It is hard to believe that young Percy Pollweather is only fourteen years old and despite his somewhat sombre demeanour he is often heard to spurt forth pearls of wisdom and the occasional witty retort. For it was in English class at school that Percy first found his voice, thanks almost exclusively to Mrs Box his unusual English teacher and her running commentaries on such things as the fun of the pun, the tautological slip, and the marvel of the tickle in the tale.
Percy and many of his chums loved the freedom found in her English classes where even the most reserved of child seemed to come to life and join in the perpetual party of mucking about with language, laughing out loud and legitimizing the fidget, the absurd and the freedom to be.
Mrs Box loved her job and although she never made it at acting school, and was in constant tension with her publishing company, she consistently drew pleasure from her rag tag charges at Our Lady of the Flowers’ Co-ed School for the Disadvantaged. She also loved the Head Mistress Sister Scholastica a portly Portuguese nun from the Benedictine Order and her openness to free range teacher practices.
Mrs Box also had a deep affection for Percy and his ability to thrive regardless of his very pedestrian upbringing and less than vibrant home life. Percy's parents were devout followers of Arthur BranksvilIe a self-proclaimed soothsayer for the Anti-Wiseacre Movement (AWM) where people were committed to the service of dimwittedness claiming that accumulation of knowledge and humour was the work of the devil and that the more vacuous one became the greater their salvation.
It was always something of a mystery for Mrs Box why, considering his parents faith and/or lack of it, that young Percy was ever sent to Our Lady of the Flowers, to fall under her tutelage and the spell of the wonderment of literature and the search for knowledge.
Percy also wondered why, and spent most of his non-school time surreptitiously defying his family and their devotion to the vagaries of AWM, often finding solace in his well-hidden novel of the week by such greats as Patrick White. Mordecai Richler and Alan Bennett.
In fact, the young Percy is often spotted hiding in the bowels of the local library tapping away at his own novelette, entitled - Mercy, Mercy Master Percy - English Teachers Rule Ok! Edited Of Course by no less than Mrs Box herself.
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Percy is an original sculpture by Susan Bowers. Click here to visit him in the shop.