Leaving primary school, and migrating up to the big school
was a very daunting, and scary change for me. I went there with no friends.
The only two people who came from Brookside Primary School to Hayes Manor
were two girls, with whom I had little acquaintance (Donna Davis and
Sakjinda Rai, in case you're interested). For the first few months I
was scared witless, and my face was so pale I probably looked like a zombie.
In hindsight, I suppose keeping my arms outstretched, and asking for brains
at lunch probably didn't help much either.
After an unsuccessful relationship or two (Amit Sharmar running away from me whenever I turned my back springs to mind), Sher Bhachu joined joined our form group, and we seemed to have a bit of a rapport. So I'd made my first friend, and I wasn't on my own any more! Then he broke his leg, and was off for a couple of months! Argh, I was on my own again! Sorry, there are a lot of exclamation points there, but I really feel the sentences deserve them!!
Anyway, punctuation aside, when Sher finally did return, I introduced him to my replacement friend, Graeme Parker. Unfortunately, the got on like a house off fire, and that little threesome only managed to last about a week or two before they had a bit of fight, and poor Graeme went his own way. Shortly after that (towards the end of year 7) we met — and subsequently joined — with another gang. Primarily they were: Neil Sautereau, Carl Thomas, Joe Shiner, Asif Khan, Krishna Supeda and Paul Hale. Others later joined at various stages, including: Chris Elemen, Venay Maru (preferably pronounced in a Scooby-Doo accent), Amandeep Vidhani, Yaser Ghauri and Paul Barrance. It was with these people that I spent most of my senior school life.
Joe was a Jehovah's Witness (although he never really wanted to be one as he
didn't get xmas presents), and Neil was a devil Worshiper. Well, he wasn't really
a devil worshipper, but he was an atheist and he liked to joke about it.
There seemed to be a lot of tension between Joe and Neil for a year or two.
I don't know why that was; they just seemed to rub each other up the wrong way.
They had got into a couple of tussles before, and they were about to engage in another.
There had been a few digs at each other throughout the day, and things peaked when
Neil found a bit of chalk outside the mobiles (temporary classrooms, which
had been temporary
for about twenty years). He put it under his foot and wrote
on the pavement Jo-ho-hovah
. Now, for some reason Joe took offense to this,
and a mild fight broke out. Neil got Joe in a headlock, and Joe was going red.
He'd been in this exact position once before during one of their previous fights,
so he was probably getting used to it. Still all's well that ends well,
and Joe and Neil became friends after that. Well they actually had a disagreement
near the end of compulsory school, and I think they hate each other now,
but you get the drift.
Mr. Grimshaw was from Wales, and so the inevitable
title of sheep-shagger was bestowed upon him by some of the older kids.
We arrived at the rickety old mobiles (where we were taking our maths lessons),
and some Noel Cowardesque fellow had written on the side, Mr.
Grimshaw is a sheep-shagger
. So we had to make him aware of this ditty:
Sir, have you seen what they've written on the side of the mobile?
Yes, it saysMr. Grimshaw is a sheep.
None of us had the guts to say You forgot the
,
but we all thought it.shagger
bit
Another joke of ours involved capital A
letters at the start of sentences. When writing
on the white-board, Mr. Grimshaw always used to capitalise A letters with
the lower-case variant. Let me explain: he may start a sentence something like,
A cow can provides two meals…
, but instead of writting the proper
upper-case A
, he would do it lower-case, but large, thusly: a
cow can provide two meals…
. So once we noticed he always did it,
we took to reproducing it in our books. I'm not sure if he ever noticed. If he did he
never said anything to us.
The mobiles must have been left from the 1960s or something, because they were so rickety and dilapidated that everything shoke when there was a gust of wind. There were two lined up side by side, each accomadating two rooms, although only one was ever used at a time as every else got to use a safe room. The sixth-formers used to hang around on the steps of the adjacent mobile chatting and looking hard. One of the guys that was there always used to have a chain round his neck. He was quite a scary guy for us young kids, and although quite short he was stocky with it. Well he seemed to take a dislike for me and Neil who were sitting together, and gave us a dirty look. We kind of grinned and turned away, and the next thing we heard was the sound of the chain being smashed against the window. We shit ourselves and jumped out of our seets. He didn't seem so big though when Mr. Grimshaw went out there and told him to bugger off.
Quite some time after that I was sitting at the table behind on my own. The wind was blowing and we all had our coats on as there was no heating in the room (is that legal?). All of a sudden the plastic window just fell in, narrowly missing me by about an inch. I just sat there and tried to look unphased. The smell of fæces gave away my charade. We never seemed to go in that mobile again.
Another interesting thing about the mobiles is that the tables were often stickey. Now we also used to see our Mr. Grimshaw with the music teacher, in a very jovial manner, so we put two and two together and came up with them having sex on our tables. Seems reasonable, no? Or perhaps it was just leftover detergent, I don't know.
For a while I sat next to Sai-wah, and — I'm quite proud to say this — was actually
better at maths than he was during this period. But there was a reason for this - he could
never read the writting on the board properly. So I said to him Maybe you need glasses?
.
I offered him to try mine on to see if they helped, and help they did.
In fact they helped so much that he keep using them for about a month.
I'd be sitting there having to hand him my glasses in between copying the text
from the board.
Once Sai-wah had outgrown me and gotten his own pair of glasses I sat next to Asif. He opened his pencil case and out came a pair of eyeliner tubes. Next came the pencil-sharpener and he began to play football with them. He sat there for the whole lesson, every day, just batting the sharpener back and forth, never doing any work. I don't know how he got away with it. I'll say this for him though: that sharpener never once hit the floor.
I suppose Mr. Norris — our Maths teacher at the time — never really minded as he wasn't disrupting the lesson. He must've seen Asif, as we were seated on the front row of desks.
Asif did surprising well during the first couple of years, despite his lackadaisical attitude (sound like a right boffin, don't I?). He managed to get 100% (or something ridiculously close) in Humanities, even though he used to sleep throughout most of his lessons. This, I found out later, was due to the fact that his dad had him working in their shop until late at night.
In our first few weeks of school we often had to write our names on a piece of
paper as the registers hadn't propogated to all of our lessons (they'd only had
the six weeks summer holiday to sort this out, plus the couple of months prior
to that when we had our induction day). Most of us just wrote our names,
but of course there were always smart-arses who had to write
Superman
, Bob Marley
, etc.. But Navneet got dragged into
this. She had her name down on the paper, Navneet Panasa
. But someone decided to
write lala
at the end of her name, and the name stuck. She seemed quite
upset about it until they stopped using it four years later.
The old ones are they best, 'ey?
When I was first at Hayes Manor I was quite naïve and not very good at taking a joke. So when a bunch of girls decided to pick on me, by asking me if they'd seen me at butlins, and if my brother was Gaetanao every time they saw me, you can image I didn't take it too well. I can only put it down to the fact that they must have found me irristable, and to be quite frank I can't really blame them. Poor love-sick girls.
In PE we often used to come into
a changing room full of the last class who were still changing, or vice versa.
One time, Neil — a hulking great sixth former (or so he seemed at the time) —
came in. Of course we all screamed like girls and covered our nipples.
Well Neil noticed the birth mark on Yaser's cheek and said, Oi mate, you've
got a bit of chocolate on your face there
. Everyone burst out laughing, but I
felt really bad for him and felt like decking Neil. Of course I didn't because he'd
have squashed me, but Yaser later told me he thought it was funny so I can sleep again.
PE was one of those lessons where the teachers would sometimes
just not show up and we'd be standing around all lesson waiting at the gym doors.
When they did show up they never supervised us; they just let is in the buggered off
to the staff room. Well I think the next incident made them regret that.
We had false ceilings in the changing rooms, with a lot of tiles missing where students
had broken them. So Robert, being of a large build (oh let's say it, he was fat),
decided to swing from the thin beams where the tiles where missing.
Well it lasted about 5 seconds before a loud creak and a big chunk of the ceiling came down.
We all rushed to put our clothes on and run out, but only a lucky few made it.
One of the teachers came in and caught us. She stood there tapping her foot saying,
Well, I'm waiting. Who did it?
. Eventually someone owned up. It wasn't the culprit,
but that was fine by us. Robert came clean though in a surprisingly nobel moment.
I think he probably later regretted it though.
Another thing that some of the rougher kids liked to do was to set fire to the spray that came out of the aerosole cans. Whenever that happened the rest of us really would rush to get the clothes on! After a few times of this, they decided that it was getting boring, and so decided to bring in a hand full of ping-pong balls and set fire to them instead. They'd then play football with balls, and kick them towards people. So all in all, a safe school was Hayes Manor.
I'm sure everyone's come across one of these teachers.
You know the one: he wears a leather jacket, rides a motorbike and says,
Now you can chew gum in my class, as long as you don't put it under the table
when you've finished.
. Well we chewed gum, and we stuck it under the table!
And when I say we
, I mean the hard kids, not the goodie-goodies like me.
Our Mr. Cool
was the English teacher,
and we had to read a book about Milo and the (weak) metaphorical place he went to,
the Doldrums (sorry I can't remember the title; Milo and the Doldrums, perhaps?).
Now this had to be the most boring book I've ever been forced to read,
and trust me I've been forced to read a lot of boring books.
My form tutor had to have been the most miserable teacher I've ever had,
and trust me I've had a lot of miserable teachers (get the reference to the above story?).
This man made 5 minute registration periods seem like an eternity.
He'd ramble on about how the class was always in trouble (what he meant was
one pupil would argue with a teacher every so often), or how we weren't dedicated
to studying every second of our lives, etc.,
etc. But just to make it worse he would single
out some of the better-behaved students (i.e. me)
and say how the others should live up to their standards.
Oh thanks sir, how kind of you. I remember on the open evenings (where parents
would come in to discuss their child's performance) he would ramble on about how
he had old fashioned morals
and believed in a strict teaching method
.
Roughly this translated to, If the student isn't licking my arse, I won't help him/her
.
My dad never attended another open evening.
Our art teacher was one of a sadist nature. He seemed to get some perverse
pleasure from making us line up outside the art room. We would often practise
40 or 50 minutes of lining up if we so much as coughed while entering the art room.
Of course the stupid (or was it clever?) kids used to let the last pupils get just
get inside the room and then say something like Oops, I dropped my pencil
to which the teacher replied Right, everybody get your coats and bags and line up outside
.
I never figured out whether it was the pupil or the teacher who was trying to avoid the lesson.
At break times we used to hang around outside the art rooms, talking, arguing, having
strength contests (not that we were macho types, we just seemed to let frustration out on each other).
Well one time we kind of ended up in the cloak room area of the art room,
in which there was a table up against the wall. Carl was sitting there, and I was in front of him.
For some reason I got it in my head that I would grab his legs and pull them upwards.
Well I did, and Krishna saw me do it and burst out laughing, and likened the
incident to changing a nappy. So then everytime me and Carl got into a little play-tussle
he would egg me on to change Carl's nappy
. I did manage to perform this feat
once more, but we both ended up a bit grassy and bruised, and so formed a kind of
tacit mutual agreement to never change his nappy again.
Still outside the art room, Sher and Joe decided they would have a tussle
of their own (couldn't come up with their own ideas). Sher, being of a large build,
had no trouble in grabbing job and forcing him up against the art room door,
which was paned with glass. Well what was originally a tiny dent, turned into a
full crack all the way along it's width. I few days later the art teacher asked
us if we'd seen anything suspicious, to which we obviously replied, Oo no sir,
must have been some of the rough kids
.
For one of his choosen subjects, Joe had picked art. He liked the subject, but wasn't quite so
keen on the homework, so he decided not to do it. He had a few excuses, my favourite
one being, Sorry sir, but a cupboard fell on my nan and she was hospitalised
.
Surprisingly, Joe got away with this, and managed to later use the same excuse again,
but craftily added the line, A fairy pushed a cuboard onto my nan, and
hospitalised her
. Even more surprisingly Joe got away with it again.
Although I must remind you that this was the same teacher who made us line up
outside the art room for 50 minutes. Obviously he disliked marking homework as he
did teaching the lesson.
Our English teacher had a hard time for a couple of years. I won't go into
too many details, but her marriage to one of the other teachers ended,
and I think she suffered from depression because if it. She was a really nice teacher
though, but was regularly off sick during this period, so we often had cover teachers.
What this meant was that we had to do very little work as none of the teachers knew
what stage we were up to, or even had any lesson plans. Most kids didn't realise
that while they thought they were getting away without having to do much work
by sitting at the back of the class, we were at the front chatting with theacher
instead, doing absolutely no work! We'd get the odd, Right come on now lads,
you better get on with some work.
, but we'd find a way to get the topic back
onto something more interesting. We had a South-African teacher for a while,
Ms. Saber I think her name was. She was a nice person, but she had
a funny way about her. Hard to describe, just sometimes she would say odd things.
She was telling us how she'd spent all of her money getting over her. She said she
couldn't afford a TV, so she she just used
to sit in front of the washing machine, watching it spin dry her clothes. We never
did any work with her; she was a good teacher.
Joe was often the main culprit in our group during English lessons; he'd often
do funny little things. He once asked the teacher, What would happen if I threw
this…
— referring to the scewed-up piece of paper in his hand —
…out of the window?
. You'd have to go downstairs, pick it up
and bring it back up here
, replied the teacher.
So out went the piece of paper, and down went Joe. We all hung out of the window
and waited for him to appear. After a while he did, and he called up, I've got it,
Miss. Should I come back up now?
. Once he came up he realised he
could throw it back out again and he'd get another 5 minute break. But our teacher
was too clever and told him to leave it.
Another time in English, we had a cover-teacher, who was also covering Joe's German classes.
There was a trip to Germany or somewhere, and teacher asked Joe, Have you got the
permission slip signed yet Joe?
. Joe affected his child's voice and replied, Well miss,
I asked mummy and she said to me,
.
The teacher looked at him and sincerly said, Joe, if I let mummy's little soldier go on a trip,
I'd always be worrying about you, so I can't let you go
, so I can't come.Oh I'm sorry Joe, that's a shame we'll
miss you
. I'm sure she really believed him, even through all of our laughing.
As part of our English exam our teacher had to see and hear us reading a play,
and judge our reading abilities, plus our group social skills. So she put us
into about five groups, each one in a different room. So while she was off checking
up on everybody we decided that Macbeth was too boring the way it was, and that
we could improve on Shakespeare's literary skills. I got up on the table and started
to sing, Do do do do do, inspector gadget. Do do do do do doo doooo!
.
Once the title music was over we started doing our inspector gadget impressions:
Oh valiant penny! Worthy brains!
Uncle gadget, thou must get thy helicopter thing out of thy hat
Silence wench, or I doth laden thee with thyne bazooka thing-a-me-jig
OK, so we didn't really know what we were talking about, but we got an A for it all the same.
German was one of those lessons that started out nice and easy, but slowly progressed to total confusion. All those tenses; when to use masculine and feminine words; it was just too much! This was hindered by the fact that our original teacher had left (personal problems, which I won't go into), and we were left without a teacher for about a term. But anyway, eventually came the exam, and most of us didn't have a clue what to do. We were called out of lessons one at a time to go and take our oral exam with our teacher. Now obviously he didn't want us to fail as it would have looked bad on him, so he gave us a couple of little hints:
<Teacher>
Hello, wie heißt du?[Ahh this one I knew!]
<Me>Ja, ich heiße Rick
<Teacher>Ahh, Rick! Wie alt bist du?[Wow this was going well!]
<Me>Ich bin siebzehn Jahre alt.[Now brimming with confidence!]
<Teacher>Was sind Ihre Interessen?[With one foul swoop the confidence was all gone.]
<Me>Erm. Err. Ja. [cough]. Ich, er, weis nicht
<Teacher>Ja, erm Was sind Ihre Interessen? [cough] music hören [cough]
<Me>Music hören
<Teacher>Fernsehapparat [paper shuffling] Aufpassen
<Me>Fern-something or-other pass-over
Pretty much the whole exam went on like this, only it also included eye signals, body movement, morse code, etc.
Of course Neil Sautereau (don't even bother trying to pronounce it), the boy who would come up smelling of you know what, after landing in you know what, came up smelling of, well, you know. He was called out of his lesson, and made his way to the exam room. The teacher was not there, but what was this? The exam questions were. So off he popped, found an english to german dictionary and prepared & rehearsed his answers. He passed with flying colours.
Although my bad performance of the oral left me somewhat embarrassed, it was
nothing compared to the listening and written exams. You see, being the clever
chap that I am, I thought I'd put all of my exam dates onto one piece of paper,
thus saving me the effort and risk of finding which exam I had and when.
But, whoops I'd written Afternoon
for my listening and written exams,
instead of what they were supposed to be: morning. So I showed up, nice and prompt at
ten to one, only to find no-one there. So I thought, Oh that's odd, they must
be playing football or something
. So off I trot to find them. Sure enough
they were standing in the cage where we used to play football, and I hear, Look,
here he is! Where the hell have you been?
I say, What do you mean, I was
over at the foyer, waiting for the exam.
. The exam was this morning!
,
comes the response. Haha yeah right, shall we make our way over now?
, I somewhat
reservedly venture back. No we're serious, you've missed it!
. Shit, what am
I going to do now?! I rush off with Carl (who's sure he's failed, and wants to resit
the exams) to find the teacher. We find him, and explain the situation. He's
quite understanding, but I know really he's thinking, Oo, look at the stupid English boy,
he doesn't know when his exam is. Didn't you even know that? I did.
.
After some conferring with the other teachers, he tells me unfortunatly I'm not allowed
to retake it as I could be cheating. So I decided to resit them next year in the sixth form.
After summer holiday I decided it wasn't worth it; it was only German after all,
and I probably would fail it again all the same. Besides I'm happy with my F#
(the #
is for too stupid to remember to attend exam(s)
).
Now I know it's a stereotype, but one of our science teachers, Mr.
Gransuall, always walked around with his tie over his shoulder. I mean it was
like he used a tie-pin to pin it there. Even when we pointed it out to him, he'd
refuse to put it back to where it should be. Anyway, we used to get these science
lessons every so often where the pupils (in groups) would have to teach the class.
I'm sure you've all had the same thing. You haven't? OK, so it was just our school?
Well that puts my mind at ease about the quality of our lessons. One of the things
we learnt about was Tuberculosis, a disease my grandad once had. I felt it was
my duty to inform the lads of the bravery my gradad had shown, and how he'd fought
so hard to overcome this crippling disease. My exact words were, My grandad
once had TB… Yeah it was a colour TB
.
But being the kind of person I was, I couldn't leave it there; I went on, But
seriously, he really did have TB… it was a colour TB
.
Being one of restraint and moderation, this only went on for about half-an-hour.
I recently found this while rummaging through my old class-work: a diagram I drew during Mr. Gransuall's lesson, as part of an essay on selective breeding:
I never had a nose bleed until I was a teenager. Something happened to my body when I went to senior school. Sure they blame it on puberty and hormones, but it's funny how it all starts happening just after you have that TB injection, isn't it?! Well anyway, I digress. I started to have regular nose-bleeds for no apparent reason, not very often, but at 4–5 month intervals. So I took to carrying some tissue paper around in my pockets. But being the kind of person I am I couln't just carry enough to do the job; oh no, I had to carry a ream of the stuff. Plus it got a laugh, and you never know when you're going to get a snotty nose or a wet willy (in the literal sense, not the American prank). The annoying thing about randomness is that is always seems to happen when you least want it to. Case in point: we were in science and had been given a project to write up an article about the thermoregulatory system (laymen: body keeping itself at the correct temperature). So we had this nice big piece of sugar paper; the tounge was hanging out of the corner of my mouth and the pen gripped firmly in my fist, when the nose starts to bleed, all over the paper! Aghh. But still, it got a laugh and scared a few people - well worth the pint of blood I lost.
During our humanities lessons Carl and I would often exchange insults about each other's taste in music. I was quite clearly right — as I am about everything — but I let him win, due mainly to the fact that he was a better arguer than me. Anyway we would generally get one text-book to share between the two of us as our school couldn't afford much, being a quarter of a million pounds in debt. This, in Carl's mind, meant that only one of us should do the work, while the other mearly take an exact replica of the others. Carl came out on top, and from that point one copied my work word for word. Sometimes I would finish on the current page, turn it over so I could carry on writting, only to have it flipped back and ordered to wait. We eventually worked out a system: I waited for Carl to finish or else he punched me. Amazingly we actually got away with this, even after the teacher had marked our work. Funny how we got different grades though, one may even think teachers just pretend to mark work, assign a random grade and remark, and hand you back your work. No, they wouldn't would they?
Asif had always been in the top group for humanities (see The Eyeliner), while Carl and I were in the second.
We were constantly amazed at how he did it; he actually slept in class but still
got the highest grades. He used to sleep as his dad made him work at their shop until about
12 at night. Still he used to bring us in the sweeties from time-to-time so all
was well. Well, the sleeping must have eventually caught up with Asif as he was demoted
to our grade. Carl's copying trick was spoilt somewhat, as one of us had to sit
at the table in front of us. But most times Asif sat ahead of us, and the karma
was good. That was until Fahred joined our class. It wasn't so much Fahred's fault,
as it was all Asif's. For some reason Asif was able to — and even enjoyed —
winding Fahred up. One one occasion he said to him, Does your fatty mummy suck your fatty willy?
in a funny voice. He received a beating for that, and seemed oddly resigned, never fighting back.
Carl's last move was to play a part in Asif's antics: Carl told asif that he wanted
to put his ruler down Fahred's pants, but didn't have the guts. Asif graciously
offered to take the blame. So carefully, Carl positioned the ruler by Fahred's trousers,
while Asif positioned his hands by Carl's. Carl took a deep breath, thrust the ruler
down into the depths of Fahred's pants and retracted his arms. Asif artfully held his
hands up so as to give the impression to Fahred that he was trying to get out of it.
Fahred didn't seem to happy with what had just happened and started calling Asif a queer,
while Carl sat there quietly giggling. Carl got moved down to group 3 for this.
Either that or our Ms. Kettlewell realised
he'd been copying from me for the past 2 years.
With Carl gone Asif seized the opportunity to stop doing work (or rather start doing work, just not his own). He sat next to me and copied my work word-for-word, as his predecessor had done. And once again the work came back graded without so much as a peep from the teacher. Asif didn't quite have the staying power of Carl and got feed up after a few lessons, and just went back to doing nothing at all.
At the start of our third year at Hayes Manor (year 9), after the summer holidays, Asif wasn't present. We just assumed he was sick at first, but as time passed we started to wonder if he'd moved or something. Well about 5 or 6 weeks in, just before half term he appeared. We'd kind of forgotten who he was, but once the memory came back we asked him where he'd been. Turns out that he noticed that his parents both left for work before he had to leave for school, and had devised a cunning plan of just staying in bed. The school had been phoning but never managed to get hold of his parents. Asif obviously got a bit too careless, as one day his mum stayed home (probably figured that everyone had already left and thought she'd play truant) and caught him. Asif's not one to put the effort into to making up a story, and just came clean, hence his arrival back at school the next day.
For his English coursework, Asif decided to write about his work experience at the local Homebase where he had attended with Carl:
ORIGINAL WRITING: My Work Experience Diary
6 0ctober 1997(Monday):
As I walked into the huge building with the word ‘Homebase’ I felt very nervous. There were two reasons for this: The first reason was that this was my first day on work experience, the second was that I had arrived two hours late. To my relief, I found that all I had missed was the health and safety video. However, I soon began to regret this when I ran over a customer with a fork lift truck. Fortunately, the customer was old and didn't remember what happened, so I didn't get fired.
7 October(Tuesday):
The next day was not quite as eventful: In the morning I worked under the supervision of Panna: a short asian lady in her forties, who never seemed to have any work to do, so she just told me to walk around the store tidying up. It was during this time that I saw a man trying to walk out of the store with a lawn mower in his pants. Due to the reason that I wasn't getting paid enough, I overlooked the fact that he hadn't paid for it.
8 October(Wednesday):
Today, I worked with Tom, a short grey haired man who had retired, just like everybody else working in Homebase. I had to help him put security tags on light bulbs. It all went OK. Although I dropped quite a few light bulbs. Tom didn't notice, despite the mysterious jingling noises coming from inside the light bulb boxes. So I just stacked them on the shelves.
9 October(Thursday):
I have now met everybody working at Homebase, and to be honest I'm a little worried. One reason for this is that I've just met the security guard and he's demented. If he's in charge of security here at Homebase then I'm going to quit.
10 October(Friday):
I have decided not to quit- the reason for this is that I want to experience what work is like seeing as I will probably be unemployed after I leave school. So I spent the whole day, under the supervision of Jane(another old age pensioner), price checking everything in the store with a small scanning machine.
11-12 October(Weekend):
I spent the entire weekend recuperating in bed.
13 October(Monday):
Today, I went to Homebase with one thing on my mind: Work, and after 5 hours of just that I went home with one thing on my mind: Suicide.
14 October(Tuesday):
I went to work with the hope that maybe the Homebase building had caught fire during the night, it hadn't so I was subjected to going around the store tidying up for almost the whole day.
15 October(Wednesday):
I didn't turn up to work today. I phoned in to tell Janet Jenkins, the personal administrator, that I was sick. This was partly true because although I wasn't physically sick, I was sick of working 5 hours a day for virtually no pay at all.
16 October(Thursday):
Today, I experienced Homebase being robbed. However, the security guard didn't: he had looked himself into the toilets and had refused to come out until the police arrived, it would have helped if he had actually phoned them.
17 October(Friday):
Due to today being the last day here at Homebase, I decided to take it easy and not tire myself out. However, in the end I didn't have much choice and I spent the whole day stocking the shelves with Christmas ornaments. When it was the end of the day, I politely said goodbye to everyone at Homebase, while muttering swear words under my breath, and then after collecting my things, I started my journey home.
We all thought that it was hillarious, and couldn't believe he'd actually handed it in. And what shocked us even more was that he got an A for it! Although he did fail Enlish and resat it in the sixth form. Having gotten an A last time he choose to hand the same piece in again, only this time his new teacher wasn't so lenient and gave him a D.
I want to mention a couple of things here:
gift-wrapped! Well he either didn't put it in right, or got the wrong size or something, because he mangled the machine and it wouldn't work. But like the light-bulb thing I have a feeling he just walked away without telling anyone!
Carl and Asif also got a complimentary box of gifts from Homebase, which included a pencil, a rubber, a certificate and a few other cheap oddities (jingling light-bulbs perhaps?). Asif's ended up in the bin before he'd finished saying thanks to our teacher (who was the work experience representative)!
Asif like writting stories, so much so that he'd often spend a whole lesson writting them rather than doing the set work. H.E. was a favourite lesson of his for literary composition. Most of his stories involved Carl in some way. I found this the other day. Now I can't remember who wrote it, but it certainly sounds like one of his:
Once there was a little boy called Jim, Jim was a nice guy but he had a problem. His problem was that he was gay. And the other children realized this when one day Jim pulled out his dick and stuck it up another child's arse.
Because of this the other children bullied him and he grew up into angry short bald headed teenager
So it's a pretty weak one, but to us who knew Carl (an angry, short, bald-headed teenager) it was funny. Most of his stories were a lot longer and more involved than that. They also had a habbit of being passed around the class. That was until Ms. Leighs got hold of one. She didn't seem as keen on them as we did, and sent them home to Asif's parents. Asif never got punished for his literature; reason being that he intercepted the letter and hid it under his bed. He told me a while back that it's still there.
The last story
that Asif wrote was on carrers day (I was accidentally off sick).
He passed around a note which read, Carl's dad is bent
.
When his form tutor read the note, and questioned him on it he replied,
It means he can't kick a football straight
.
Carl had a small bald patch on the left side of his head. Hair just didn't grow there. So being the type of people were are, Krishna and I used to wind him up about it. We would sit there looking at it, raising our eyebrows as though we were lasering it like superman. Carl was easily wound up, and we were always there to do it. We made a very good double team; One of us would, say, kick his bag and run off, to get Carl to give chase. The other would then grab his bag and run off. The bag would often end up in the bin, and Carl would come back to find one of us smuggly looking towards the bin, and another chase ensued! Of course this went a bit too far, and on two occasions the strap broke off, and poor Carl had to buy a new bag.
But this wasn't our only method of annoying Carl.
We would also rub his bald patch, say Carl's mum
to him, and loads of other things
I'm sure I've forgotten. Krishna really got on Carl's nerves though, and Carl was
always looking for any way to get his own back. One day they were both in the toilet
together, and upon emerging we were told by Carl, You never guess what I saw while we were
in there! Krishna's got a bent dick!
. We said, Maybe it was just the way he had
it in his pants?
. No
, he replied, it was almost a right-angle!
.
So Krishna gained the name of Bingy
(pronounced bing-E) which means bent
in Hindi.
I later found out that Carl was actually quite sensitive about his bald patch, so I'd like to extend my deepest apologies to him for taking the micky so much, and for all the annoying Krish and I did to him over the years: Sorry Carl! Although, Carl wasn't entirely innocent. He and Krishna used to wind me up a lot too. They used to tag-team sometimes, the main objective being to pop the crisp packet in my bag. They'd sneak up, and slap my bag as hard as they could. Sometimes a loud bang would sound, and they'd burst out laughing. The laughing would only grow when I opened my bag to be greeted by a shower of crisp debris.
After they'd successfully popped my crisp packets a few times — and I'd gone hungry — I decided enough was enough, and that I must take some kind of precaution. So I put my lunch inside a Tupperware container, making sure to keep this fact a secret from the other two. Well, on the first day of my precautionary measures, Krishna snuck up behind me, and hit my bag the hardest he'd ever. The most pleasing bone on plastic noise sounded, followed by a little yelp! He was walking around with his finger held limp for the rest of the week; but my crisps where safe from that point on!
For my business studies coursework I decided to investigate baked beans™.
For the love of me I can't remember why I choose baked beans™,
but I did, and I found a surprisingly large amount of information about them.
But not only that, I wrote a letter to Heinz and got one back from no less
than Mr. Beans himself! Well I was honoured, and although his letter
was short he told a little about the history of Heinz and gave me a fact sheet on
baked beans™. I think it was thiny guised advertising, but it
was helpful nonetheless. Anyway, I finished my essay which I was proud of,
but poor Gary Ross was still stuck with his coursework, and couldn't figure out
what to write about. So I gave him a copy of my coursework on disk for him to get
some ideas. He eventually choose to write about tea, finished his coursework and handed it
in. But it came back a couple of days later with the words baked beans™
circled with Ooops!
written above it in bold red ink. You can't say I didn't help!
Business studies wasn't the most interesting lesson at the best of times,
so Carl and I would make our own entertainment as most kids do. I noticed that
Summit would often be listing to his in-ear headphones instead of doing work.
Well surely this had to be rectified. So in a loud voice I would say
What's that music I can hear Carl? It seems to be comming from Summit's ears.
Sir, sir, check Summit's ears there's music comming from in there
.
Also there was a rule about no white trainers, and oh dear, Summit hadn't heard
and had come into school with white trainers. So I casually asked him
Those are nice trainers Summit, where did you get them from?
Sir have you seen Summit's trainers? They're very nice
. Summit did laugh
at first, but it went on for about a year and I think he did get a bit fed up of it.
The other person to get a bit of annoyance was Gary Ross. He was a large lad
and people often used to punch him as he could never feel them.
No-one could seem to hurt him, no-one but me that was. You see, most people
thought in a very orthodox way. Whereas I preferred to do things the stupid way.
So I thought, I know, I'll tweak his nipples
. This certainly did the trick,
and he would cower away every time I bought my pincers out!
Apart from annoying Summit and Gary, I would often talk rubbish to Carl, telling him stories about my parents. The list includes:
You know, all the pathetic things you say when you're really bored.
Well our friends in the other busniess studies class that came in before our lesson
decided to join in with the joke. They found my folder and drew pictures over it
each week. I got a picture of a clock with tick-tock above it, me and my dad
laying in bed together, plus an assortment of insults.
Of course I would write little messages back, or tipex over their comments and
replace them with my own. One of the things that Krishna had done,
in an attempt to transfer his nickname to me, was to tipex out my name, and replace
it with Bingy Bull
. Mr. Newton, our teacher, was handing
out the folders one day when he noticed all of the writing. Bingy Bull?
,
mispronouncing it as in binge-E, Is Bingy Bull here?
. Carl burst out laughing.
Another thing that was plastered all over my folder was the name Saso
.
Carl and I found this name scratched into one of the tables one day, and were
confused about what this meant. Once the confusion had faded into apathy we decided
to start using it ourselves. First we started calling each other it, then it just
ended up on the folder in various places. And I'd forgotten all about it
until I dug out the folder for this piece.
During our business studies course we were assigned to work in groups on a
newspaper article. Our group consisted of me (Rick Bull), Carl Thomas,
Carl McEwen and Gary Ross. After much consideration for the name
of the newspaper we settled on McThomasBullRoss
.
[DETAILS ABOUT WHAT WE WROTE ABOUT…].
During our collaboration we were discussing pain. Having watched a widlife documentary
the previous night which mentioned that a particular animal could switch off the
part of it's brain that handled pain, and feel nothing when it was being attacked,
I made the mistake of proclaiming, I can switch off the part of my brain that
sesnes pain, and feel nothing when I'm attacked
. At once, all three of the others
started hitting me on the arms as hard as they could. I sat there looking smug
and pretending to feel nothing. But it was too much, I screamed and told them,
Owie, owie, owie. It hurts, it hurts! The pain, please stop!
.
They stopped and it was their turn to look smug. For some reason I had a lot of
bruises the next day.
Carl (Thomas) was quick to flare up, and knowing that, I took every opportunity to ignite him!
Krishna and I would often bring his mum into the conversation. Mainly just saying,
Carl's mum
, would do it, but there were other things. When Carl told us his
mum's name was Carolin Scott we realised his parents were never married, and so
took to calling her Carolin Scott-Thomas. Doesn't sound like much to you or me,
but it wound him up. Anyway, after years of this he got a bit fed up with me.
Everytime I said (or wrote) something about his mum he would scribble on my work.
It was quite funny at first, but slowly the scribbles got bigger and bigger.
He was also quite clever in that he would let me get right to the bottom of the
page and then scribble all over my hard work. I developed quite a complex and
started to either write, and as such became illegible; or have my hand ready to turn
the page so he didn't have time. But I had to be careful not to give the game away,
and so pretended not to expect anything then at the last minute make a sudden
dash for the bottom corner, and turn the page quickly. There were two things
that sometimes happened though that ruined my success:
Sometimes I'd run out of paper and have to go up the front to get some more. By the time I'd gotten back Carl would be sitting there looking innocent, and pages of my work would be covered in scribble! Aghh, I had become the victim; I didn't like this game any more.
In our second year of business studies we had a teacher who was from Africa
(I think it may have been Ghana, but I'm not sure). And like most of the people
that come from that part of the world he was quite easy-going, and laid back.
I suppose it's because there's probably a more relaxed way of life over there,
compared to the competitive and paranoid West. Anyway, Krishna often used to come
into our class as he didn't have any lessons during this period, and otherwise was left
sitting on his own in the sixth-form centre. Having someone from outside of the group
come in made us show off, and push things a little further. One time Krish and I
were standing behind Mr. Hammond holding a piece of paper.
We were egging each other on to try and balance the paper on Mr. Hammond's
head. One of us eventually mustered up the courage to do it (can't remember who),
and we must have stood there for 2 minutes waiting for him to turn around and shout at us,
but he didn't! He just carried on talking to the students. We eventually got bored and
started to walk away when we heard, Hey, what are you doing back there?!
.
Once we realised his extreme-delayed reactions we do things like pull the hook on
the back of his shirt so he was on his tippy-toes. Then when he looked around we
just kept a straight face and looked at him as though nothing was going on and never said anything.
We weren't the only ones to try it on with Mr. Hammond though,
Saqib, Sunny and Mo often used to join in too. Saqib's trademark was shouting out
words in Arabic, even if he didn't know what they meant. He'd hit the table with
his thumb and shout, Babu!
(father), Muken!
(butter).
After a few times of him doing this I had to join in which the others found funny
because I was white and also because I was taking the piss. It was good because
I got a bigger laugh than Saqib, simply by plagiarise him.
Venay Maru, our friend, used to get wound up by Asif in this lesson too.
Asif started telling me how there's no letter V in Gujarati, so really Venay should
be called Wenay. Once this got a bit tired he then told me that there was no M either,
and that his name is really Wenay A-ru. Venay didn't take this too well and spent
most lessons from then onwards kicking the back of Asif's chair. Venay also had to put
up with Steve, from the year above us, calling him, Marruuuuuuu!
in a scooby-doo
voice. We tried it, but couldn't do it properly, and our voices broke up half-way through:
Marruu-<cough-splutter>-uuu!
. Didn't quite have the same impact.
Sometimes us lot in the A-level classes would attend the GCSE retakes that some of
our friends were in. We would usually sit in the back room which had a
PC in, chatting and such.
One day Mr. Hammond upgraded the keyboard to one with a microphone
built in (he was always at car boot sales looking for junk which he mistakenly
thought he could sell on for a profit), so we (I) decided to test it out.
I started the wave recorer and shouted, Mr. Hammond!
. We played it back
and it worked, a bit distored but that just added to the fun. Then I went to the
control panel and made it play when Windows started up. We choose to restart the
computer and walked out telling Mr. Hammond we were off, leaving only
Carl to finish fitting the CD-ROM
drive he was installing. Just as we opened the door and stepped out we heard, Mr. Hammond!
,
coming from the computer. What Carl later told us was that the computer crashed and the
sound kept looping, making it go Mr. Hamon-am-am-am-am-am…
and he had to restart the computer and delete the file from DOS.
Mr. Hammond probably just said, Yes? Who is that calling me?
.
The back room was not only a place to record sounds on the computer, oh no;
It was also a place the kids in compulsory schooling could go to hide in during
their lessons. Once I found out about this I walked in, just out of sight of the
boxes they were hidding behind, and affected my Mr. Hammond voice,
Hey! What are you boys doing hiding behind those boxes there?!
.
They all jumped up, and were about to run off when they saw me and said,
Oh my god boy, it was just dat long-haired geezer!
. They took it quite well
though; I thought they would probably start cussing me, but I suppose they were
skipping lessons, and couldn't push it too far in case I dobbed them in.
RE is one of those lessons that everybody hated, including the teacher.
The thing is I can't remember there being a dedicated RE teacher,
so it was always the duty of teachers of other subjects to fill in. But rather
than teaching we just ended up talking and throwing paper at one another.
We'd all be saying, I can't wait for RE today
, on our way
there. Teachers must have thought, My god, that Mr. Hammond must give
such an engrossing lesson!
. So great was the lack of RE teachers
that sometimes one teacher would have to simultaneously teach
two classes.
The classrooms backed on to one another, so it was just a matter of going through the
door to the other room. Once the teacher was out of our room everyone would start
shouting and pushing over the dividers at the back of the room. Then, when teach would
come back, our class would quieten down, and the other class would crescendo!
During the quieter RE lessons, my friends and I used to sit in front of an old 486 PC and play the BASIC games. Sometimes this would be Gorilla — a game where you controlled a Gorilla who had to chuck bananas at his opponent, guessing the right angle and velocity — or more often it would be nibbles (now more commonly known as snake) — where you had to manoeuvre a snake around a basic maze, eating dots as you go. Now usually we would play the two player game, so that a couple of us could be playing at once, and most often this seemed to be Neil and myself. But Krishna — not being one to let an opportunity to annoy someone pass — had realised that there was an emergency off button by the whiteboard, and decided to press it. The computer went blank, and we wondered what had happened. Then we all turned around to see Krishna feigning an innocent expression with his hand poised over the bright red button. We all had a little laugh, and he turned the power back on. So we booted the PC up again, and after five minutes we're back playing nibbles. Then the power goes off again. The novelty of this joke is starting to wear off… except for Krishna. He kept this up lesson after lesson, right until we left school.
But his strategy for annoyance definitely improved: Instead of just shutting the power off as and when he felt like it, he'd wait until we were doing really well, and had got to something like level 10, and then turn the power off. Neil would usually just sigh in that resigned frustrated way we do; but it used to really wind me up, and I'd have to go over, try to punch him, and then put the power back on. But he'd always manage to sneak off and go through the whole process again. Sometimes he'd sneak over to the button, and then start coughing or something to get our attention, and make us beg him not to turn it off. Of course he always would, no matter how much we appealed to his… <muffled laughter>… conscience.
Oddly enough, when I went up to college, we had some old 486's in one of the classrooms there,
and me and my new friends started to play Gorilla there. The teachers were a bit more savvy
at college though, and told us to stop playing (you'd think as we were there of our own choice
that we'd be concentrating anyway, wouldn't you?). We would've got away with it, but the
PC had an internal speaker, and it was obvious when
we were playing. But Richard Perry was quite a good programmer, and had programmed with BASIC since he was young.
So he scanned through all of the source code, and editted out the bits for playing sound.
So hurrah for Richard; he'd circumvented our pesky meddling teacher, and we could carry on
avoiding work into our adult
education!
Well it was inevitable, wasn't it? At sometime in everyone's life we all know someone who falls fowl to a bird shitting on some part of their body. And with us it was our friend Paul Hale. I have to confess that this was really my fault, as I used to bring in sandwhiches and feed the crusts to the seagulls at break time. Everyone used to moan at me as we'd end up with about 30 gulls diving in to snatch the food, and we'd have to move on. So we were all standing around chatting, when all of a sudden a watery substance appears on Paul's face. We all burst out laughing when we realised what it was, except for Paul, who thinks it's mud that someone's slung at him. That is until he notices how warm it is. Feeling quite guilty, I hand some of my reams of tissue paper, all the time trying to hold in the laughter. Of course, it's a moment that we all reminisce about whenever we get together. Although, Paul's always a bit reticent… I'm not sure why.
For a brief period there was a boy who used to walk around with arms out-stretched
(miming an aeroplane), singing, Cruising, cruising
and whilsting the tune.
I didn't realise until Carl told me, but it was a Will Smith song of the time.
So that became our song. I'd sing it to Carl most every day.
Obviously being in a mainly asian school, and having one asian grandparent
you're going to inherit some of the culture. Like any good Englishman it had to be
the swear words. I was taught many a phrase like Pan-chode
, meaning sister fucker;
Ma-chode
, mother fucker; Shuckeri hum do le la
, a sort of bless you
(OK not a swear word, but it was long and so I felt a sense of achievement).
But my favourite without a doubt was Tudee nickel ghee
, the shit's come out.
I used to run around in a crouching posture, holding my arse shouting, Tude nickel ghee
at the top of my voice. It only ammused my friends for a day or two, but me,
well it lasted a lifetime.
During sixth form some of the guys used to play cricket, which we would watch when we had nothing else to do. One day I noticed an empty coke can lying on the floor. I also noticed that Shehzad-the-impatient was bowling. So everytime he was just getting to the end of his ten minute run up I would kick the can. He'd stop dead, hurl a barrage of insults at me and return to the start of his run-up. Well surely he knew that this was indication to me that it was my duty to kick the can again. So again I did. And again. And again.
Anyway, after I'd got bored of that, Yaser challanged Saqib to a push-up contest.
Well I noticed that in doing this it left his posterier unguarded.
So I ran up, croushed above him, with my genitals alligned to his anus, and began to pulsate.
Everyone was in fits of hysterics. Yaser just carried on, and later tried to excuse
it by saying, I didn't realise he was above me
. The funny thing is he took
all of the ripping for my behaviour. Still, in Yaser's defence, I suppose they'd
had 5 years of this sort of behaviour from me.
After I'd left Hayes Manor, one of my friends told me about another incident involving Yaser. Yaser had let slip to them that his father had a cockerel back in Pakistan that used to fight. Of course they asked what colour it was; black was the response. So they asked him if it was a big one, and of course it had to be.
So Yaser, your father has a big black cock?
Yeah, well when he was in Pakistan he did.
But not any more?
No, he hasn't got a cock any more.
I think he was just playing along, but the others reckon he wasn't, and that he got mad once he realised.
During our last compulsory year we had an American guy join our school, BJ.
In typical American style he never shut up, and you didn't know what the hell
he was talking about half the time. Being about 5′10″ and having
long hair at the time I would often get, Hey watch it ya' six foot goon.
,
and, You god-damn hippy
. There were a few funny incidents involving BJ.
Apart from running round like a hyped-up madman he had a knack of insulting people.
One of those people was my friend Krishna. I think he said something about him being a
Hindu or something, so Krishna, having noticed that BJ was black,
decided he would keep saying very quietly, Black
, to BJ in our german lesson.
He used to turn round and shout some American profanity at Krishna, only to be
pulled up by our teacher for distrupting the class.
The other thing I remember was a BJ getting into a fight with Gaetano. Gaetano was educationally subnormal, but he was pretty good at fighting and being short-tempered. We were in music, and BJ being BJ must have upset Gaetano, as he rushed out as soon as the bell rang to avoid Gaetano. But Gaetano was already outside waiting. He clenched his fist, then pointed out his index and middle finger and thrust them into BJ's eyes and ran off. When we all came out, BJ was doing his usual shouting and running around bit, so we all thought he was being a prat as usual… until we noticed he was holding his face. He told us what had happened, then went of ranting about how his dad's in the airforce and he'd sort him out or something. Then we all went home and forgot about it.
One last thing to mention about BJ — and something I'm sure you're all wondering — what BJ actually stood for. Well he would never tell us no matter how much we asked. So one day when Ms. Miller was out of the class during music, someone sneaked a look at the class register. It was Badoddie Jim. There was a rumour going around that that was his name before, but none of us believed it. I mean, would you?! He buggered off back to America after a short while, and everyone was happy… except the rest of the Americans.
Quote from Yaser:
That was a nick name Badudie, his full name was Badrudien Yousouf Mohhamad. Bit off a mouthfull, Yousouf is Arabic for Jouseph, and he preffered poeple calling him Badudie, hence the name Badudie Jo, AKA BJ.
Asif was quite worried about his appearance. Whenever he got a haircut we'd ask,
Have you had a haircut since yesterday?
, to which he'd reply, No, I just
combed it different
. He also had braces for a while, and although none of us
thought he needed them we'd still make sarcastic little comments every so often.
God Carl, I hate people with big teeth, they're so ugl… Shhhh, shhh Asif's
coming!
. Or Carl's favourite, So have you been over to visit your family in
Buck-istan lately Asif?
. He'd immediately put his hand over his mouth for
the next five minutes, continuing to talk of course.
Another thing he was obessed about was his complextion. He had a bit of a spotty
face (but who didn't at that age?), and used to wash it 5 times a day. I said
to him once, Maybe you're washing a bit too much. You might be removing your natrual
oil and so don't have a barrier against germs?
. The next day he came in with
a dirty face.
Aside from washing I also got him to stop shaving. He'd always had
a bum-fluff moustache, and one day he came in with his upper lip as smooth as a baby's bottom
(minus the poo-poo). Immediatly I mimicked George Doors' theme tune from Shooting Stars and
sung to him, He's a baby, he's a baby!
. The moustache was back within a week.
In CDT we had to design and make something from wood. Carl and I chose a bass box (only because I realised a mandolin was a little out of my capabilities, and a bass box was basically a box with a speaker in it), while Asif chose to build a PlayStation cabinet. Well poor Asif wasn't too lucky, as everytime he started getting somewhere with his cabinet it would have been broken into little pieces by the next class in the room.
On his third attempt we decided we would beat the Phantom Cabinet-Wreaker to the job. Carl and I teamed up to distract Asif, while the other one stole his cabinet, and hid it. But he started to find it too easily (in hind-sight we shouldn't have kept hidding it under the same table), so we took to stealing it, running to the other side of the class room and hitting it with a mallet. At first he seemed distressed, but eventually just settled into acceptance.
This destructive behaviour also wore off, and we decided to make ammends by doing his project for him
(as he'd given up long ago). We finished off the basic five sided-design
(oh who are we kidding, it was only ever a five sided design, not even one shelf.
I mean how lazy have you got to be to come up with something like that?!),
and admired our handy-work. But then we thought, Well what's to stop this having
six sides; I mean, surely six is better than five?
. So we added the sixth side and
the cabinet was complete. [IMG OF CLOSED BOX]. Asif got an ungraded result for CDT,
even with all of our help.
Jamie was well known for his stupidity, but none of us expected what was about to follow.
Still in CDT Jamie was bored one day, and craved some attention,
so he picked up the big bottle of glue, held it by his pelvis, and waved it around
squeezing the bottle. We all cracked up laughing as he sprayed the glue all over
the floor. Obviously Jamie couldn't have been expected to think ahead more than
half a minute, as he looked shocked and worried when Mr. Dorricot
shouted from behind him What the bloody hell is all this glue on the floor?!
.
I suppose Jamie was the obvious suspect as he stood there still holding the leaking
glue bottle as his penis. He got detention.
Our CDT teacher had divided the class into two -
one for the boffins and the other for the rest of us. Now we were generally
left unattended with the drills, sanding machines, soldering irons, etc.
so something was bound to happen. A couple of the kids decided to put a 2 penny
piece under the bench-drill for about 5 minutes until it was smoking hot. He then
picked it up with his sleeve, ran over to poor Fahred and dropped it down the
back of his swearshirt! Fahred stayed calm, and wit something along the lines of
Fucking hell man, what the fuck is that?! Get it out, get it out!!
,
all the while running around with arms flailing towards his back.
He eventually managed to pull his shirt out from his trousers and the penny dropped
to the floor and burned through to the centre of the earth.
As Mr. Dorricot was off helping the boffins with their work
he never saw us do anything, and so assumed we hadn't. Well me and Carl had
worked quite hard with out bass-boxes. Granted the sides didn't quite line up right,
but we only had 1 year to make a box with a hole in it, so it was pretty good going.
But when Carl presented our projects to him (I wasn't there, as I had to go
home as the home-time bell had rung) Mr. Dorricot accused us of
not doing any of it and getting our dad's to help. Obviously he'd never met my
dad otherwise this wouldn't have been an issue. Luckily Carl's dad was there,
and told him 'e fuckin' did do it all 'imself
, which seemed to satifsy
Mr. Dorricot and the subject was never mentioned again.
What made me mad about this incident was the fact the Mr. Dorricot had already
lost my design work for the project, and tried to accuse me of not doing it in the first place.
My dad put a lot of work into that course work, while I gave him much verbal encouragement.
I was disgusted, and I think he knew on a sub-consious level. Very sub-consious.
Once or twice a week we had CDT theory, which involved
learning about woods, metals, screws, nails, and all that kind of boring stuff.
Most days were very boring, and the lesson seemed to drag on forever, so we found
ways to liven it up. Krishna used to like picking on Gaetano (who had learning difficulties):
He would do this by finding small pencils, pens, dowling or anything else cylindrical,
holding it between his thumb and index finger within Geatano's peripheral vision,
then pretending to flick it. Gaetano would sit there trying to listen to the conversation
going on, blinking every time Krishna flicked his wrist. Eventually Gaetano
would realise why he was blinking and tell Krishna to fuck off. Krish would stop
for about 20 seconds then start up again. That went on for a good deal of every
lesson for about half a year. I used to stick up for Gaetano and tell Krishna to
stop. And what thanks did I get in return for this? Gaetano starts picking on me!
He had one of these curly plastic spines that bind paper together, what are they called?
Binders I think. Anyway he had one of them and decided to hit me on the knuckle
of my middle finger (right hand if you're a gluten for petty details). Well it
hurt a bit, but I just ignored him and carried on chatting, until Paul Barrence
pointed out that it was spurting blood. Only a small spurt, but a spurt none-the-less.
So Jamie Hudson, being the noble gentleman that he is, called Mr. Dorricot
over and said, Look sir, Ricky's bleeding. He needs to go to the medical office.
I'll take him in case he faints on the way!
. I didn't think I was loosing anywhere
near enough blood to bring about a state of unconciousness, but Jamie wouldn't
have said anything like that unless he meant it. What did he have to gain?
If anything he would be loosing out by missing part of his education. And I thank
him sincerly for saving my life that day. When we got to the medical office
(a.k.a. the reception where the secretary was doubling as
medical officer) I was given a piece of tissue and sent back to class. Paul did a
drawing (he was often doodling)
of the day's events. I'd gained a rather attactive beard in the picture and,
although I can't remember Gary listening to a ghetto-blaster (or Jamie masturbating
for that matter), Asif was definitely there, so the picture depicts the
scene accurately enough.
Registrations during sixth-form were generally spent talking and waking up
in the morning. Chris sometimes used to bring in a CVG magazine to pass the time.
In one of the mags they had a competition which
entailed designing a computer game, for which they would give you a £10
gift voucher and take the sole rights for the game. We decided instead of just
wasting time in registrations we would have a go at it. Seemed a simple enough
task. Most games simply involved fighting, sports or some sort of simulation.
We opted for the third choice, and I came up with the idea of Virtual Crisp
Packet
, in which you had to design a snazy crisp packet. We (or rather I)
drew up a game design and added the [slightly sycophantic] text
P.S. I love CVG
,
just to try and win them over. We couldn't believe that this game hadn't been
thought of before. It seemed like too good an idea to let go to waste so we
were definately going to send it in. I was all set to hand over our (soon-to-be)
award-winning design to Chris, who was going to send it in until he noticed that
I looked like one of the staff in CVG (we both had long hair,
and that was enough for him). He said he was going to send a picture of me in
with the design, and I didn't think he was joking. So I took no chances, stuffed
the design in my bag and cried wee wee
all the way home!
Years ago, around 1994 I think, Walkers started putting little blue bags inside
some of their crisp packets which contained money prizes of upto £1 million.
At break time I was eating a bag, as I did most every day when I found one!
I was so excited and without saying a single word people gathered from miles all
around to watch the unveiling of the little blue packet! I felt like Richie from
Bottom when he get's excited and starts shaking: Her-ugh, Eddie look: a little
blue packet ! You know what this means? I could be a millionare!
.
One kid said If that's the winning ticket I'm fucking grabbing it and legging it!
.
I thought No, shut-up Eddie it's mine you bastard! You're not having a penny!
.
Slowly I started to tear the packet. A streak of sweat ran down the side of my brow
and into my crisps. I pulled the little piece of paper out thinking This could be it!
I could be rich and skip out of school early!
. I unfolded the paper and behold,
a one pound cheque!!!.
That was the biggest anti-climax in my entire life! Everyone let out a dissappointed
Ooowwhh
. But that wasn't to be my last time to get a blue packet.
A year or two later, when Walkers reintroducted the blue packet thing I opened
a bag only to find 7 blue packets! In a single bag! And you guessed it -
each with a net value of £1. My friends were jealous and questioned what
was so special about me, and why I kept getting all these cheques. I recieved
another 14 blue packets over the next couple of years, gaining me a total of
£21. Each of them ended up in the bin, as I didn't have time or patience
to wait in the queue at the bank. Plus I didn't have a bank account until I was 20,
and there was no way my dad was getting the money!
My handwriting was always quite messy, and what with school being boring, it often ressembled hyrogliphs more than English. I was always getting comments back from teachers about it (and some of my shoddy work), and here I'll show you a (small) collection of some of the comments, along with my responses (oh I'm brave enough to say them now that I've left!):
![Level 2 - about the average for a 7 [year] old](images/level_2.png)
Most times I didn't bother putting any more effort into neatening up my writing, but I did try distracting the teacher by doing a pretty drawing before my work in the hope she would have such pleasent thoughts in her head she'd lay off about the messy writing. It didn't work.
