Mr Simon was my English teacher for a few years in high school.

I did not like him and nor did many of my classmates.  He was a single (I think) man of about forty-five with a neatly cropped moustache and a US Marines crew cut (though any military allusions ended there).  He dressed very formally and wore his pants improbably high.  He had a superior, pompous, countenance and a short fuse.  If he was in a shitty mood he didn't make any effort to hide it - even if we'd had nothing to do with whatever was bothering him (though generally we had).

He was, however, someone I somehow respected.  I never looked forward to his classes; but often I enjoyed them.  Mr Simon took his job seriously; he didn't care whether we liked him, but he did care whether we were learning anything.

And he was pretty good at reading people.

He had me nailed.

I was one of the stronger students in the class.  When I did something well, he was generous with praise; but when I did not measure up, he could be vicious.

There was one class when he'd asked us the day before to think overnight about little tricks for remembering how to spell difficult words.

As he went around the class, it was clear that some of the kids had come up with really great ideas - some that I still remember and use 40 years later ('independence is 'e'-zy' (Andrew); 'manoeuvre a canoe' (Derek)).

I had nothing - in fact, I'm pretty sure I'd dozed through the critical juncture of the previous class.  When he got to me, I said something like 'I just look at the word and see if it looks okay' (which was, and is, true; but is not a lot of use to anyone else).

He exploded.

(I interpose here - in case Mr Simon is alive and marking this - that I have since come up with a quite a good way of differentiating 'discreet' and 'discrete': in 'discrete' the 'e's are separate.)

There was another explosion when we'd all been asked the day before to bring in a book we were to read and review.  Once again, I'd missed that bit, but a mate had come to the rescue by slinging me a second book he had in his bag.  When Mr Simon got to me, I confidently produced my 'selection': 'Get Smart: Once Again', a novelisation of the immortal TV show ('there was a TV show?' [a gag for the true aficionados]).

The excoriation that followed - which involved him denigrating my selection by comparing it to the book chosen by another student, Mil ('To Kill a Mockingbird' or something similarly lightweight) - was completely justified; save that it was Mil who'd loaned me the Get Smart book.  I can still picture him smiling at me - half apologetically and half delightedly - from up the row of desks.

Mr Simon liked to write lengthy comments on our homework.  He once wrote that an essay I'd written (about friendship) had started well, only to be be completely spoilt by one paragraph (where - perhaps for the sake of the word count - I'd riffed about friendship between countries, a notion Mr Simon seemed to find offensive).  He concluded his tirade with this: "You must eschew complacency! (Two words for your dictionary.)"

As soon as I'd read this - and somehow completely oblivious to the fact he was making two suggestions - I walked straight up to his desk and asked him what 'eschew' and 'complacency' meant.  (He reacted with the mixed disgust and triumph of a person who has successfully squashed a fly.)

And he was right.

I really must.