Jeremy Smithers is living in a retirement village and suffering from ill-health. He has a story that he desperately wants to tell for several reasons, focusing primarily on the funnier side of his forty years of teaching in secondary schools. He employs a young writer to help him to transform his ideas to written word. Gradually, from a very difficult beginning, a more meaningful relationship comes to fruition as they work on the book together. But Smithers is hiding more than one or two secrets from his past that he definitely does not want to come out! Slowly, the pieces are put together through his fractured narration, which reveals his desire to show an often misunderstood side of teachers and teaching, and the observations and reactions of his collaborator, the young protagonist Elaine.