Read by Matthew McAloone (final story in podcast, at 1h 15m)
They’re meant to be reading in silence. Just come in, take out a book and do ten minutes of silent reading. Part of the school literacy drive. Bridge the vocabulary gap, instil a love of books: all that crap. But somebody has taken Zach’s pen lid. Not the actual pen. Just the shitty little plastic cap, and Zach is finding this bare jarring. Triggered by the fact that despite mad threats, Ruby, Max, Miriam and Brandon remain chill.
Why Zach even has a pen out is not clear. This is after all silent reading, but shouting this at him, while barking at Maruf to stop spinning on his chair, and screaming at Amira to finish her little circumnavigation of the classroom, is adding very little to the situation.
And now, of course, the fucking cable won’t go in the computer. The whole plan to get them listening to the third episode of War with Troy is in jeopardy.
They can see the panic rising with every jab of the connector against the port.
Zach is out of his chair and demanding everyone empties their pockets. Amira has opened the cupboard and is attempting to steal some stationery. Maruf brings his knees to his chest, hugs them tight and launches the spinny-chair into G-Forces your average cosmonaut would struggle to withstand.
Why won’t this port go in the computer?
It may be necessary to read them the text himself. Bungling his way through names even more anxiety-generating than the ones on his register.
Red-Haired Menelaus. Owl-Eyed Athene. War-like Peleus.
It’s as if Homer was sent to earth to torture Stout-Quaffing Kelly last thing on a Friday. As the holder of a Post-Graduate Certificate in Education, he has always tried to remain at least one page ahead of his students. Alas the sheer volume of characters (and the complete impossibility of remembering who is related to who) has made this noble intention more difficult to realise.
So who is Achilles’ mum, sir?
And his dad?
Hang on so if that G is his dad, and he’s like a cousin of Zeus, does that mean the woman he’s sleeping with is actually his cousin?
Oh man that’s sus!
It has been a difficult start to term, and now, technology, as if working for the Goddess of Strife, Eris herself, is conspiring to make things worse.
Zach has recovered his pen lid and is now telling Mason, (who must have been stitched up by Ruby because she’s grinning ear to ear), to watch what happens at lunch. Amira, possibly owing to the noise outside, has fully entered the stationery cupboard and closed the door. Maruf, still struggling with dizziness, is lying under his table and for some unrelated reason has started pulling bits of old chewing gum off the bottom to throw at Ibrahim.
For a very long time now, Stout-Quaffing Kelly has known he’s in the wrong line of work.
Then, as if one of the Gods up on Mount Olympus has taken a shine to the struggling pedagogue, the connector slots into the port and the projector comes alive.
He bangs up the speakers. He talks Zach off the edge with a promise of biscuits. He coaxes Amira out of the cupboard with a square of the emergency Fruit & Nut he always keeps in his top pocket. He tells Maruf that if he picks another piece of chewing gum off the bottom of that table then he is going to make him eat it, and he has enough hungover, wild-eyed Irish madness about him to make it believable.
The class starts to settle down and the actors reading the story are so lovely to listen to. So sculpted, so balanced, that it kind of lulls the entire class into an easy enchantment.
Stout-Quaffing Kelly is beguiled of his fears.
Zach puts his head down on the table as if voyaging across the Aegean. Amira gazes into the distance as if she, not Helen, is gliding through the Scaean Gates with Paris.
Mountains and sea. Kings and Queens. The rise and fall of great nations.
Stout-Quaffing Kelly looks out of the window at the towers where his students live and admires their bare concrete form. Stripped of their cladding they are naked grey against the blue sky. Just another London day in January. No need for panic. No need for alarm.
The moment he thinks this, it begins.
A window about half-way up the tower. Close enough that he can quite clearly see the man standing in his jumper and shirt and tie and trousers and shoes. But also far enough off that he feels no moral obligation to look away.
The man puts both palms flat on the glass and bends his knees at an angle that somehow seems obscene.
Guinness curdles in Stout-Quaffing Kelly’s guts. Alcohol seeps out of his pores.
It is a few moments before he realises the man is looking straight at him. Another clean minute before he realises that the fella is taking off his jumper. Sexy like. Slinking out of the thing with a suggestive arch of the hips. Trailing his tie down his chest, over his groin and then back down between his legs.
Even if Stout-Quaffing Kelly had looked away before the slow, teasing work on the shirt buttons had begun, it is highly unlikely the event would have gone unnoticed. Maruf does, after all, spend ninety-percent of his day staring out that window, but Stout-Quaffing Kelly’s open-mouthed gape ensures the man’s sky-high striptease is an instant class hit.
It’s on SnapChat before anyone can react. Kids stream in from other classes. Teachers, abandoned by their students, drift in red-faced, cursing Stout-Quaffing Kelly and his inability, for even one Friday afternoon, to keep his year nines in check.
‘What’s he doing?’
‘I think he’s stripping.’
‘Doesn’t he know the children can see?’
‘I’m pretty sure he’s knows we’re watching.’
With the final button of his shirt free, the man throws his shoulders back to allow the fabric to fall, revealing a belly not shy of Kronenberg and kebab. He swivels to pulse his bum cheeks as his hands, hidden from view, begin working on his belt.
The screams of the kids. The banging on the glass. The battery of pen lids, rulers and glue sticks. It has moved beyond a point of climax and it’s as if Maruf and Zach and Amira are only throwing themselves into it with such gusto because it is the only source of normality left to them.
There is a fully-grown man over there, stripping in the window of their tower block!
They have, of course, seen worse on Tiktok. They’ve watched girls on Snapchat do stuff that got them sent back to Kosovo. But this glass screen, this window here, has no big pause button. This big, hairy, white guy up on floor seventeen isn’t going to disappear when they click X.
A few of the bottom-feeders start with the lip-wobbling. A pair of swots abandon the window and seek refuge in their homework.
Maruf and Zach become caricatures of naughtiness and Amira, seeing the belt pulled loose of the hoops, makes a run for the cupboard.
The big, hairy arse is just about to make its appearance when SLT arrive.
Glaring at Stout-Quaffing Kelly as usual. Giving simple, clear, calm instructions that the kids cling to like lifeboats. A weakness for authority that Stout-Quaffing Kelly has always found disappointing in a student.
‘Nothing to see here … Back to your classroom … Show’s over …’
But the show is far from over, for the arse is out and the shimmy-shammying of the hips suggests they are about to get a full-frontal.
Even Maruf and Zach are hiding under the desks.
SLT drift towards the glass like a curious cursor hovering over porn.
‘Is that … Mr Donnelly?’ The words are out before they can be censored.
The pineapple-shaped birthmark on his upper thigh is hard to disguise. His weakness for short-shorts, even when cycling in the winter, has made it legend.
‘Didn’t he get fired for threatening to get naked if his class didn’t stop talking?’
‘Suspended pending investigation.’
Donnelly is now squatting, scrotum swinging free as wrecking balls.
‘Well, as you say yourself sir – threats without follow-through are pointless with these kids.’
SLT does not take this well.
‘Get the blinds shut, Mr Kelly.’
Stout-Quaffer does as he is told and SLT stands in the doorway waiting for him to restore order, and teach.
‘Okay year nine, War with Troy, please.’
Exactly nobody is listening to him.
‘Year nine, open your books.’
Zero response.
‘Year nine!’ Shouting is frowned upon, but Quaffer prefers it to heart-attacks.
SLT is getting ready to show him how it’s done. How to assert authority.
Not today.
Not to-fucking-day.
Stout-Quaffer undoes his top button.
Books shoot open.
He loosens his tie.
Like a host of angels descending from Mount Olympus high, they begin their reading in silence.
(c) Brian Kelly, 2025
Brian Kelly is a writer, publisher, and academic. He was the recipient of the Irish Novel Fair award in 2023. He is the founder of Insurgent Press and co-founder of the spoken word night Club Verbal Discharge. He is writing a PhD on the Irish novel post-2008 financial crash at King's College London.
From being a BBC Comedy Award contender for 2015, it’s been nothing but up for actor, comedian & storyteller Matthew McAloone, whose confident stage presence & sharp writing make him a must-see act. A sitcom come to life, & as much at home in a sold-out Shepherds Bush empire as he is in a dark, tight comedy club, 2025 sees Matthew continue to develop his excellently-received family show “Who wants to be a grown up?” across the UK’s many kids’ comedy venues.
Comments