One of the features of being a retired teacher is the requirement to do something about staying registered - something I still do lest I am overcome by penury or boredom. And so it was that in the last couple of weeks I received two missives from the GTC, one informing me that a direct debit was being taken for this year's sub and therefore I need do nothing and the second informing me that I had to pay £40 by the end of May. The trouble arose from the opening sentence of this second letter:You may recently have received a letter with regards to a Direct Debit being deducted, please ignore this letter.
I quote this verbatim primarily for the delectation of my more pernickety readership, but I must confess that I rang the contact number on the letter to complain, Meldrew-fashion, about the slight ambiguity and the far-from-slight horror of the sentence. I did ask the very civil chap at the other end if he would like me to take time from my retired life to come and teach English to his minions, and I'm afraid I pointed out that this was supposed to be a council for "maintaining and enhancing professional standards" (if you enlarge the screenshot you'll see this claim from their site).
He promised that they would try harder, and we both laughed. But I bet he's away looking up "comma-splice" somewhere.
See what happens when I'm forced to retire from the GTC because of retirement from teaching? I was the veritable scourge of illiteracy in that body, and added much to the gaiety of nations by my ability to spot a misplaced jot or tittle at forty paces. The trouble was that I spent so much time spotting trees that I sometimes missed the wood entirely. But I was a happy lumberjack.
ReplyDeletePS - (this could become a habit) Your site has developed an annoying tic (no reference to entomological posts elsewhere). When I preview my rants, judge them complete and attempt to publish them, a previously deleted ghostly (optional) in the URL box reappears, telling me it contains illegal characters, and I have to go through the whole routine again. Why?
See! It did it again.