I began life in my new place with an enthusiasm I hadn’t felt since the blazing hot late August of 2001, when I moved into my first dorm room at Malaspina U.C. Laundry was done (even folded and put away for the first time since Alexandra! Like a real boy!), I stocked the fridge and cupboards, and I prepared each night for the next morning’s theoretical subbing work. A normal rhythm returned to my nomadic lifestyle and my health, somewhat sapped by weeks of living outside in the exhaust-y CBD and running a constant sleep debt, returned to me. I even hosted a few different friends I’d made in various places in my NZ travels, replete as I now was with floor space. Aside from my friends’ snoring – and why exactly they all had to be snorers I am not sure – I had a comfortable existence, and my own doggedness to thank for it.
There was one problem, however: I had been told that the prime time to receive calls from the subbing agency was just after 6 in the morning- when the agencies themselves tended to get calls from the understaffed schools for relievers. I went to bed each night sure that my phone was charged and that it was close to hand, but found myself waking up unmolested by the ringtone at around 8:30AM each day. The first few days this happened I looked at it as a reprieve of sorts... one which would let me be at leisure in my glorious new place and accompanying neighbourhood (Auckland Domain – my erstwhile home – being up the road afforded additional ‘points’ to my location). I got to know some of my neighbours as well, though the Governor-General (who lives about 200 meters away) was away on business during the block function I attended. A certain unease, however, began to manifest as time went on and I remained employed only in theory.
In essence, my first thought of each weekday became ‘damnit’, as my waking up at a comfortable hour obviously meant I hadn’t been called. While I was quite happy overall in my new abode, the fact that most mornings started with a tinge of economic unease started to wear after a couple weeks’ idle time. During this time my landlady would occasionally ask, as we companionably worked in the backyard garden (I had been tasked with stewardship of a dozen or so tomato plants), whether I was getting any calls – to which I had to half-sullenly say ‘no’. While I was still riding the pecuniary wave of my savvy homelessness, the time to improve my financial prospects was clearly nigh.
As difficult as it may be to understand for those that know me best, I had finally tired of free time. I resolved to offer whatever services – in a voluntary and thus irresistible capacity – I could to the incredibly prestigious institution I lived directly across the street from: Auckland Grammar School. I had admired it from afar (alas that ‘anear’ isn’t really a word, applicable though it might be here) as the kind of school I might have enjoyed in my youth: all boys (reducing distraction), all in mandatory uniforms (reducing anxiety re: ‘what to wear?’), and all ‘bourgeois as’, as the Kiwis might say. Thus it was that I cast out an email, adding yet another item to my list of ‘things to wait for’. Just as I had hoped, I wouldn’t have long to wait.
A few short days later I found myself ushered into the office of one of the Deputy Headmasters (doesn’t that just sound better than Vice Principal?) and thence around the school. In a word, I would describe the experience as astonishing; having attended and then taught at a series of adequate, if utilitarian, institutions back in Canada, I wasn’t really prepared for what I saw. The main hall, replete with aged hardwoods and artisanal brick construction, soars to a 3-storey height (at least... I admit to a lack of skill in estimation) which accommodates every boy (some 2,500) each day for assembly; it more closely resembles a church than the gyms I sat through endless assemblies in in my youth, but only started the tour.
I was ushered through a series of massive outbuildings to meet various people (head of Music, head of Supply teaching, head of Learning Support, and so on in dizzying array), pausing for a moment to enjoy both of the huge gymnasiums, various athletic fields, and heated outdoor swimming pool (think about that- I believe it was of the 50m variety, about 8-12 lanes) before my tour was cut short by a passing rain squall. In the end I was brought back to the starkly well-appointed administrative wing to receive the description and paperwork relating to the place they wanted to put me: a teacher aide/foot soldier in the Learning Support department. As if to sweeten the deal I was told that if I were to do well in my voluntary trial, I would be in a strong position to be upgraded to a paid version of the same job when a number of aides left to go back to university in a couple weeks. A few more handshakes and forced smiles (my being quite overwhelmed at this point) later, I was out the mahogany front door and back across the street to my palatial basement abode. 3 days later I would be going to work at the single most prestigious public school in New Zealand with a decent probability of gaining a paid position that would make my rent/bill anxiety vanish like so much caviar at a school wine-tasting function, and I had my own initiative to thank for it.
Starting to become kind of a theme, that is.
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