How to Write Really Badly Read Free

week with Mrs Hooper?’
    I took a look. I looked in the front of the book, and I looked in the back.
    ‘That Mrs Hooper is one brave, brave lady,’ I observed.
    Miss Tate said warningly:
    ‘I’m losing patience with you, Howard.’
    So I stowed it till she left. Then all I did was watch as poor Joe picked up his pen, gripped it so hard his hand looked like some paralysed tarantula, and wrote, pitifully slowly:

    ‘That won’t do,’ I told him. ‘There’s five mistakes in that. Not to mention the truly dismal standard of penmanship.’
    Joe tried to stick up for himself.
    ‘But you can read it, can’t you?’
    ‘Of a fashion.’
    ‘It’s the best I can do.’
    ‘Then you’re writing the wrong book,’ I told him patiently. ‘Always, in project work, it’s best to trade on your strengths, not on your weaknesses.’
    Joe sighed.
    ‘Not sure I have any.’
    If you don’t mind, I’m breaking off to make a short public service announcement here. I
know
when someone says to you, ‘I’m not sure I have any strengths,’ you’re supposed to pat their paw kindly and say to them: ‘Of
course
you do!
Everyone
has strengths. It’s just that some people’s are more hidden than others. And some people’s don’t show up in school.’
    I
know
you’re supposed to say that. OK? It’s just that that isn’t what I said.
    What I said was:
    ‘Oh, I don’t know. You’re really good at writing really badly.’
    You want to know my big mistake? I’d said the magic words: ‘You’re really good at –’ That was my big mistake. Here was this sad case at my side, whose teachers probably hadn’t drawn a smiley face at the bottom of his work since he was
three
, and I was saying he’s really good at something.
    ‘Do you think so?’
    He beamed so wide, I thought his face might split. For one grisly moment, I feared he would even lean over and hug me.
    Then it was Worry Hour again.
    ‘But will you help?’
    So tell me, all you bigheads out there reading this: what would you have said?Here I am, stuck in Happy Valley School, where everyone is peachy-sweet, and this poor dimple-head thinks that I’m being
nice
, like everyone else.
    I’d like to see you wriggle out of it any better than I did.
    ‘Sure,’ I said. ‘I’ll help.’
    I picked up my pen. I wrote the title in big, clear capitals, so he could copy it on to one of the bits of card he’d spent break cutting to make covers. And copying isn’t hard, so he made quite a decent job of it. I won’t say it was neat. And there were way too many fingerprints. And he’ll take time to crack this business of the backwards ‘e’.
    But I was proud of it. And so was he.

    After a bit, Miss Tate trills over our way:
    ‘So how’s it going, Joe?’
    He sticks his tongue back in his mouth to answer her.
    ‘It’s going well. Howard is helping me.’
    Now didn’t Miss Tate look pleased at that!
    ‘And, Howard, how about your own work?’
    ‘It’s still a secret, Miss Tate.’
    ‘Well, just so long as you’re getting on with it.’
    I looked at my nice white cover on which, so far, I’d written diddley-squat.
    ‘Getting along nicely, Ma’am.’
    She nods away, all happy as a clam. My mother’s always saying it, and it is true. Some of these teachers are so away with the fairies, they should be put right out to grass.

4
Trash or treasure?
    I would have found it easier to work in a street riot. You wouldn’t believe the noise Joe Gardener made, trying to write. His pen clattered to the floor ten times a minute. He said ‘Sorry!’ half a dozen times whenever he stabbed me with his elbow. And every few seconds he lifted his desk lid and rooted through the garbage inside.
    It was like sitting next to a giant gerbil.
    ‘What is the
matter?
’ I asked finally.
    He turned his worried face in my direction.
    ‘What do you mean?’
    I tried the question round another way.
    ‘Why aren’t you working?’
    ‘I
am
working. You can
see
I’m