Alius in Pariete Laterem

A long long time ago in the early 90s discipline was all the rage at boarding school. Rage being the operative word. Teachers were called Masters to help reinforce the fact that they were in no way a parent substitute and were addressed as Sir. Female teachers were called Mrs because the sexism within the male dominated faculty was staggering and of course they were never given roles any more advanced than teaching one of those new-fangled and silly languages like German.

Above all the masters (and therefore by definition the women) was THE master. Essentially a headmaster but so masterful that he’d dropped the head and was just referred to as THE master and addressed as Master. No one knew why but why was not a word that was encouraged in the boys at boarding school. The institution prided itself on batshit and pointless traditions justified only by decades of repetition. The reason certain hats were worn on certain days was to avoid punishment. The reason the whole school had to give up a Saturday to walk one by one past the Master and salute him (Kim Jun-on enjoys something similar) was because we had done so the year before and for over a century before that. There might have been a point to this ridiculous parade in the late 1800s but it had been lost over the decades.

One afternoon my friend and I were outside the school grounds which was forbidden. We were caught and sent to our respective housemasters. His was a really lovely bloke. Mine, less so. The gap in severity of our punishments was enormous. He had to forgo sugar in his tea the next morning and I was given 3 years hard labour in solitary confinement in Siberia. If I’m honest I can’t remember what they actually were suffice to say mine was significantly more harsh for exactly the same crime.

Why?

Quite – let’s go and find out I though. My housemaster had started a relatively progressive initiative of allowing boys to book time with him if there was anything we wanted to discuss. I did so. I very politely and carefully asked for more information on the punitive disparity and even kindly offered him the way out that he might not have known what punishment the other boy had received.  Obviously it would have been on him to speak to his colleague to ensure consistency but he saw it differently and instead had a right go at me for questioning his punishment. In an unfortunate moment for all concerned an educated and clever man tried to assert that my punishment was more harsh because I had questioned it.  He seemed to overlook the obvious chronological challenges this farcical position was precariously balanced on. I helpfully highlighted these flaws but that didn’t have the calming affect I’d hoped for. My housemaster now had a problem because he’d reached the boundaries of normal punishments on the school’s menu. Short of having me deported or keelhauled he was going to need back up or to back down. He chose the former.

I was told I would be seeing……….the Master on Saturday. No one asked if I was busy at that time. I was just given a time and place. I showed up outside the Master’s office. My housemaster arrived wearing not just a suit but full flowing teacher cape that they wore in chapel and speech day. He neither greeted or looked at me – his eyes focused purely on the closed door between us and the Master. It was apparent that he was absolutely terrified and had the air of an Imperial General waiting to tell Darth Vader he’d lost the keys to his Star Destroyer. After well over twenty minutes (which is an extraordinarily long time to ignore a 14 year old boy of whom you have pastoral care of, stood next to you) a voice bade us to enter. If I was twenty minutes late for a meeting in my own office I would have got up, opened the door and apologised profusely but clearly opinion was divided on the subject. To be fair he may have intended to apologise but was not given time due to an explosion of sycophantic toadery from my housemaster thanking him for his time and apologising for bothering him. Seriously if he’d have flung himself to the floor it wouldn’t have been out of place with the rest of his behaviour.

The first order of business was surprisingly – how I was dressed.

“What are you wearing?” asked the masterful one.

“Normal uniform” I answered, puzzled.

“Why are you not wearing your suit?”

There you go! Why! Well done, you! Why is so important. Here we go (in no particular order):

1) It’s Saturday.

2) I’m 14.

3) There’s absolutely no reason to.

4) No one told me I was expected to.

5) No normal person would expect me to know that I should.

6) Batman here had time to put his cape on and a further 20 minutes while we waited for you (kudos on the power-play by the way) to point this out to me but didn’t.

I wisely chose number 4. A monologue followed about the importance of authority and tradition that did nothing to explain the comparative severity of my punishment and was only loosely relevant to my not wearing a suit.

Batman appeared to be getting worried that this wasn’t quite the shit kicking he was hoping for so he interjected with some less than relevant vagaries about my character and attitude and how much they worried him. The Master and I both looked at him with our best “what do you actually mean?” expressions leaving him with nowhere to go but inform us that he’d spoken to other teachers who agreed with him. This was some very weak hearsay and shredded any scant respect I still held. However I took the bait and said that if I had been given any background to what this meeting was about beyond a (as it turned out, a very vague) time and place I would have worn a suit and provided ample examples of boys who shared my opinion of him.

This didn’t go at all well.

It was then I decided I should probably leave the school, a conclusion I was doubtlessly the third in the room to arrive at. I think we all knew why.

Funny Old Game

A long long time ago in 1989 our school took sport extremely seriously. At least two hours a day was devoted to it four days a week and the whole of Wednesday and Saturday afternoons. Rugby was the most important of course. The first rugby team were automatically anointed as college prefects because as anyone who has been on rugby tour can attest, that sort of culture is a perfect match for government. After rugby came cricket, then hockey, athletics, rowing, tennis, squash, swimming, water-polo, fencing, fives, field-gun and more. The facilities were excellent. 15+ pitches, an amazing sports centre complete with rock climbing wall, a cricket pavilion and fully stocked armoury (where the children kept their machine guns). One thing I never saw was a football.

Interschool matches were big events and rivalries were intense. We fully expected to smash our opponents using a combination of school spirit and large Samoan mercenaries we’d given scholarships to. The latter came in particularly handy in the scrum with highly suspicious beards for their ages, full body sleave tattoos and their own children watching from the touchline.

So this was all going well and our sporting results helped mask our declining academic performance until a new teacher had some incredible notion that we should invite the local state school to play a match of something.

Short interjection while I explain the dynamic between us and the local state school. They absolutely hated us and would frequently hurl almost exclusively homophobic, insults at us in the town. These usually centred around institutionalised homosexuality and the teachers all being paedophiles. The fucking nerve – that was only half right. Some of the boys at school were gay but nobody gave a shit. We were completely uninterested in the prejudices of the era and embraced everyone regardless of race, sexuality or anything else. Well nearly anything, state school children were viewed as vermin and  we’d automatically retaliate to their homophobia with classism, wishing them well in prison and offering them pennies to fight to the death for our entertainment. Good healthy stuff. It rarely kicked off because we travelled in packs, played vast amounts of rugby, were trained cadets and had confidence bred into us to a point we were rarely worried if the Grange Hill cast made good on their treats. Anyway, it was much more fun to pretend not to understand them and express concern for their terrible living conditions.

So it was quite an event when we actually allowed some of them through the gates to play a match against us. Turned out they’d never played rugby, didn’t know one end of a hockey stick from the other and hadn’t heard of fives. Seems they only played sport weekly! Christ knows what they did with their time, heroin presumably!

Another short interjection while I point out that this school is frequently rated excellent, parents move from miles to get into the highly affluent catchment area  and I have subsequently met several ex pupils who are not heroin addicts. One was my boss for years in a lovely twist of irony.

So football was chosen. We all looked at each other quizzically. We’d seen it played and it looked simple enough. A team need to be assembled. A task hampered by a flu epidemic that as you can imagine can turn a boarding school into something resembling a battlefield in a couple of days. The sanatorium was overflowing and dormitories were converted to sick and not sick to try and keep the remaining healthy out of harm’s way. We just need 11 healthy boys irrespective of ability to play. Sadly I fit that criteria.

On paper our team was excellent. We had a future England rugby captain (and British Lion test starter) in goal. Several other future internationals and professional rugby players, an Olympic hockey player and two who would go on to excel in the military including I think, one special forces member.

But we were absolutely crap at football.

Our 6 ft, 15 stone, “12 year old” Samoan was awesome in the scrum but he was not made to be a left back. It was like watching the Hulk playing ping-pong. Grange Hill showed up looking like rejects from an East 17 audition and soon after the match started. The home crowd cheered and we were quickly 5 nil down. The crowd grew quieter and then dispersed as 5 quickly became 8. We needed a change of plan (or the beginnings of one). Our keeper who I’m sure has fonder memories of World Cup finals and Lions tours than this torrid day spent much of his afternoon retrieving the ball from behind the goal which was a netless Rugby post. We ended up putting a junior boy as wicket keeper behind our goal to help, a role sadly unrequired at the other end. The bane of my afternoon was their left back. A little Brian Harvey like creature with a permanent squint. I was playing right midfield or right wing. I wasn’t sure which or if that was important but on the rare occasions I got the ball Brian took it away (often without me even noticing) and every time he got the ball he went round me with ease or I fouled him. Some of those fouls were completely accidental. He was just considerably better than I was. As the match progressed and the goals accumulated I noticed Brian was getting tired – presumably from running into the acres of space behind me I was affording him (and possibly down to malnutrition and heroin). I on the other hand was pretty well rested. Slightly hoarse from shouting warnings about impending danger down the channel I was meant to be defending but physically fine. Our keeper had made the wise decision to throw the ball rather than kick it and I received the ball in some space. Grange Hill had abandoned any thoughts of defence as it was superfluous to requirements and there was only Brian, a keeper and three quarters of the pitch between me and their goal. Up until then my plans had been to either run directly at Brian (failed) or dribble around Brian (failed more) so I decided to hoof the ball way up field which made Brian fall over (probably out of shock or possibly withdrawals) leaving a lot of pitch and single keeper between me and the beginnings of a herculean come back. Christ knows how but it worked and I somehow brought the score to a nail biting eleven – one. A mass pile up ensued in celebration complete with a distinct and deliberate homosexual undertones. I can’t remember how many more Grange Hill scored after that, it didn’t matter. They and we both knew that honours and reputations were shared that afternoon.

They wisely declined a rematch at rugby or anything else but to be fair to them it would never have entered our heads that they could beat us at anything, let alone absolutely fuck us up at the national sport on our own pitch. Equally at eleven nil they probably didn’t see themselves conceding to a bunch of stuck up, posh twats who’d never played the game before. Jesus if we were playing rugby and one of the East 17 shitbags had crossed our line I never would have set foot in the town again. 

Speaking of which I saw Brian in the town soon after. If this was a better story and we were better people we’d have nodded with mutual respect but I’m sure he offered a limp wrist sign and I retaliated with a look of patronising concern for his circumstance. But still, everything was gonna be alright.

Pharaoh nuf

A long long time ago in 1988 our school took its own moto too seriously (something in Latin about the importance of ambition) and decided to put on a west end musical. We were aged 7-13 and fully aware that musical theatre is usually left to adults who have some musical ability but our head of music, Ludwig Van Actually from Surrey (whom you may remember from last time) wanted to carpe some diem and magnify his opus by producing a reworking of Joseph. He’d written a few numbers himself to enhance the original (Webber’s version didn’t have enough catchy toe tappers in it evidently) and better yet, every single boy in the school (including the ones with zero musical ability) would be involved.  Overlooking the blindingly obvious hurdle that this was way beyond us we cracked on with rehearsals and Joseph and his technicoloured shit show opened to rows of baffled parents.

The first issue was the sets. I’m led to believe the original transforms the audience to Israel and Egypt via a prison cell and some impressive dream sequences. Our version had some pyramids (Egypt init) that the wood-work teacher had begrudgingly fashioned and some sand we’d probably borrowed from the long jump pit. The prison scene was a low-light. The cardboard cell bars regularly fell over undermining the sense of incarceration of our hero, leaving him to hold the bars up with his free hand that wasn’t holding the microphone. If we’d have done Jericho rather than Joseph we’d have been laughing but instead ,the audience was.

The costumes weren’t great either and the titular garment was especially under whelming. I think Matron had been entrusted with its creation (female so sewing skills assumed – it was the 80s). Part of the brief was that it needed to be put on and removed quickly. Joseph and his colourful wonky poncho was good to go.

As mentioned, Ludwig had written a couple of his own tunes to add to the piece. The most notable was a full number for the Ishmaelites. The lads who Joseph’s brothers sell Joseph to after they beat him up, throw him down a well and tell their Dad he’d been eaten by a wolf (this is a musical! I don’t remember the Rum-Tum-Tugger double-tapping Mr Mistoffelees over a cat-nip deal gone bad). Anyway, Webber and Rice didn’t feel the need to add depth to these characters but opinion was divided on the subject and Ludwig decided they would be a motor cycle gang with their own song because Ishmaelite rhymes with bike (kinda) and if memory serves, “Outta sight”. Some of the purists would have questioned Harleys in 1700 BC Israel but this was a dream and any dream would do. Sadly we couldn’t afford a Harley but we got our hands on a moped. Just the one. So they weren’t really a biker gang. More of a five boys trying to keep up with one boy on a badly controlled moped, gang. The up-beat rock number was lots of fun though giving it a more edgy Sharks v Jets, “Middle-East Side Story” feel to proceedings.

Did I mention we were all in it? If you weren’t one of the 15 boys entrusted with a part you were in the chorus with the uninterested tone-deaf masses – all two hundred plus of us. In a much celebrated section, Joseph first dons the colourful wonky poncho and spins around as the tone deaf masses sing a list of colours that goes on for fucking hours. Ever the optimist, Ludwig expected us to learn the thousands of colours. That was some bold ambition worthy of our motto but definitely a bridge too (Poti)far. Reality set in and instead, two hundred boys confidently mumbled “and it was hmhm and hmm hmm and hmm and hmm and hmm hmm and hmm” We sounded like monks on an Enigma record if the monks’ voices hadn’t broken yet. After several minutes of en-mass mumbling while Joseph spun around like a whirling dervish in his gay pride poncho the song was brought to an abrupt halt with the colour “Blue” where all 200+ uninterested tone deaf chorus members would leap to their feet as one and clap above our heads.  Great plan. Didn’t work. Not once. Wiggins was always the first to shoot up. Not even at the end of a bar. We had dozens more hmm hmms to go and Joseph’s poncho was hardly over his head. Wiggins’s neighboured pulled him to the ground from his triumphant solo clap and everyone nervously looked at each other. A few more leapt up in groups a bit too early before the majority got it right followed by the least confident who decided to wait until the others went first. The result was less single cannon and more machine gun fire but the lights were wisely snapped off to hide all the bouncing.

So far we had crap sets, crap costumes, new songs that didn’t fit, a random moped in Genesis Ch37 and 200 boys who couldn’t count. The scene with Potiphar’s wife was a challenge. She’s the slave owner’s wife who fancies Joseph but falsely accuses him of rape when he rejects her – (this is a musical! I don’t remember Mary Poppins making wild and false accusations of Dick Van Dyke: “Super-rapey, misogynistic, that chimney sweep’s atrocious”)

Without girls in the school Potiphar’s wife (she doesn’t get a name because neither Rice, Webber or Moses deemed it necessary) was played by a boy in drag which gave the whole section an unpleasant Christopher Biggins and the Shawshank Redemption feel to it.

The other slightly awkward thing was that the lad playing Joseph was a very accomplished singer but couldn’t pronounce the letter S. This was especially apparent in one number that had a fair few of them and had a call and response section with chorus.

Joseph: “I clothed my eyeth”

Chorus: “I COTHED MY EYETHHHHHHH”

Joseph: “Drew back the curtain”

Chorus “Ah ah Ahhhh”

Joseph: “To thee for thertain”

Chorus: “AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH”

Poor Poor Joseph.

Medication Time….Medication Time

A long long time ago in the late 80s/early 90s many teachers at boarding school prided themselves on their eccentricity. The effects of being massively and voluntarily institutionalised were front and centre for all to see. The situation was exacerbated with a strange game of batshit one-upmanship between the male faculty.  Whether it was the French teacher who would ride his bike down the corridors of the school bellowing warnings for boys to get out of his way or the maths teacher who kept a supply of paper clips on the nose bridge of his glasses (“always there when I need them!”) we were surrounded by mildly deranged authority figures. It was almost part of their scholastic image. The head of music for example had full on crazy Beethoven hair. He would also fly into (and then out of) a snap explosion of volcanic rage if someone played the wrong note which we all knew was an act because he was a lovely bloke. He even adopted a fake Germanic accent as part of his brand image. Knew his subject, decent teacher, wasn’t a paedophile (three big ticks from us boys) but let himself down with the Sideshow Bob, General Von Klinkerhofen routine.

The little-bit-racist Geography teacher was interesting.  He gave nicknames to everyone in his class. This little game could get tricky even if he wasn’t a little-bit-racist but because he was – Wow! He renamed a boy of Sri Lankan heritage “Vindaloo”. I’m sure there’s rules against that sort of thing now but back then, all good! He once gave the same boy 10/10 on a test and commented underneath “Hot Stuff Vindaloo!”. The same teacher taught rugby. We had a very quick half Japanese boy who played on the wing (some of you may be getting ahead of me). “Isn’t he nippy!” the very pleased with himself little-bit-racist Geography teacher would say at least once a week. I think the same well worn joke even made it into the school report of the team’s season. Again though, knew his subject, decent teacher, wasn’t a paedophile so we let him off the little-bit-of-racism.

The South African Physics teacher who was a slave to hyperbole kept us amused. An absolute fascist of punctuality he would get up and slam (and I mean SLAM, often with a run up) the classroom door on the very second of the hour starting even if a 7 year old boy was half way through it. Some poor lad would have been sent flying back into the corridor and would then have to, pick himself up, knock on the door only to be asked “Whar ah yu so laite?”

“I’m six seconds late Sir and five off them have been spent picking myself up from the door you just hit me with”

He would give out punishments of a magnitude that he hadn’t quite thought through. He was famed for his 100,000 lines punishment.

“Wrart art one hundred tharsan tarms ar mast not be so laite”

“Did you say 100,000 Sir? 33 lines on a page so that’s over 3,000 sides of A4. Even if don’t sleep it’s going to take months – how about 60 lines, 10 for every second I was late?”

Knew his stuff, decent teacher and wasn’t a paedophile so we let him off the door assaults and Dante inspired punishments.  

We had a horrendously institutionalised maths teacher who was in his 70s. He had taught at the school since leaving university and was a pupil there before that. He’d basically had a 3 year gap in between being 8 and 70 and had spent the other 59 years at this school. That’s 8 more years than Myra Hindley served. He taught my class for a term and told us to colour in graph paper while he stared out of the window silently. It got weird after a few weeks of this but he knew his subject and wasn’t a paedophile and two out of three ain’t bad.

Then there was the Chaplain whom you might remember from the previous story. Knew his subject, decent teacher, oh…. He had the unenviable task of trying to teach us religious studies. God was properly omnipresent at our school. Chapel every morning. Grace every time we ate. Prayers before we went to sleep. We were Godding all the time. Funny thing though. If you mandate that kind of thing to kids you run the risk of them seeing if there are any flaws in the concept. As such we were pretty unconvinced. In one lesson the chaplain did a fantastic job of reinforcing atheism in his flock by glossing over the story of the feeding of the five thousand without acknowledging that it was a tad silly.

“How Sir?” asked Wiggins (I forget his real name)

“How what Wiggins?”

“Well how did five thousand people eat five loaves of bread and two fishes?”

“What do you mean Wiggins?”

“Well even at ten slices a loaf, that’s one slice per hundred people (Wiggins had just come from a maths class where he’d learnt more than how to colour in graph paper). We have two loaves per table at breakfast Sir and there are ten boys on a table and often that’s not enough even though comparatively that is 200 times the amount of bread as the Israelites in question Sir and… we get Shreddies too”.

Wiggins had a point. However he also managed to expose a very odd behaviour trait in the chaplain (in addition to the acute paedophilia of course) and that was that boys who didn’t believe in God made him cry. He would actually get emotional and at times have to leave the room if any of us questioned how likely any of these stories really were. Obviously this was an absolute gift so we did everything we could to set him off.

“Do you really believe the Earth was created in 6 days Sir – in spite of the mountains of evidence to the contrary?”

Quivering lip, off you fuck. Let’s play cricket.

Poor chap  – he was trying to teach a room full of 11 year old Richard Dawkinses that he was secretly attracted to. No wonder he was always in tears.

One teacher who wasn’t mad taught pottery but given how timid he was and the relative importance of his subject we did bring him close to a nervous breakdown. The school couldn’t give a shit if we learned how to fashion some crockery any more than we could so this poor bastard tried to keep order while we destroyed each other’s creations and moved towards the inevitable clay fight. He was also in a new relationship with a female history teacher which was perfect fuel to embarrass him.

“Did you get laid Sir?”

“What?”

“Did you get the clay Sir?”

“Erm oh yes”

“Well done mate!”

“What?”

“I said that’s a well done plate Sir – some of your best work”.

You get the idea. Seemed to know his subject, ok teacher (I have a wonky ashtray that started out as a bowl to prove it) but definitely not a paedophile so we let him off the fact that we could easily reduce him to thoughts of ending it all in his own kiln.

So whether we were learning how to colour in an ox-bow lake from Little Bit Racist, our circle of fifths from Ludwig Van Actually-From-Surrey or absolutely fuck all from a catatonic maths teacher, we weren’t sure if we should go along with it or petition matron to change the schedule so we could watch the World Series.

That’s all folks.

God Bless The Child

A long long time ago in 1988 this country had a very different attitude to paedophilia. Michael Jackson took a 13 year old boy to the Grammys, Jimmy Saville and Gary Glitter were fixing it for kids and inviting kids into their gang respectively, Rolf Harris sang about two little boys and my boarding school was run exclusively by ageing bachelors who chose to live with young boys instead of wives, partners and families. I’m not saying they were all paedophiles because with the benefit of hindsight I think two were probably not. One was far too senile to remember what he was doing long enough to get hold of one of us. I remember we were once twenty minutes (the point where questions became permissible) into a Latin class before someone pointed out we were meant to be learning French. The other was the only female we ever saw. Matron. Sort of maternal and with a huge temper but probably not a paedophile. She looked and acted like Kathy Bates in Misery. Her facial expression changed horribly when she informed me that I had the same first name as her ex-husband. Fortunately first names were forbidden as they could remind us who we were on the outside but 11 year old me was smart enough to keep my distance from her to avoid waking up strapped to the bed with a block between my feet.

These two were fine. Mad but not paedophiles. The rest however, were. Most did nothing illegal (then) about it. Of those that did, couple got caught, one’s in prison but none of them were you know….not paedophiles. Now for the avoidance of doubt, we are only talking about the boarding staff. The teachers who went home to their wives, families and kids were not paedophiles (hooray!). We were safe during the day. It was the after the sun went down that you had to keep moving because they mostly came at night….mostly. We’d watch the day staff drive off at 7pm, look at each other and decide who was going to take the first watch.

Just to reiterate most of the child enthusiasts never acted on their very obvious desires beyond holding their gaze far longer than necessary in showers, changing rooms and dormitories and to my knowledge no teacher ever crossed the line. However the line was drawn in a very different place in the 80s to now. One teacher for example had a standard punishment of making boys change into various different school uniforms (games kit, suit, choir etc) in front of him. He insisted on being present throughout otherwise presumably we wouldn’t learn anything from the correction. Another always seemed to have a blond boy on his lap while watching TV. Maybe he was just being paternal? To exclusively blond boys ideally under the age of 10. Anyway these examples, the senile French teacher who though he taught Latin and the maternal yet mental matron determined to punish small boys for the sins of her ex husband were problems but not the problem. That was the chaplain.

Now as some of you who went home to their parents after school rather than holding the massive privilege of being locked in with the paedophiles may not be aware, prep schools had a chaplain. A priest who taught RE, performed all the chapel services and acted as an avuncular figure, responsible for our spiritual guidance and development. Massive paedophile. Again, no evidence of him acting on his urges but these urges were on full view as he walked around the school like Augustus Gloop entering the chocolate room. Being an atheist from a very young age and not being a particularly attractive child served me well and my dealings were him were sparce. This was why I was surprised when having passed by him in a corridor I heard him shout my name. Surname obviously. I quickly scanned through my most recent crimes in my head and could only think of my incredulity at the existence of God and not wanting to have sex with adult men as anything that could affect him. I was wrong. There was a third. It was the book I was holding. The book was Jaws.  The book and I were called over. I was told to leave. The book stayed with the chaplain and no explanation was given for our separation.  I was vexed. I was at a good bit.

Hooper had gone in the cage. Cage had gone in the water. Hooper was in the water. Shark’s in the water. Our Shark. Farewell and adieu to you …I have no idea how the rest of that song goes because the paedophile had my book.

Later I was summonsed to his room. Der num. Der num. De den de den de den de den…..

(Just to point out nothing bad happens to me – in case you were getting worried. Oh and I got to finish the book but we’ll come back to that)

I didn’t think I was going to get the book back so wasn’t sure what success looked like in this meeting but I had little choice so showed up and retreated to beyond arms reach after knocking on the door.

He explained at some length that it was his duty to God, the headmaster and our parents to look after us and as such wanted to protect me from the harm some of the adult themes in the book could do to me. It was a book about a fish but resisting the temptation to argue that it didn’t condone slavery, human sacrifice and the murdering of homosexuals like a book he frequently quoted from, I got the fuck out of there. Two days later he was arrested.

Turns out the cleaner of his vast family mansion that he chose not to live in because there were no young boys there had discovered what at the time was a record breaking stash of child pornography. Given this was pre-internet this meant a literal library. We are talking shelves and shelves in a room she had previously not known existed! Last scene in Raiders of the lost Ark but with child porn rather than arks.

She called the police and they thought even though this is 1988 we should probably do something about that paedophile teacher in a boys boarding school and arrested him and took away his pornography and as it turns out, one copy of Jaws.

Just to reiterate a man of God had castigated an 11 year old for reading an “adult” novel while being in possession of a vast library of pornography starring 11 year olds. Weapons grade hypocrisy I think you’ll agree – on we go.

So there we were all queued up outside the chapel and the chaplain was down the nick probably doing his best  “I thought they were 18 – it’s hard to tell with Thai boys. Are you sure they are that young? I’m shocked. I’m a man of the cloth don’t you know”.

Anyway they didn’t buy it. He got charged, defrocked, fired and eventually sent to prison. The last point made an older me question whether pornography was the worst of his crimes to actually get him to serve time in 1988 but there was no implication any boys of the school were involved. A point the school was desperate to impress upon the parents.

This story obviously provokes a lot of questions the most pressing of which is, did I get my book back. Turns out it had been on quite an exciting journey of its own having been returned to the school by the police as it had been collected in error with some other things and had my name in it.

So what’s the morale of this story beyond close the beaches sooner? Months later I received a letter from the convicted paedophile, presumably from prison. There were some general pleasantries ignoring the massive elephant in the room of his incarceration followed by him asking if my book had made it back. Turns out it was in his coat and he was wearing his coat when he “had to leave the school” (did you see an elephant? What elephant) and he “didn’t come back” and neither did the coat but he’d asked if it could be taken from is coat and sent back.

My parents weren’t particularly happy with me being written to by a convicted paedophile (even though I’d lived four doors down from him for the last four years) and raised hell at the school.

Turned out he was released after serving his time but just couldn’t help himself and was caught with more child porn this time on his person at customs (from Thailand no doubt) and got sent back to jail.

He’s gonna need a bigger coat.

Show Me Your War Face

A long long time since forever, boys at boarding school were given a taste of army life with a compulsory (natch) stretch in the Combined Cadet Force. Nothing embodies the batshit insanity of boarding school life so perfectly as this experience. Don’t get me wrong, the military is great for adults who choose to do it. However….

The first thing to help us deal with the insanity was the immediate deconstruction of language. Nothing was called the same thing as it was to normal people. Guns were “rifles”, bullets were “rounds”, hats were “berets”, people were “civvies”, and 15-year-old cadets were “fucking horrible useless pieces of shit I have ever had the fucking empty experience of looked at in my whole fucking life” or something along those lines.

The afternoon began with boys at attention being shouted at with unanswerable questions followed by punitive press-ups if you couldn’t think of the non-existent answers.  Example:

“Are you happy with the state of your beret?”

“Erm”

Press- ups.

Always press-ups. Not sure where the obsession with this particular exercise came from. It was never a case of “You horrible little shit-  drop and give me 20 leg-raised stomach crunches and a 90 second downward dog”

Then the children would head down to the armoury to pick up their machine guns from the ex-soldier who lived in it.

Nobody saw a problem with that sentence so a hundred or so tooled up 15-year-olds headed to the woods to learn how to set up camps.

After months of shoe-shining, shouting and shooting we were informed of two key dates in the calendar. Inspection and Core-camp. The former was a tradition (like everything else) that went back hundreds of years (like everything else) was completely pointless (like everything else) and resulted in several children losing consciousness (unique in this aspect). Ex-pupil, General Bumblecrunch who probably hadn’t seen action since the Crimean War was invited to come and inspect the troops. In July. On the hottest day of the year. Our uniform consisted of a thick shirt from the 1940s made from a material more commonly used for scrubbing pans. On top of this was a heavy jacket which would be suitable for skiing. Berets, heavy trousers and shin high boots completed the ensemble. Naturally the powers that be realised that making young boys wear such heavy garb in 35 degree heat was a bit dangerous so they called the whole thing off. Just kidding. They told us to drink some water beforehand. Being 150, the General wasn’t the most nimble of chaps and so “beforehand” was hours ago.

We were called to attention and squinted through the mirage (without turning our heads of course because of press ups) to see how the General was doing.  He went up and down lines of wobbling boys occasionally stopping to ask questions of those still capable of responding. He was halfway around when the first boy toppled. Being at attention we were not allowed to move to help. The powers that be didn’t care – they loved the smell of dehydration in the morning (and evidently when the sun was at its apex). By the time he’d finished his tour a couple more had gone over. He was ushered around the corpses to a small stage where someone fired a cannon (we had a cannon for cannoning purposes) which helped wake up the boys that were drifting to their happy place. After what seemed like an age he finally fucked off and we were eventually brough to ease with a squelch of foot sweat. We were dismissed, picked up our wounded and headed for shade enjoying the new levels of character we had just built.

Even better than inspection was Core-Camp. We spent a week in a barracks in Wales with the real army. They loved us because we were arrogant posh boarding school boys and they were rugged battle-hardened drill instructors from the real world. Anyone entering the week with an attitude, inflated self opinion or sense of humour had it firmly removed in the coming days.

“Because it’s your first day tomorrow we’re going to give you a little lie in – First Parade at 6am”

“You old softie” I sarcastically quipped.

Fuck me that was stupid I thought at 5am between press ups. Here is my attitude, I won’t be needing this for a bit.

At one point we were learning the amazingly practical skill of checking an enemy corpse to make sure it had not been booby-trapped. We hadn’t been taught about the metric system or that computers might be useful but if you ever need an enemy dead-body checked to make sure the sneaky fucker hasn’t died with a live grenade under them with their bodyweight depressing the lever, we’re your lads. A grizzled veteran of the Scots guards with a pronounced accent explained the procedure which involved one person throwing themselves on the corpse and rolling over with it on top of them to avoid the potential explosion while his partner checked the area under him from a safe distance.

“Uf yew seeey unyting yew shoot GRRINEEDE”

The first two boys selected to perform the manoeuvre still had their attitudes and one made the unwise decision to shout:

“OCHHH GRINNNEEDE”

We didn’t see him again.

Later in the week we were tasked with finding a camouflaged man in the woods in front of us, a task I achieved by shouting “Camouflaged Man, Come here!” with some authority and then casually gesturing at the only bush that was walking towards us. Press-ups.

One lad tried to take a large, bright red golfing umbrella on night-opps. He failed to notice that he was the only soldier with a large, bright red golfing umbrella prepping for battle or the rhetorical nature of the “What the fuck is that?” enquiry from his commanding officer and innocently suggested that it looked like it might rain later. Press-ups.

Another boy fired off thee (blank) rounds at a group of regular soldiers who were not interested in his “halt, advance one and identify” while on watch. He followed procedure to the letter but turns out the army don’t like being shot at by school children. Lots of press-ups and quite a bit of paperwork.

A combination of teenage attitude, complete incredulity that any of this was happening, finding whimsical observations impossible to leave unsaid and being absolutely shit at every army task I was given meant I was averaging several hundred press ups a day and left the camp considerably stronger than I arrived. That said I turned in my wings the second it was allowed and left military life to play old wartime songs to OAPs in local retirement homes which was the only other thing you were allowed to do on a Wednesday afternoon. Watching the old boys and girls tear up as they joined in with We’ll Meet Again I think I’d found a far better way I could contribute to the war effort.

That’s My Bird

A long long time ago in 1990 the living quarters in boarding school often mirrored that in prison. Long corridors of thirty plus rooms/cells on each side where we slept, worked and housed the possessions we were permitted (and the ones we weren’t). Schools were divided into “houses” for the purposes of arranging sports teams and each house had its own housemaster (teacher) and head of house (boy) who ran the place. Some houses developed a reputation for excelling at academia, sport or the arts. Ours had a reputation for carnage which we encouraged and protected with alcohol, rule breaking and general acts of fuckery resulting in the powers that be providing us with a new shit kicking housemaster to whip us into shape. The resulting power struggle was the stuff of legend. Sometimes he won. Sometimes we won. This story is an example of the latter.

Our corridor had an entrance at one end and a large doorway and balcony at the other that over looked a large courtyard (known as the Quad because we never missed out on a chance to use Latin) two floors below. Being Summer the doors to the balcony were left open to allow the breeze in (and help disperse the cigarette smoke). A pigeon had come to frequent the balcony as I think some of the boys had been feeding it (bit like that bloke in Shawshank – just saying!) and he had been given the name Harry.

It was prep, 90 minutes reserved for “home” work. Obviously we didn’t get to go home so had to call it something else but the concept was the same. Absolute silence was mandated and you were not allowed to leave your room for any reason even to go to the toilet. The last point didn’t really matter because we didn’t have one. 68 boys and not a single toilet. That worked well! Anyway back to prep, a system that was policed by prefects rather than teachers so a game of cricket was in full swing in the corridor. Our house supplied several members of the school’ first cricket team including its opening batsman who was at the wicket that evening. To add to the excitement Harry had joined us on the balcony but had come through the doors and was flying around our corridor. A vicious inswinger had hit an imperfect section of the floor, causing the ball to pitch up higher than the batsman was expecting. As at home playing off the backfoot as front he instinctively waited a fraction longer before hitting a wonderful drive through extra cover but with the result of greater elevation than he would have liked. The only fielder in the covers was Harry. In a valiant attempt to stop the ball Harry gave up his life in a burst of feathers. The ball and Harry hit the ground, the latter’s head hanging from a thread of sinew to the rest of him. What was probably the greatest sacrifice to save a boundary in the history of cricket was not lost on us but we had little time to dwell on it as we heard the warning of the approaching housemaster.

In those days junior boys were instructed to “keep the door” and effectively act as a lookout for teachers when we were doing something we shouldn’t like playing cricket or killing pigeons. In this instance it was a soft warning as the housemaster had been seen in the Quad below but was not heading towards us. Yet.

The need to be quiet did not slow the communication as we looked at the housemaster below, at each other, at Harry and then back at the housemaster. A crystal clear, perfect and universally held realisation formed as we knew that Harry was going to fly for one last time.

We were lucky to have the school’s first team hooker as well as opening batsman whose accuracy throwing in at the lineout was impeccable. He was the obvious and willing candidate for Harry’s propulsion and we watched as we steadied himself, raised Harry above his head in both hands and adjusted for the mild summer breeze and unusual angle.

Harry took to the skies, and assured his place in glory by striking the housemaster square on the back. With no little surprise he turned around looked at Harry, then over to Harry’s head and then up to the balcony which had been deserted less than a second ago. He picked up Harry, then Harry’s head (probably too angry to experience any of the usual feelings of disgust at touching a decapitated pigeon) and set off with some speed in our direction.

A single loud crash of 67 doors slamming in perfect unison preceded his entrance by less than a second. A perfect silence and empty corridor manned only by the Head of House (entrusted with keeping order) met him. This particular prefect had a calm smoothness that made David Niven appear like a Jeremy Kyle guest. He doubtlessly went on to a successful career in PR, politics and adultery using skills he learned dealing superbly with situations like this.

“Good Evening Sir”

“What is this?” spluttered a furious housemaster gesturing with most of a pigeon in one hand and the head of a pigeon in the other.

“A pigeon Sir? Is it yours?”

“Of course it’s not mine. I was hit by it in the Quad”

“How unfortunate – however of the two of you, you seem to have come off the better Sir”

“Who threw it?”

“Threw it? It’s prep Sir. Also if someone had thrown it, wouldn’t it have flown away before it reached you?”

We listened in awe as an 18 year old boy managed to convince a man in his forties that a kamikaze pigeon had struck him, possibly protecting its young that might have nested in the Quad and decapitated itself in the process.

“Perhaps he saw you as a threat to his mating rights Sir? Were you looking at his bird? That’s just a little joke Sir.”

Whether he was prepared to believe that a jealous or paternally enraged pigeon had formed itself into a beak-tipped missile to perform the ultimate sacrifice or whether he realised he was beaten on this one, the housemaster left (with Harry) and what was left of his dignity.

Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many, to one pigeon.

Apple Trees, Honey Bees & Snow-White Turtle Doves

A long long time ago in the early 90s at boarding school everything was either compulsory or forbidden. It was never:

“If anyone fancies it we are offering cadets to any of you that don’t think it’s a massive waste of time and enjoys being shouted at”.

Instead it was either:

“Former pupil, Lord Bumblecrunch is delivering a four hour lecture on spoons this Saturday night. Non-attendees will be hunted down by the college dogs”

or

“Yo-yos are banned – anyone caught with one will be locked in their own trunk for the weekend”

One thing that fell into the compulsory category was the house singing competition. We did it because we had done it last year and the 187 years before that. Each house was expected to assemble itself into a choir and deliver a song to the rest of the school and teachers (some of whom formed the judging panel). Our school housed many talented musicians. Several went on to be professional, couple of record deals and even a mercury prize winner but by making everyone do it the average ability level plummeted.

Our housemaster was very keen for us to win it and told us so in a rousing team talk with the necessary level of delusion. He had selected “I would walk 500 miles” by the Proclaimers. Basic. Monotone. Achievable. Other houses were probably working on Good Vibrations, Bohemian Rhapsody and Carmina Burana so we’re going to have squeeze out every bit of polyphonic complexity the piece held. Interestingly after his song selection our housemaster’s involvement ended, a decision I’m sure he regrets to this day.

We’d noticed another very important thing. The second round was on a Saturday night meaning the lucky few who’d been eliminated could stay in and watch Gladiators. With that particularly delicious looking carrot dangling in front of us we made a concerted effort to make sure round one was an absolute shit show.

Making as much noise and taking as much time as possible we clumsily filed onto the stage and arranged ourselves in three lines (as was compulsory) in height order. There was some obvious distress from the junior boys in the front row as the lyrics were attached to their backs with drawing pins by the older boys behind them. (What? Blue tack cost money and drawing pins could be stolen from notice boards. Anyway – It didn’t hurt after the initial incision if they didn’t move).

The next tactic of sabotage was to pretend to sing a different song. This song (with heads swinging from side to side in perfect unison) went:

“Some songs are very very long. This one isn’t.”

Quite a long silence followed, broken only by our housemaster’s jaw hitting the ground. Possibly not quite as funny as we’d hoped but definitely helping with operation; don’t make it through to round two. There was a mixed reaction from the teachers. Some were shocked, some angry and some seemed fearful that this was the beginning of the revolution and were terrified that they might not make it to the armoury before we did.

We needed to get proclaiming and fast. Our piano player hit the single repetitive note of the introduction but the conductor’s mind was elsewhere and four bars became eight. Then we were off. We’d made the wise decision to go as Scottish as possible to really bring the song out.

“Wun ar wake arp. Yus ar knowww arm gunnabeeey. Arm gunnabeey the marn thut weeks arp nuxt to yewww”

We’d taken it down thee tones (and then an octave) so it sounded more like a rumble than a song. We had also chosen to stamp in time to give a particularly threatening inevitability to it. The best was yet to come.  The Badalandas. Anyone fortunate enough to be unfamiliar with the song will need an explanation. Not content with the three chords of genius they had already gifted the world, Scotland’s answer to Lennon and McCartney had written a nonsensical call and response section that really took the song to bold new heights of structural layering. The lyrics were :

Badalanda (x4) Badalandadalandadaldadalandadarrr.

Powerful stuff I think you’ll agree. The original version is sung by two identical twins so the call and response has an even balance to it. Our interpretation had the call sung by a single boy and the response by the remaining 67. This resulted in the pop-folk toe-tapper sounding more like a haka. Along side the stamping, the unsolicited acupuncture in the front row and the fact we were singing in a key appropriate for most Slayer songs, our performance was less Pitch Perfect and more a prelude to the sacking of Troy.

A few thooosand miyels later we finished to polite and nervous applause during which was a sharp intake of breath from the young lads as lyric sheets were removed. Evidently the last 3 minutes of stamping was habit forming and the noise leaving the stage was even louder than our arrival.

Next up on stage was another house performing a beautiful rendition of Sound of Silence in perfect and haunting close harmony. It reminded us that we probably would have not made it into the second round even without our gargantuan effort to avoid it but we were not taking any chances. The results were announced. Mission firmly accomplished. That Saturday night we enjoyed the spoils of war.

GLUDIATERRRRRRRRRR RAIRDEE

A Little Learning

A long long time ago in the late 80s British private school education was the envy of the world. Smaller class sizes meant better student focus and a finely tuned streaming system meant that different levels could be tailored to differing abilities to ensure the weak could catch up and the elite could get even better. Fucking marvellous. Except my school set the levels (1 through 7) of all subjects on the students’ abilities at Latin. Your grasp of Latin was deemed to be a far better barometer for your abilities at Chemistry than for example, some sort of assessment of your abilities at Chemistry. If Louis Pasteur had rocked up at the school and didn’t know his vocative plural from his second declension it would have been a case of “Quel dommage Sunshine, you’re in with the special kids”. We were immediately categorised on our first day from 1-7. Set 1 were the mildly autistic bespectacled chess champions for whom Latin was simply another puzzle to take their minds off the weight of their parents’ expectations. Sets 2 through 6 were broadly the same as each other because it’s hard to subdivide 12 year old’s abilities in Latin that sharply. And I was cast in with the dumb-fucks of set 7 who hadn’t learned Latin before. However I, shame upon shame, had. I just thought it was pointless. I was right then and I’m right now. If your knowledge of Latin is above your knowledge of any spoken language, someone at some-point lied to you and owes you an explanation. Back then my Latin knowledge was non-existent as my brain correctly rejected it as soon as it got past my ears. I did however speak quite good French which infuriated my teachers as Latin was deemed superior. “French comes from Latin” I was told. “Just because I can ride a bike doesn’t mean I need to master a penny-farthing” I replied. Later in detention, while writing a history of the penny-farthing in Latin (denari-denari quartum???) I had lots of time to consider how right I was.

French class posed some issues. I’d spent the Summer months living in Paris without my parents (who evidently missed me during term time), with a family who didn’t’ speak English so quickly learned basic survival French. Our French teacher hadn’t left the school grounds in the last thirty years let alone been to France so our skills overlapped but didn’t match. He only had to cover set 7 anyway so two verses of Frere Jaque, counting to ten and ordering a ham sandwich usually got us through the hour. I learned three fifths of rein but possibly even less than Guillame next to me who was also flung into set 7 because Latin was not one of his three fluent languages. L’imbecile! That said, watching an English French teacher try and teach a French boy basic French is a rare treat few other than me and my classically challenged brethren have had the pleasure of witnessing. The best exchange was:

Sir: Tu compris?

Guillame: “Are you asking if I understood what you said or what you meant?”

History was also interesting because we were only taught about Britain’s successes. Crecy, Agincourt, Spanish Armada, Crimean, Waterloo, Boer, World War One, World War Two, Falklands – Questions?

Sir – Did we ever invade some countries? – Quite possibly, but only to help them out.

The French revolution was mentioned in passing but purely as a warning about the dangers of socialism.

New systems of teaching were rejected utterly as was any form of modernity. Our rulers displayed inches and our maps, Ceylon. Debate, critical thinking and opinion were shunned in favour of repetition, repetition or simply saying the same things over and over again. To this day I could list the dates for the events above but left the school not knowing why any of them happened beyond assuming it was the French’s fault. Which admittedly actually turned out to be true with several.

New technology was as bad as new systems. We had two computers that over two hundred boys shared. In fact if you sat down at a random keyboard at the school you had 33% greater chance of it being a harpsicord than a PC. Evidently we learned probability and percentages at some point too.

The one thing that we were taught that did prove useful was the following:

You are not special. Neither is anyone else so why shouldn’t it be you. The first bit was rammed down our throats for the first few years and we learned the rest along the way. The teachers themselves did their best to exemplify this theory by often being knowledgeable about their subject (if you repeat the same syllabus for 30 years the stuff has to start sinking in I suppose) but often quite appalling at you know, teaching. All this while commanding some of the highest salaries the profession offered. Didn’t matter. We had harpsicords.