7 Miss Palaver's

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MISS PALAVER'S Theatrical Theatrics MISS PALAVER COULD TURN anything into a drama. The smallest thing would make her launch into the most over-the-top performance. It could be... A plastic bag caught up a tree...

"Oh, woe! Poor bag of plastic! Come down from atop your lonely branch!" she would wail. A teacher sneezing in assembly... "ATISHOO!" "Get thee to the nearest apothecary* at once. Ye may only have moments to live!" *An apothecary is an old word for "pharmacist". Miss Palaver liked using language from the time of William Shakespeare, the famous playwright who died over four hundred years ago. A piece of chewing gum stuck to her shoe... "Oh, woe! Oh, twice woe! I am stucketh to the spot! I will be entombed here for all eternity!" A wasp trapped in a classroom... "Out, out! O stingy foe! Thou art not welcome in my classroom ever! Do notteth forceth me to fetcheth the spray canister of certain waspish doom!" A bird plop landing on the headmistress's car... SPLUT! "O bird of foulness, why hath thou smited the headmistress's vehicle so with your ploppy poop?"

A girl with a shoelace undone... "Stoppeth at onceth and doeth your shoelaceth uppeth! Please, please, please do not thanketh me, even though I hath saved your life!" A book being overdue at the library... "O book! O book! O pretty book! Flyeth back to the library on the wings of a dove! We need thee safely returned!" A shortage of baked beans in the school cafeteria... "I weep for me. I weep for the children. I weep for baked- bean lovers of the world. We must have beans, beans and more beans or we may as well rolleth into a ditch and die! Die! DIE!" In case you hadn't already guessed, this particular world's worst teacher taught Drama. Miss Palaver's appearance was, in a word, theatrical. The teacher dressed as if she had travelled in time from hundreds of years ago. She wore a long scarlet velvet

cape, which billowed on windy days. On the cape was pinned an antique gold brooch, with the symbol of drama, the twin masks of comedy and tragedy.* *That was fitting, as her life was a mixture of the two. Underneath the cape, Miss Palaver wore antique blouses with ruffled collars and cuffs, and tweed skirts that went all the way down to her ankles. Her shoes were heeled lace-up boots, which were last popular in Victorian times. She wore her half-moon spectacles on a chain round her neck. No one had ever witnessed her bring them up to her eyes, so they might just have been part of her costume.

Miss Palaver taught at LADY OSTENTATIOUS'S SCHOOL FOR POSH GIRLS. A POSTER school you could not find." *It was even posher than LORD POSHS SCHOOL FOR POSHOS, where you had to be a member of the royal family to attend.