A vague idea about the town’s history

Now’s the difficult part. You’ve barely thought about it. You’ve been too busy doing other things.

You thought you’d talk about the town’s history. It’s appropriate for your job and for an assembly. The problem is you don’t know much about the town’s history.

The later history is non-descript. World War 2 took men but didn’t even see a single Luftwaffe overflight. World War 1 much the same. The Victorian era passed it by. Even back to the Stuarts and the Civil War shows little interest, both Roundheads and Cavaliers marched past but never occupied, the Reformation just pushed the Catholics underground but never tried to chase them away.

Earlier history is your forte, but for most of the country it’s vague. For your hometown it’s vaguer. A mention in the Domesday book and that’s about it. Local stories are low key and closer to fantasy than to reality. But you have to speak about something, so you speak about this. It’s not going well when Dr Stricture starts asking questions. From then on, it gets worse. You’re waffling. You’re vague.

After five minutes digging yourself a hole, Dr Stricture’s gaze is withering.

“I had low expectations,” she finally states, putting you out of your misery. “It appears you haven’t even reached those. As I’ve stated several times, we take assemblies seriously in St Perpetua’s. It appears you don’t. Reconsider it. You’re dismissed, and the next time Mrs Oversight gives you an assignment, I recommend you actually do it.”

You haven’t felt this small in years. You traipse out of the office, feeling utterly inadequate. All you want to do is bury yourself and disappear. You don’t go to lunch. You hide yourself in your office and contemplate how bad you feel. But you can’t wallow for too long in depression. You have more classes to teach.