Drama Queen

Kriss Nichol

I know I shouldn't have done it. It was against all the rules. And rules are there for a reason, aren't they?

At the time I was a senior manager running a community education programme from a High School covering a large rural area of Northumberland. I was a responsible adult, so I should have known better. However, I also had a heavy teaching commitment and it was GCSE marking time, that time of the academic year when you give over your life completely to assessing not only your own student files, but working as a department you also assess your colleagues' students in the name of standardisation.

Unfortunately this 'death by marking' period also coincided with a weekend of lectures I had to attend in Birmingham as part of an M.Ed course I was doing. So I did it. I broke the rules and took my GCSE drama folders with me on the train instead of leaving them locked up at home, with a view to marking them in any spare time I had over the weekend. Other people had got away with it, so why not me?

After an initial period of guilt, expecting the school to phone at any minute and ask me for the folders, the weekend went well. I managed to get up early enough every day to do the marking and was feeling pretty pleased with myself. At the end of the weekend we all said our goodbyes and three of us, Roddie, Steve and I, were travelling by train so one of the other students, Michelle, offered to take us to the station. My folders were in a purple bag (yes, I know, not very classy but at least it didn't get mixed up with other people's bags) and I put this into the boot of Michelle's car along with the other luggage.

At the station I was distracted, probably talking too much, and didn't notice I hadn't the purple bag until Michelle shot off. I shrieked with horror and Steve, who was getting the same train as me, charged off manically through the traffic and managed to flag Michelle down and retrieve my bag. I heaved a huge sigh of relief and resolved to take much better care of the bag. It didn't bear thinking about what problems it would cause if the folders got lost.

Roddie, Steve and I set off to check our trains. Roddie was travelling to Glasgow, Steve and I to Newcastle. We checked the timetables and the Newcastle train was supposed to leave 30 mins before Roddie's so Steve and I went down to the platform indicated on the timetable. There was no-one there. My luggage was quite heavy so I put it down on the platform whilst we re-checked the timetables. A tannoy message informed us that the train was delayed for 45 mins; Roddie had gone for coffee so we decided to join him. Picking up our luggage we made our way back upstairs and found Roddy. He went off in time for his train but Steve and I stayed a bit longer in the cafe. Then it was time to go and yes, you've guessed it, my purple bag was missing again.

Panic doesn't even come close to what I was feeling, nor does headless chicken describe what I was doing, but I think you get the picture. I managed to calm down enough to find a guard, leaving Steve with the luggage. The guard was quite officious, asking me if I'd heard the tannoy messages which had been appealing for someone to come forward and claim a purple bag. This was 1996 and the terrorist threat came from the IRA, not Al Qiada. My bag had been confiscated and Bomb Disposal were on their way to blow the bag up! My near hysteria seemed to force the guard to take pity on me and he radioed ahead to say the bag had been claimed. I had to retrieve it myself from Lost Property, which was at the other end of the station. I had five minutes before the train was due in.

Steve gallantly offered to carry all the luggage and I broke all world records sprinting like Lara Croft across the station, knocking young and old out of the way in a desperate bid to save the exam papers. I was fined on the spot Ł5.00 for wasting police time and rushed back for the train and down onto the platform we'd previously been on, only to discover the train arriving at another platform and Steve frantically waving his arms in a kind of semaphore to attract my attention. So it was up the stairs again, then down onto the correct platform as the train was pulling out of the station. Steve held the door open for me and a guard bundled me inside. I'd made it!

It took a couple of minutes to get my breath back and for us to find seats together but we managed it. I collapsed into the seat and was just thinking about the lucky escape I'd had when the train jerked and I was crowned by a couple of aluminium crutches which fell on my head from the overhead luggage rack. A fitting end to the weekend's drama, perhaps? Thank goodness there aren't many days like this!