261. Working not from home

Suddenly I raise my head and a frightening thought washes over me like a giant tsunami. It is such a powerful feeling that I nearly fall off my chair and as I sway to the left I get my sleeve caught in the little foldable table in front of me. The hollow bang it makes as I place it back has most heads turn towards me. I smile a forced smile and look around pretending it wasn't me.

It is all I can do not to scream out loud: ‘Help!’ I fidget in my seat, looking around again, turning this way and that. 

What if this was a catch? What if I'd been ensnared in a dreadful trap? Lured into this stuffy school theatre in a town an hour and a half from mine? 

I sit up straight, try to keep still. I inhale deeply . One. Two. Three. Exhale. One. Two. Three. Repeat. I do that a few times until I realise the people around me have noticed. It is not so much that they stare at me, it is just that I have this feeling that they might join in. I do not want to be responsible for turning this 'meeting' into an improvised mediation class.

I am a little calmer now. I look around. The 'meeting' has now turned into a 'workshop'. I have to turn round to join the two (very grumpy) teachers behind me. Turning around and sitting comfortably in this amphitheatre is difficult. I do more tossing and turning. I really want to scream and I wonder how long I will be able to control myself. We start the atelier but as we do not have enough students' papers (a single one for the three of us) and we do not have the question paper the exercise is proving tricky. I am briefly wondering if this isn't part of the atelier: how are we going to cope? Are we going to share? Three heads peering onto the same paper or are we going to take it in turns? When I ask one of the animateur she is willing to let us have her exam paper but we have to give it back at the end. I stare at her blankly. I want to start the breathing thing again. I let my colleagues read the paper (singular) and I start looking around with the secret intention to find a soulmate with whom I could pop out for a smoke or a pee. Or even a fight. I am so bored.

A couple of rows back two inspectors are peering over a laptop. I can tell they are the important inspectors because they are wearing ties. One is wearing a maroon (maroon!) tie over a deep blue shirt and a nondescript dark suit. I decide to call him Mr Fashion-Faux-Pas. I stand up, pretending to brush crumbs off me but I cannot see his shoes. I'm almost certain they're brown. He is pointing at a screen to the other inspector who is nodding and smiling. I wonder what they are doing. Preparing the next atelier? Meanwhile at the other end,   near the stage (the stage!) a large group of inspectors and important teachers (the important ones are standing, the non-important ones are seating) are having a very animated group conversation, so animated that they seem to have forgotten about everyone else in the room. The sitting teachers in the room are also animatedly chatting to each other, the atmosphere in the stuffy room (there are no windows, only artificial light) is not unlike a back-to-school day after a long holiday. A few lucky ones have got a paper and are reading, a serious frown on their faces, the saviours of the day. Plenty are on their phones: some messaging their kids or husbands to put the chicken in the oven, some messaging friends asking them to offer if not help, at least compassion (me). A few are just pretending to attend to the task at hand: shuffling the documents and doodling in the margins. A few are having a little snooze, heads resting on arms on the mini-table. An other is staring at the emergency exit door. I notice an interesting tee-shirt: a complete timeline of the history of Marvel characters. A lone bored inspector is standing in the aisle on his phone too. I wonder if they have an inspectors' WhatsApp group. I try to imagine their conversation.

Suddenly my chums get up: 'Here! You can have the paper (singular). We've got a train to catch. And anyway we're in the wrong room.' And they get up and go.  

The lone inspector, sounding almost dynamic and enthusiastic, walks dow the steps in the middle shouting.

'Sorry, we've kept you on that one a bit too long.' 

Follows a lengthy whole group discussion about what mark we should give and why, and should we agree or not on the given mark, and is this paper fitting box 2 or 3 in column B? And should be add up the marks from column B and C before or after getting an overall impression of the paper. How many words is too many? how many is not enough? How long is a piece of string?

I check my phone. It's that or screaming out loud. My friend is telling me to turn to my blog. Not a bad idea. Better than the screaming out loud.

This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons or actual events is purely coincidental.