Frog Cook - Smallest in the Pond? (Paul Feldman)

Animals without backbones – our years with Frog

Pale skin with bulging eyes. The dead brown hair of a muppet. Hairless forearms extruding from a crumpled white shirt. – a shirt that could have been a sheet, torn from the clothesline on his way to work.

He drove a large old Austin.. Once grey, it was now darker still, with patches of sandpapered rust. A child’s car seat hung in the back seat, exciting a morbid pity.

This was Frog.

Like others without formal qualifications, Frog came to us from Industry. The industry that spawned him, who could tell…?  It conjures up images of men standing next to huge vats full of chemicals or hoppers loaded with iron ore, but they could have done anything from look after lab animals (a good backgrounding) or quality control in a Schweppes factory (staring at soft drink bottles). Often they came from Industry and went back to Industry, the schoolie thing being just a bizarre interlude in a life otherwise packed with useful endeavour.

One thing alone was sure: Frog detested us with grim relish.

The man exuded relentless contempt. Having established a willingness to beat and behead on Day 1, he ruled us for the next three years by force of negativity alone.

‘Appalling lack of understanding of the basic principles’, ‘really no reason for this’ ‘total lack of application’, ’complete lack of  effort’, ‘Well these results are terrible, if you want to go out into the world with that level of ignorance go right ahead….’

Science with Frog was the absorption of categorical fact. Through grey triple periods in Room 13, hunched on benches, we transcribed slabs of text at his diktat.

Moments of humour stood out in stark relief: the electric shock delivered by magneto along a human chain of hand-holding students, when Davies mimed a dying fit and Frog broke into a horrible grin; the day Keith West lurched into the line outside Room 2, throwing us forward on top of Frog, who staggered backwards in alarm. Best of all, the day he left a Geiger counter running, its face to the class. Unbeknownst to Frog, the counter was racing towards a million. He may have been surprised at our sudden intensity, our smiles of interest, our forward leaning focus. When the counter hit the target, the whole class cheered. No less welcome was the blank confusion on Frog’s face, and then the consummate derision.

On his last day at the school, I  walked in front of his car without realising it for about twenty metres, slowing his progress as he was driving out. Finally, he blasted the horn. John Hamilton said to me 'You should have seen the look of hatred on his face'. Frog drove through the school gates and out of my life...