Life Skills

On the first day of a twenty seven 

Year career teaching whatever we mean

By ‘English’ I shared a first bus ride in

With a fellow first day inner trembling

Outsider, nod-silently agreeing 

To part before the barbed gates dividing

Master from pupil, unforseeing

His five years Formed in my registration.

I left TVC with him twenty years later

In his cab, named his favourite teacher

In The Guardian, his world playground fame

(I thought) a torch to the statelier flame

Of his world-obscured literary master:

Ego’s scoffed bait to his alpha baiter.