None of the teachers in our school would volunteer to
take the class, and so the job was farmed-out to an
eager party,
Ambassadors for Christ
a local group.
No, really,
it wasn’t even a religious school.
The AFC came in one afternoon – we’d seen them once
or twice before, promoting their events in our
assemblies.
They had this old school bus they travelled
round in with a library in the back, and on the side it said:
THE G-SUS BUS
almost as bad as Goodlord, Ava…
the main guy was known as Mr C., an ancient man –
that’s how he seemed – older than the world –
benevolent cloudy face, hair like the finest
morning mist, arthritic hands forever rested in a chapel
shape.
And often he was joined by Faith, a fierce woman,
thin and tall, who could have been ancient too but also,
maybe – twenty-five?
She spoke once of her former life,
heroin etc.
dirt
she called it,
I injected dirt, let dirt inside me, hung around with
dirt and so was dirt myself.
Writing it here, she sounds quite cool, but her
delivery was so uptight, so highly strung and righteous
that you kind of just switched off when she was on.
One afternoon, we all filed in from lunch, shoving,
giggling, crisp crumbs on our jumpers, backpacks low
and bouncing as we walked,
once inside Faith gave us each a piece of
chewing gum – now, Ava, I don’t need to tell you what a
thrill this would have been – gum was banned in school
of course…
every small occurrence is a big event when in that
barren stretch of education,
