Pleeaze! Tell Me That Bomb Isn't Live!: Further Ramblings Through the “Overburden” of the World of International Education.

By Nick Crozby

Pleeaze! Tell me that bomb isnt live! is a follow on from Nick Crozbys successful first book, Pleeaze tell me that wasnt a teacher. Like its predecessor it continues in a humorously written, anecdotal style and is based on the multifarious events and incidents the author, Nick Crozby, has been privileged to encounter, enjoy and occasionally suffer during his long career in education. The events related were real but the names of all those involved have been changed to preserve anonymity. Pleeaze! Tell me that bomb isnt live describes how it was a working visit to Saudi that led to a totally unexpected change in direction to his and his wifes newly established teacher recruitment company. That in turn led to exciting, sometimes difficult but always interesting experiences and events in countries across the world. Helping set up new schools in Eastern Europe, Bahrain and China, advising and helping to staff and improve established schools in the Caribbean, Africa and Hong Kong all as a result of an initial visit to the Middle East. The scariest times were as a result of the Gulf Wars and visits to Kuwait, Qatar, Dubai in the aftermath. With his well-chosen stories and incidents Nick not only entertains but informs the reader about the nefarious, colourful behind the scenes goings on in the international educational world.
The dialogue is colourfully illustrated with many carefully recalled situations, some sad, others naughty and some very moving. Incidents and characters seemed to follow him during his time in teacher recruitment just as they had during his teaching career and these too are humorously related.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Oct 8, 2013
• ISBN: 9781491879993

Nick Crozby

The author, Nick Crozby, was born before the outbreak of World War Two. As a child he always wanted to be a teacher and when old enough he trained as a Secondary teacher after successfully completing his Bachelor of Arts Degree and Educational Diploma courses. He then taught in several different schools before taking up a teaching appointment in a College of Education where in the course of his work he was involved with many schools, ran In-Service training courses and undertook research. He wrote numerous successful school text books and worked with The Schools Council, Her Majesties Inspectors, Local Education Authorities, Advisers and Radio and Television Companies on a wide range of different projects. His special interests lay in the areas of Fieldwork, Community Education, Disadvantage and Disaffection. As head of a Middle School he was able, in conjunction with outstanding colleagues, to put into practice many of his ideas. In his spare time he was a keen sportsman playing and helping to run rugby and cricket teams as well as doing occasional disc-jockeying for relaxation! After taking early retirement Nick worked for a short time as a sponsoring editor with a major educational publishing company. He and his wife, Emm, then founded a highly successful teacher recruitment company. Soon a chance meeting took their work in a totally different, unexpected direction which resulted in Nick and his wife working with schools and teachers’ worldwide and especially in the Middle East opening up new horizons with many exciting experiences, opportunities and stories. Now being fully retired Nick and his wife enjoy a quieter more relaxed lifestyle, gardening, motor-homing, writing and craftwork and live in Spain for a part of the year. They also collect smoothing irons of which they have a considerable collection. Nick Crozby is the authors’ pen name. He married his childhood sweetheart and has been happily married for over 50 years. They have two children and three grandchildren.

Book preview

PLEEAZE! TELL ME

THAT BOMB ISN’T LIVE!

FURTHER RAMBLINGS THROUGH THE OVERBURDEN OF THE WORLD OF INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION

Nick Crozby

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AuthorHouse™ UK Ltd.

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Bloomington, IN 47403 USA

www.authorhouse.co.uk

Phone: [phone]

© 2013 by Nick Crozby. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 10/03/2013

ISBN: 978-1-4918-7998-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4918-7997-9 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4918-7999-3 (e)

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

Chapter 1    Pleeaze tell me that bomb is not live!

Chapter 2    Pleeaze can you help me out!

Chapter 3    Saudi calling!

Chapter 4    Pleeaze tell us: is it safe?

Chapter 5    It’s who you know!

Chapter 6    Cyprus calling.

Chapter 7    The annual outing!

Chapter 8    New centres!

Chapter 9    Qatar.

Chapter 10    Back to Qatar . . . and again . . .

Chapter 11    Pleeaze join us for a meal at home.

Chapter 12    Today the Gulf tomorrow the World!

Chapter 13    China here we come!

Chapter 14    Beijing Macdonalds?

Chapter 15    Beijing Backstreets.

Chapter 16    Suzis tours?

Chapter 17    Back to the Middle East.

Chapter 18    Accosted!

Chapter 19    Whetted appetite!

Chapter 20    Two pronged attack!

Chapter 21    Pleeaze be my head.

Chapter 22    Pleeaze can I have first offer?

The author, Nick Crozby, trained as a Secondary school teacher after successfully completing his Bachelor of Arts Degree and Educational Diploma courses. He taught for several years in different schools before taking up an appointment in a College of Education and Polytechnic. As part of his course work he was involved with many schools, with In-Service training courses and with research. In his spare time he worked with a colleague to write numerous school text books and worked with The Schools Council, Her Majesties Advisers and Radio and Television companies on a wide range of different educational activities. After taking early retirement he worked for a short time with a major publishing company and then in conjunction with his wife founded a highly successful Teacher Recruitment Company working with schools worldwide.

This is a humorously written, anecdotal account based on the multifarious events the author has been privileged to encounter, enjoy and occasionally suffer during a very varied career in education and his forays into the educational world. The names of all those involved have been changed to preserve anonymity.

Nick married his childhood sweetheart, Emm, and has been happily married for over 50 years. They have two children and three grandchildren.

Nick Crozby is the authors’ pen name.

Thanks

An enormous vote of thanks and gratitude goes to the superb people I have had the privilege to work alongside and to befriend. You know who you are. Over the years I have developed the highest regard for members of the teaching profession as well as for members of the Police and Social Services who often work under very difficult circumstances. An even bigger vote of appreciation goes to my beloved wife and family who have had to put up with me and all my foibles over the years. God Bless!

All that mankind has done, thought, gained, or been, it is all lying in magic preservation in the pages of books. Thomas Carlyle.

CHAPTER ONE

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Pleeaze tell me that bomb is not live!

My wife and I were being driven over the parched arid wastes of the desert to the south of Kuwait City by a small statured, middle aged lady wearing long, traditional, Arabic style clothes. Married to a Kuwaiti gentleman she had lived happily in Kuwait for decades and was proud of her adopted country. It was overpoweringly hot and dusty though we were riding comfortably in a massive four wheel drive Nissan Patrol with the air con full on, me in the front passenger seat, my wife in the back, progressing at a steady pace when we suddenly appeared to be heading for what looked like a road block. Sure enough as we approached the barrier a large, well-armed, burly guy in military uniform stepped in front of us and signalled for us to stop. Two others followed him: they stood and waited. Our friendly host who was also our driver waited too though she did slowly wind her window down. We had been travelling with the air con on full blast and as soon as she wound down the window we were hit by a wall of heat and an acrid taste as we breathed in. After what seemed like ages one of the military men approached our car.

Excuse me ma’am he spoke in a broad American twang.

You can’t cross over into that area I’m afraid! Delivered forcefully and firmly!

Why on earth not? was an equally forceful riposte from our petite little driver.

It’s strictly forbidden by the US military. We are responsible for patrolling the area and for the security

He responded while towering over her and the car. To my wife and I that seemed fair enough after all we were in a country that had recently been at war with Iraq and the clear up had only just nicely got started. But not so for our friend! She went straight onto the attack.

Were you here right throughout the war young man? she delivered in an abrasive almost hostile way!

Well er . . . he was searching for the right response.

Lost your tongue have you! she bitingly urged him on.

No ma’am! No! I was not here throughout the conflict Replied the military guard very nervously!

I thought not! Well! I was! And I’m taking my friends through so they can see some of the damage and troubles that have been caused to our special country. So stand aside immediately!

With which she put the car into first gear. When we reflected afterwards it was quite funny really. Three large, burly, armed, military police brushed aside by one small five foot nothing lady.

Well if you say so ma’am but please be very careful and don’t stray too far off the roadways whatever you do. It’s for your own safety.

Forbidden territory!

With that we continued over the desert towards an area where there were large, black, ominous looking clouds on the horizon. The further we drove the nearer the clouds came and the darker it got. Scattered on the desert surface by the track side at intervals there were the carcasses of dead animals. Killed, we were informed, by the Iraqis for food.

They even took all the zoo animals from the zoo and shot them before butchering them for food.

As she was telling us we drove past several dead camels though whether they were dead from shooting or starvation we couldn’t tell without stopping. We drove further and were aghast at seeing the shot up remains of armoured vehicles and the burnt out remnants of trucks and tanks. We were beginning to witness something of the scale of the mayhem that had occurred. The Nissan slowed to a stop.

Just look at that

Our friend said as she stepped out of the car pointing to a large pile of mortar shells, bombs and other armaments casually stacked a few feet from the road. My wife and I hesitated before gingerly exiting the car with extreme caution. I was very nervous!

Pleeaze! Tell me that bomb is not live! I stammered!

Without batting an eyelid our friend looked straight at us.

Indeed it is! she responded in a matter of fact way!

The military are trying to collect all the unexploded ammunition into piles and then at certain times they explode it: thus, they hope, removing that danger! As I’m sure you will have read one of the scourges of the aftermath of war is the hidden legacy of unexploded mines and ammunition!

Then as we looked across the desert surface we could see several of these large piles of unexploded ammunition scattered about. Scary! And it made us wonder how much more there might be buried beneath the ever mobile, drifting sand and sand dunes.

Back of a lorry!

Around three sides of the pile of ammunition nearest to us were large, partly unravelled rolls of barbed wire presumably located thus to act as a barrier to people or camels. Immediately my wife and I looked at each other. Mind readers? We’d both had the same thoughts. Our son was, at that time, driving lorries for a living in and around the U.K. and one of his contracts prior to and during the Gulf War had been to collect lorry loads of barbed wire from the manufacturer and delivery them to Portsmouth for ferrying to the Middle East. He had said to us at the time that there must have been hundreds of miles of the horrible stuff! As we continued to stare at the military stockpile we couldn’t help wondering whether these rolls had come off the back of the lorry our lad had driven! It was a strange sort of feeling. We got back into the car and continued driving along the compacted track-way passing more dead animals, more unexploded ammunition, more barbed wire and by now the sky was getting to be very, very black.

The sand’s on fire!

Suddenly, as we came over the top of a slightly elevated sand dune area, the sand to the right of the track was aflame: there appeared to be a whole lake of flames. It was eerie seeing sand burning.

Fancy that and we use sand to put out fires at home! I exclaimed!

To us that was immediately a worrying sight but our friend drove on quite unperturbed. As she explained afterwards she had brought several folk out here and therefore knew what to expect! As we drove on there were more and more flames this time gushing out of the desert surface and pumping high up into the air. We’d seen pictures of oil gusher fires in the movies and on the newsreels but this was for real and very scary. Our host continued.

That’s one of the legacies the nice Iraqi soldiers have left for us! At one point there were one thousand seven hundred and thirty two oil wells ablaze! Yes! 1732 fires! By the time we were ready to reopen the school many had been extinguished but there are still something like a hundred and twenty oil well fires still burning. It’s not a quick job to close them off. Before they left us they decided to blow up as many of the oil wells as they could so that we couldn’t use them.

My wife and I then realised that that must have been what we had spotted from the window of the plane as we had approached Kuwait airport: the numerous smoking, burning oil wells. We continued our journey but a short distance further on and our friend suggested we step out of the car to experience the heat from one of the flaming gushers. She stopped the car near but not too close to a small gusher bursting out of the ground.

Out we get but be careful I can still hear her words.

As we stepped out of the car there was the most awesome explosion! We all leapt into the air terrified! Then, rapidly collecting ourselves, we dived back towards the car. As we did so there was a sudden downpour and we were almost instantly soaked. Thank God it wasn’t a bomb after all. It was a cloudburst. But wait! I looked at our friend and then at my wife. Our clothes were all a sticky black mess! It wasn’t raining rain you know, it was raining . . . oil! Actually oil mixed with rain. Back in the car the windscreen was black: we needed our windscreen wipers. However all they managed to do was to smear the oil across the windscreen so we had no choice but to sit and wait. Thankfully the storm was very short lived so when it stopped we were able to get out again and wipe the screen clear enough to see through. But even then at full beam the headlights did not enable us to see too easily through the dense darkness of the burning petrol fumes though again thankfully the air con kept the air in the car reasonably free from the odious chemical fumes. What an experience: we couldn’t stop chattering about it all the way back into the city.

As our friend dropped us outside the large apartment that she and her husband had lent us for our stay we thanked her profusely and commented that this was one journey we will never ever forget but one we were glad was over and as she was preparing to drive away we arranged to see her in school the following day. And what an eye opener those few days in school were as we will see later!

CHAPTER TWO

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Pleeaze can you help me out!

The Kuwait experience came about as a consequence of the work I had been doing with three colleagues for a British School in Saudi Arabia. Before the first Gulf War I had been asked to join three other educationalists to go out to Saudi to run an In Service Training Programme for the staff of a prestigious British School with its British Curriculum. It all started when the phone rang at home. It was Dennis a senior educationalist with whom I had worked previously. I recognised his voice instantly.

Pleeaze can you help me out?

I was quick to respond, jokingly.

It all depends! If it’s money you want Dennis no chance! Anything else I’ll have to think about!

Seriously I need help. I am putting together a team of four people to organise and run an In-service training programme for a head who has recently taken up an appointment at a British School in Saudi Arabia. They want various up to date, Science, Religious Education and History, Geography and Environment and Nursery specialists and someone to lead sessions for the parents to bring them up to date with the new National Curriculum proposals and all that that entails.

He continued to tell me that the session with parents was so important and was needed because most parents living and working on limited term contracts overseas were always conscious of their situation and didn’t want their offspring to be at any disadvantage if and when they returned home. I had just recently retired and my wife and I had plans to start a recruitment company supplying cover staff for schools needing short term supply teachers in our local area. There was such a big need and the local authority where I had been a head before retiring had had a very piecemeal way of dealing with the supply staffing needs of schools. After retiring from teaching I had worked for some time with an educational publishing company and as part of that work I had been heavily involved with the National Curriculum though that work was terminated when the company was taken over. Hence my wife and I decided to start our own company. However before we had really started our new business the Saudi request came through from Dennis a friend for whom I had previously run INSET (In Service Training) courses, something that a colleague and I had in fact done in several different educational authorities dotted around the country. What an opportunity! One that I had no intention of missing! I was to be part of a team of four, two men and two women. In addition to myself there was to be a Science and Technology specialist, a History and Religious Education specialist and an Early Years specialist. Eventually when all four were signed up we agreed to meet in the lounge of a hotel within comfortable reach of both the A1 and M1 motorways on a misty, cold afternoon to find out exactly what was needed. Our flights had been booked for us to fly out of Heathrow on a Saudi Airline scheduled flight in a couple of months’ time and we were to be met at the airport in Saudi and put up in a hotel as our base for the duration of our visit.

It was dusk as we were flying over the Arabian Desert and we could see through the plane windows patches of lights down below us breaking up what was otherwise becoming a pitch black scenario. Every so often there would be another circle or square of lights with other lights scattered within the circle. What were they?

You’re the geographer! What are they?

I honestly had no idea. The desert was barren ground or so we thought. We were puzzled.

They must indicate that there are people there: though I can’t think why.

I was to learn on a later visit when we travelled out into the desert that these were Bedouin encampments. The Bedouin had pitched their traditional tents as they must have done for centuries but surrounding the camp they had strung rows of lights fired by oil fuelled generators. Lights adorned their tents too and no doubt they would have heaters in the tents during the cold nights. Luxurious four by four vehicles were also scattered about their compound. How different life was for todays’ Bedouin!

But back to the flight! It was at the point where we were discussing the lights below that one of the passengers lunged drunkenly along the aisle and collapsed in a heap clearly blind drunk near our aisle! The hostesses were quick to assist him to his feet and escort him down the plane and out of our line of vision. Having been told about how strict the Saudis are about alcoholic drinks we guessed that he would be in serious trouble when we landed. Very soon it was time to disembark! As we stepped out of the plane the heat hit us. Wow! We looked around amazed at the size of the airport and the myriad of aircraft and as we entered the ultra-modern design concrete airport building we were staggered by how vast and modern it was. As we walked down a spacious, spotlessly clean, sparkling corridor our eyes were riveted on a large waterfall feature stretching across one part of the entrance hall area. At that moment who walked past us with a very sprightly gate? It was the blind drunk man! He must have been given something while on the plane to bring him round as he appeared to be perfectly normal! In all innocence and with adrenalin running high we were rapidly shooting off photos of this ultra-modern area to show friends when we got back home. It was not until later that we were told by one of our hosts that we could have been arrested as the taking of photos was strictly forbidden. A close shave to start our trip!

It wer reet good!

It was reassuring to be met by a smartly but casually dressed English man, well-spoken but with a good Northern English accent who was called Doug and was the head of the school we were to work with. Well you know where you stand with a Yorkshire man!!! We piled into the car with our luggage and with the atmosphere bristling with excitement he ferried us to our hotel that was apparently several miles away from the school. And what a hotel! It was a newly built Sheraton: we were impressed. This was not something that we would have afforded ourselves and were embarrassed by the opulence and commented so to the head.

"Don’t worry. We treat our visitors well. Go unpack and then we’ll have a meal together and I’ll