Failed attempt

A summer scheme, set up to keep teachers busy over the holiday period, has been abandoned after one day due to their inability to dig a hole.

‘Real Work’, a teacher/summer work scheme initiated by the Omagh Management Group (OMG), saw seven teachers from the west Tyrone area sign up to four weeks of tasks including digging holes and lifting things.

OMG director Harvey O’Hanlon admitted he had to call a halt to proceedings after just one task on Monday morning:

“It was a disaster. The task for the seven teachers was to dig a hole in a field, approximately 4 foot deep. The History teacher started lecturing the rest on the origin of holes and spades. The Geography teacher kept taking pointless measurements of humidity and soil samples. The Maths teacher was scribbling away at angles and such like for the spade to enter the earth. After 30 minutes, not one had lifted the spade itself.”

O’Hanlon revealed he started to lose patience when the teacher of English began reciting Heaney poetry:

“Digging is a wonderful poem alright but it wasn’t going to get the hole dug. The PE teacher wasn’t much help either. He just kept bouncing a ball and blowing whistles and pointing. The RE teacher took the biscuit. She made everyone get down on their knees and said a prayer for the dig that was about to take place. Only it didn’t. Shower of wasters.”

The seventh teacher, a Chemistry educator from the town, did manage to lift the spade but subsequently went out on the sick. Teaching unions are to issue a statement later, advising teachers to do nothing over the summer and to stay away from outdoor activities involving manual labour. 

Tuesday’s task of lifting a plank from one side of a barn to the other has been shelved until further notice.