I called her The Inspector because that’s what she felt like the first time I met her. She was English, tall and slim, and a Moslem revert – as many term it – with a spirited intelligent face and a great sense of fun, which you could see from the lines at the sides of her eyes and because she was always smiling, even when you weren’t looking at her.
Of course she wasn’t really an inspector, but her height, breezy mien and vigorus gait gave her the air of someone supervising others in an efficient but friendly way.
Also, although she was a fellow English instructor, most of the time she was in the corridors and not in her classroom, where sulking and insolent students lolled around at their expensive desks, exchanging vapid comments during brief breaks from their compusive phone scrolling.
Most of our students were perfectly pleasant as individuals, but whether you were there in front of them trying to teach them – or not – their behaviour didn’t change much (and there were plenty of good reasons for this, not relevant here).
Our bosses, who were probably wiser and more mature than we were ( but also more sycophantic and less impish ) took a while to notice The Inspector’s characteristics, and when they did, they found her rather difficult to manage, partly because she was cleverer than all of us, and popular, and because she was marvelloulsy unpredictable too.
Out There & In Here 