Every Form Photo has one: the teacher plonked in the middle, looking like they’ve been Photoshopped in from another century. Ours was Miss Rowbotham. Hair lacquered to within an inch of its life, cardigan the exact shade of school gravy, and a smile that said, “I will not retire, I will simply fossilise.”
Nobody fancied her, obviously. Except maybe Mike McAdam, who once swore blind she’d winked at him during Latin. (She hadn’t. Her glasses had slipped.) But she became part of the game anyway — immortalised on the dartboard, sitting just below Sharon Fox and above Donna Carr, like a reluctant referee.
Kizzy nicknamed her “The Overseer.” Momo preferred “Our Lady of Perpetual Detention.” I once called her “The Rowbothamator” and got detention for “mocking staff lineage.”
She had this uncanny knack of appearing wherever you least wanted her. Sneaking a smoke behind the sports hall? Miss Rowbotham. Holding hands in the cloakroom? Miss Rowbotham. About to kiss someone in the bus shelter? She’d materialise, tapping the glass, muttering “Plenty of air between you two, thank you.”
Her favourite phrase was “We don’t behave like that at Eastfield High.” Which was a lie — everyone behaved like that at Eastfield High.
Once, at the Christian disco, she turned up “to supervise.” Half an hour later she was leading the Hokey Cokey with surprising aggression, shouting “IN, OUT!” like she was commanding an air raid drill.
In the end, she became our accidental mascot. No dart could land near her without someone yelling “Double detention!” She never knew. Or maybe she did, and secretly enjoyed being the secret boss of our teenage chaos.
That was Miss Rowbotham. Part scarecrow, part surveillance state, part accidental legend. The woman who kept the Form Photo respectable… by standing guard in her gravy cardigan.
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