks under a long skirt because I simply can't wear my boots any more  they are merely strips of leather that sit somewhere near a rubber object that used to be the sole. And I have no clean pants because I am horrible at doing the washing (although, as I may have mentioned, we are filling up our brand new washing machine with a bucket because our water pressure is so bad, so it's hardly just pushing a button and then wandering off to watch New Zealand's Hottest Baker).

Although I did make a crustless  yet soggy  quiche this week, ending the kitchen standoff that has lasted since just after Christmas and has meant we haven't eaten a proper meal in more than a month, unless you count a curry. Which I often do.

I blame being a truant when I was at school. Anne Tolley says that the country's billions of truants will become displaced, dispossessed and diseased (maybe not exactly).

It must be true.

That must be why I am a bad housewife and have been naughty at work this week  I was a wagger. Anne Tolley is right. Look at me, a no-count, no-hoper with plumpty thighs and the need to watch Tabitha's Salon Makeover (if I can get rid of Mr mr on Thursdays ... he says reality television is evil and therefore banned and then calmly pops open a beer, sticks his hand in his waistband and watches six hours of cricket).

I must confess. In seventh form I used to jump in my wee car, Flash Gordon, and pop off to Thomson's Bush for a quick ciggie at interval. Then sometimes not go back until after lunch. Bad girl. Bad, displaced, disenfranchised girl, even.

And Tolley is right about needing more truancy officers  I remember a carload of us being busted once by two truancy officers who, once they found what year we were in, turned from cop-like menaces into swaggering, mildly inappropriate boys who said, "Oh youse seventh formers always have study periods ahurhurhur'' and then sort of hung around greasily until we were forced to stub out and head back to school. So they did their jobs, and well done there.

I think, perhaps, that more time could be spent worrying why the childrens aren't actually going to school instead of running around like gestapo and dragging them back. But why would you listen to me? I am only one of the billions. And a wagger.

(O please, please don't let my old senior mistress Mrs Waddell read this, she'll give me a post-dated detention and I'll bloody well have to do it, too.)

» Sarah McCarthy is a Southland Times staff member.

- © Fairfax NZ News

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Margaret   #1   08:38 am Mar 13 2010

Ahh, Uptown Girl, I have just found all of the columns I missed since coming back to the UK. I am only sorry you didn't win the dream night at the top of the water tower with Tim bringing breakfast.....

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