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One day, a concientious teacher with an exemplary record, having met his proscribed targets with efficiency and vigour, and with an attendance record beyond question, broke his leg.

He phoned work. 'I've broken my leg.' There was a pause at the other end of the line.

'Oh, I'm sorry to hear about that,' said a voice, managing to convey both concern and circumspection. 'What are you going to do? Have you been to your doctor?'

'Yes,' the teacher announced, brightly. 'I have been given a splint and some painkillers for the next six weeks. After which I will be fine.'

'Well, you won't know until you get there,' was the curious response. 'Have you been signed off?' she hopefully added.

'Ah, well I think I could manage many of my duties with a bit of help.'

'I'm really not quite sure how we can help. I mean, it's very hard work here, as you know, extrememly pressurised. And we do want this to be a happy workplace.'

He went into work anyway, with a splint, a crutch and his painkillers, and managed to get through each day, with frequent rests, and by limiting his need to move about the building. His colleagues, he noticed, because increasingly distant as the days went by. They would politely ask him if he was OK each morning, and if he said, 'Fine, thank you,' they would smile and seemed reassured, as though, perhaps, let off the hook. If he answered, 'Well, I've got this broken leg, so life is relatively difficult at present,' they would look at him with a mixture of fear and incomprehension. One colleague asked him, 'Are you taking your tablets?' Another said, 'Oh well, cheer up, mate, it could be worse.'

There was one colleague who had broken her leg once in the past, and initially she showed an inkling of empathy with his plight, but over time she, too, began to avoid him, as though perhaps fearing she might suffer another broken bone if she associated too closely with him, or began to explore the causes of broken limbs with him.

And yet, the concientious teacher reflected as he rested his leg on an upturned litter bin during break, so many people do suffer from broken limbs. It happens every day, somewhere or other: a common occurance, surely. Why do many people choose to hide their broken limbs under loose-fitting clothing, he pondered, and hobble about whilst pretending they are fine?

Even the teacher himself, perhaps as a natural tendency to conform to cultural norms, tried to clamber and abseil up and down the stairwells as they he was in fact unbroken, intact. People preferred him, it seems, to be 'coping with it', 'getting on with life.'

Towards the end of the six week healing process, as his bones gradually fused and his strength returned, he went to see the head. 'I've taken the medication, worn the splint, and managed to get through each day successfully. Soon I will be back to normal.'

'Yes,' said the head, slowly, 'I've been meaning to talk with you about that. Now obviously I am really pleased that you have managed the, um, break successfully, a real credit to your resilience. Well done you. But, I was just wondering, will it re-occur? You understand what I mean I hope? A relapse, for example; what's to say the broken leg won't return in a few weeks? Have you thought about that?'

The hard-working teacher looked puzzled for a moment, even though instinctively, he had half-expected the conversation to take this turn. 'My doctor feels that so long as I follow certain precautions - ricketty ladders, ice, dangerous junctions, uneven pavements and so on - I should be able to manage my life withough further breaks.'

The head pondered. He sighed, to show how he was thinking deeply, forestalling any attempt to interrupt. He couldn't help looking at this teacher in a different light now. It seemed appropriate to categorise him in some new way, lump him with those teachers prone to limb-breaks. Perhaps, in this sense, not a good candidate for leadership. We can't, he mused further, following his train of thought, have leaders with broken limbs. With a slight gesture he shook the thoughts away and said, 'Well, I'm jolly glad you're on the mend. Obviously, if there's anything I can do... though I do wonder, just thinking aloud, you understand, whether teaching is quite the right profession for, well, limb breakages... but,' he announced with a shrug, 'I'll leave that with you.' And thus, with a hint of a smile, the teacher was dismissed.

The strange thing is that even though the teacher's leg-break had healed successfully (other than some residual physical weakness requiring physiotherapy), and that he no longer needed the painkillers, the experience of it, the reactions of colleagues and, in particular, the head, seemed to raise within him a new fear, a slight paranoia, even. He began to think that perhaps he might be succeptible to limb-breaks. He began to feel, in a reflection of the behaviours of those around him perhaps, that a relapse into hobbling around on crutches or trying to manipulate a whiteboard pen with a splint could be more imminent than statistics would suggest. In short, he began to feel that the mark of Cain was upon him.

And it could be argued further that the psychological impact of these new fears and misapprehensions affected his subsequent career, and even his daily performance at work, and that by a subtle process of osmosis, his prospects were diminishing.

How extraordinary, then, when he subsequently learned that over a quarter of his pupils were secretly in possession of broken limbs, and yet were somehow managing to get through each day without the aid and support of medication, splints, crutches, or even any medical expertise and intervention. Indeed, it turned out that several colleagues were hiding broken limbs, and even if they were accessing some kind of medical help, were managing to keep this quiet, pretending that all is well, that they were, within ill-defined yet collectively agreed parameters, normal.

*

Having read through this tale, I realise what a silly mistake I've made. As I'm sure you have already realised, instread of broken limbs, I had meant to refer to depression. My apologies.