Kids Most of my working life has been spent in education, and I've taught the lot, from infants and juniors through the whole secondary phase, sixth form, young adults in youth theatre and university students. They all have their plusses and minuses and I really couldn't say which I like working with best. It might seem odd then that, having spent so much time in the company of kids, not much of my writing is set in or about schools and students. However, as anyone who has worked in education knows, there are about a hundred interactions an hour. The pace can be so frenetic that those moments which, to an outsider can seem so full of comedy, pathos or enlightenment just pass in a blur before they are fully assimilated. However, now I have a little more time and a lot less responsibility I'm able to take a more dispassionate view of what goes on in classrooms and corridors, and in recent months I have made the effort to record some of the incidents I see and conversations I take part in. One or two of these have been fashioned into stories and you can read a short sketch based on a few minutes conversation with a young child if you check out Stretch Limo (see below). This is taken from my collection A Ship of Fools. This collection also contains Daggers into Shovels, a story based on the most boring teenager I've ever met! Adolescence and The Kid Gets It, two poems about growing up, also appear in the book. I've also just finished a story called Hangman which hasn't appeared anywhere yet, but for which I have great hopes. I ought to say that I find writing stories specifically for children very hard. When I worked in the primary sector I once wrote a couple of stories for my class of eight and nine year olds. The children listened to me patiently and were very kind, but in truth the stories weren't very good. On the other hand, I've always enjoyed writing plays for children, and had some success in staging them. Writing plays for adults though? Can't do it! So, plays for kids to act in, and stories for anyone who wants to read them; that about sums it up.   Stretch Limo The first car I had from new was a little white Fiat Panda. My wife had the family car, a big estate model, also white. One day my little Panda was being serviced, so I borrowed my wife's to get to work. When I entered my classroom, a little girl, aged about eight, asked me, "Have you got a new car then, a bigger one?" I don't know what possessed me, but before I could stop myself, the words were out, " No Emma, I've just had my little car stretched." Emma nodded wisely, "Yes, I've heard they can do that now." The following day I was back in the Panda. Emma found me at playtime: "What's happened to your car?" Wishing I could be as razor sharp with adults, I said, "Well it rained last night and it shrank." Emma looked very puzzled, "I thought rain made things grow." "Well, rain makes living things like plants and trees grow, but things that aren't alive sometimes shrink. You know, sometimes your clothes shrink when you wash them." God forgive me, I could feel myself digging deeper and deeper. "Well then," said Emma, "You'd better put it in the garage tonight, or you'll be coming to school on a bike."   © Ian Gray Back to Who?