Literary magazine

Your sixties should be a time of holiday- making and celebration. I would follow Mr Plummer in his endeavours; he’s a Face- book friend. Mr Plummer dashes about be- coming brown in the African sun, painting and doing up houses. He’s having a ball, so I would like to be like Mr Plummer, retired and happy. TLM: We heard you used to teach Dra- ma, is this true? Skerten: Well I am contracted to teach Eng- lish and Drama. Skerten: No, no. The Drama department has changed a great deal since I started in 2004. It used to be a traumatic time working in the Drama department. There was no window in the Drama office back then, so when you went to work you would work in a black cube with no natural light and I could- n’t bear that. I started to exhibit what was known as confinement psychosis. I started to believe I was somebody else. I had trem- ors and night terrors. It was the belief that I was…you probably won’t know him, but there was a television chef called Keith Floyd, who used to spend most of his time in southern France frying shellfish and drinking a lot. He was on TV every week and I believed... I was Keith Floyd and I had to get out of there. That’s why I stopped be- ing a Drama teacher. TLM: If you could be a type of tree, what wood you be? There is a pun there. TLM: But you no longer teach Drama?

which have come from the people: first of all, do you have a middle name?

Skerten: I do.

TLM: Do you think you could beat Dr Dia- mond in a physical confrontation? Skerten: Well, Dr Diamond and I did have a fight, at the Barbican last year. Dr Diamond got me in a headlock and punched me in the stomach, and I struck her savagely across the temple and she collapsed. She was hospitalised for a fortnight. That was confirmation to me that while Dr Diamond’s moves were quite savage and barbaric – she knew things about physical fighting which surprised me – I was still able to overwhelm her with a sharp jab to the tem- ple. TLM: Do you think you could beat a Year 7 in a physical confrontation? Skerten: No. I would allow a child to win be- cause I wouldn’t want to go to prison. TLM: Okay, well this is the final question. Why did you grow your beard? Skerten: Because I felt compelled by an in- explicable, internal force and it has hap- pened to coincide with a point in time that beards have become very popular which had nothing to do with my decision making. As I said, the force that made me choose to grow a beard is an unconscious force, therefore not one that I am in control of. I can’t even pick up a razor as confidently as I did before; something is stopping me. So I know that it is important, but I don’t know why it’s important. At some point I may dis- cover why it is important and be grateful for it. As is the case with so many things in life, the mystery is probably permanent. Insoluble.

Skerten: With ‘you’?

TLM: With ‘wood’.

Skerten: I thought yew was also a tree.

TLM: Yeah that is pretty good, I’ll write that down… Okay, so what tree wood yew be? Skerten: If I could be a tree I would probably be a Laburnum.

Interviewed by Joel Hatton, Year 12

TLM: We have some more questions here

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