Friday, Third Lesson, Drama

(Today's installment utilises your scratch and sniff cards which you should have received by messenger Parrot lasterday)

Bit odd Drama – it’s taught by this witch-like woman called Mrs. Twist who gets you to stare at people without laughing and walk around the room ‘like you’re stuck in treacle’ (Scratch panel 1). How any of that is going to help me get a job in the post office, I don’t know, unless I drop a tin of treacle in the kitchen and have to get to the front desk quickly[1].  When she set us that task last week, I just walked normally while everyone else was doing this like weird slow motion walk.  She asked what I was doing and I said treacle isn’t really that sticky and it’s wrong to exaggerate – she should have said ‘You’re in a vat of correction fluid’, that would have been better.  

Jazzy always does everything he's told

Anyway, the drama hall is huge and the ceiling is higher than high is.  It’s always cold in here so Mrs. Twist always gets us to warm up by rolling our heads round our shoulders and shaking out our arms and legs.  Maybe the Government should roll this out to pensioners (Scratch panel 2) who can’t afford their heating bills?

We had to do an improvisation – Mrs. Twist told us that the biggest mistake people make during improvising is thinking the scene has to be funny, but she said no, you just have to make what you’re doing believable.  I had to improvise a scene with Raoul and the scenario was winning the lottery.  

"Yay, look at how excited I am at winning another scratch card"

I started running around screaming and celebrating and Raoul pretended to saw some wood.  Mrs. Twist asked what he was doing and he said “Sawing some wood”, and she said “How is that appropriate to the scenario”, and he said “You said it didn’t matter as long as it was believable and you knew I was sawing wood and I didn’t even tell you so it must have been – also my dad won £10 on the lottery last week and he was in his shed watching the numbers come out on his portable telly and he just carried on sawing”, in Spanish (Scratch panel 3).  We then had to sit in a circle and pretend we were falling off a Hang-glider.  Plazzy says she does that every night when she gets home anyway so it was dead easy.

Finally we had to write a script with the title, “Kevin’s massive mam”.  Mine went like this :

Kevin :  “Mam?”

Mam :  “Up here!”

Kevin and Kevin's Mam

I got a D, which was lower than I expected. Apparently, I didn’t set the scene well enough, build suspense or inject any drama, but it was in-keeping with the title so the teacher was duty bound to give me some marks.  Kevin’s mam really is massive (she can’t get on busses[2]) so he just wrote a direct transcript of last night’s tea time (Scratch panel 4) and got an A. I wish my mam was massive.  Tazzy doesn’t know how to write a script, he keeps putting all the dialogue in the third person (Scratch panel 5) – the third person was Yazzy (Scratch panel 6). 

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[1] Barry did work in a post office in 2006 but was fired for ruining the floor with treacle.

[2] She is still massive, in case you wondered.

Friday, Second lesson, R.E.

The bell went for second lesson, but before I went, I had to get my RE book out of my locker.  I opened the door to find that the mushroom stroganoff I’d made in cookery last week had reacted with this week’s Watery-liquid juice puree and cultured a new species of fungus.  

Fun Gus

The WWF[1] and National Parks council have declared my locker a site of special scientific interest and ramblers from different countries are currently making their way to St Evander’s as I write[5].  My RE book was under a small mammal I have been allowed to call a ‘Bankank’[2] by the international new species naming committee. 

Davina, the Bankank

I trotted off to RE in the English block. We learn all about Hindus and Buddists.  Mr Toe, the RE teacher makes us sit in ones, in rows and columns with a desk each – except Steve, who doesn’t get a desk after he scratched slogans into it with his teeth at the start of term.  There are loads of bibles on the shelves and in one of them it has ‘Turn to page 33’ on the front cover, on page 33 it says ‘Turn to page 88’ and so on, until you’ve visited 72 different pages and the last message reads ‘now get on with your work you lazy twit’.  No one has used the word ‘twit’ out loud since 1981 – anyone who does, gets pointed at and poked in the elbow with an S Club 7 ruler (or its equivalent depending on what year it is[3]). 

The now infamous question on the RE exam paper last year was ‘Who was Amos?’  Everyone put the same answer except me, I put ‘My best friends dad’.  Actually, my best friend put ‘My dad’ which technically is the same answer if you follow?  Actually in the Hebrew bible, Amos was called from his rural home to remind the rich and powerful of God's requirement for justice. He claimed that religion that is not accompanied by right action is anathema to God, and prophesied that the kingdom of Israel would be destroyed.  Which is what I’ve been trying to tell the people in smokers corner all these years!! 

Amos in the 90s

The bell went to signal morning break.  Me and Wazzy were bored so we tried to traverse the side of the physics classroom like Olympic athletes but Wazzy got hit in the face by a stray football which knocked him off and broke his prefect badge.  He needed a sit down after that so we went to the prefect room in Edam House where he is a prefect.  

They can't even spel

The prefect room is a small room set aside in which prefects can relax during breaks – it’s one of the perks.  The other is that you get to shout obscenities at first years and call it a ‘deterrent’.  The room itself has comfy chairs from the 70’s[4] and a “hi-fi” on which only the radio works and the tape player if you jam a small plastic dinosaur in the side to keep the tape in.  I set Wazzy down on one of the Chaise-longues and set off for tuck-shop.  There was a big queue out the door of Edam house as there was only one prefect serving and he’s got no depth of perception due to his eye pad[6].  The bell went before I got served so I just ran in, knocked everything off the table in protest and ran away to the Drama room where 3^rd lesson was about to begin.

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[1] The World Wrestling Federation.

[2] Sadly now extinct c.2002.

[3] In 2012 it would be a Dizzy Rascal  ruler.

[4] 1870’s.

[5] Still are

[6] A pad on his left eye, not a computer tablet

Friday, First Lesson, Economics

Friday 17^th September

           

I got to school early today and sat on the wall outside the main entrance.  I watched the teachers go in and tramp up the stairs to the staff room where they no doubt down cups of awful coffee and read the Guardian.  The Guardian is called Steve and he always wears slogan T-Shirts.

Some teachers look world weary while others positively skip into the building – they’re normally the ones who teach A-level, the ones in the depths of despair teach the classes that contain pupils who would rather throw and shout than learn.  Prazzy, who is in one of these classes set fire to his left sock in Mr B’pants lesson. He also turned a stapler into an aircraft, glued two first year’s faces together and worst of all, didn’t hand his maths homework in on time.  He got expelled and suspended for that, and came back the week after and put in class 4A.  I’m in 2.  

A typical lesson with Mr. B'pants

Tazzy has started a craze of wearing cardigans instead of blazers, which all the people who want to be cool[1] have copied.  The people who want to be warm have also copied this. The real cool people do generally what they want and don’t follow fashion.  Take Yazzy for example, he wears flares, has really bushy hair with things living in it and never brushes his teeth.  The cool thing is no one has followed his chosen style – now that’s cool!  

Everyone looks good in a cardy, even people you need to spy on with binoculars

At about 8:15, Nizzy walked by on her way to Brie house. She smiled at me when she walked past.  I asked her out once and she screamed in my face and then had an attack of hysteria and ran off.  I went to see her later and asked, “Was that a yes or a no?”.  She head-butted me in the face.  I still don’t know what her answer was.  If she fancies me why doesn’t she just say?  I guess that smile she flashed me as she walked past was merely for the memory of me lying on the ground trying to keep my nose attached to my face.  A little harsh I thought, but it hasn’t put me off asking her out again.  As a contingency, I asked Wendy out last week, the one that’s got one cheek bigger than the other; she whacked me in the shins with her badminton racket and ran into the girls’ toilets crying.  Plenty more fish in the sea although it seems that girls look at me as the effluent that decreased the biodiversity index in the river of love. 

Barry's love life

8:30am and the swots start to turn up, getting out of their parents Audis and Bentleys.  Dazzy was early, getting out of his Dad’s Lada with a ski mask on so no one would recognise him.  Would have worked if he hadn’t worn the one his Gran knitted for him last Christmas[2].

You deserve to wear a ski mask if you get in one of these

Quarter to nine and lots of people are milling about now, drinking pop and hitting each other with their school bags.  There’s a fashion right now where people zip the small triangular bag off the end of their sports bag and carry that around with them.  It’s a good deterrent to bullying when you put a chambers dictionary in it I suppose.  Big Jock McPugilist has invented a new version of tag where he chases people and when he catches them, he punches them really hard in the mouth.  Ozzy likes it, it gets him out of French Oral.

My advice? Don't type 'French Oral' into Google Image search

On the way to my tutor room I passed smokers corner.  The people who hang out here like to look hard[3] and make believe they’re in control of the entire school.  Fact is, they’re not in control of anything being as they are, slaves to tobacco.  They spend most of their time up the ‘top shop’ hanging around buying singles[4] and taking money off first years to fuel their habit. Some are so addicted, if they can’t afford tabs, they set fire to an item of clothing and breathe that in. On one occasion, Cizzy set fire to Nizzy and tried to smoke him.  When they get caught, which they do with startling regularity, being as how smoker’s corner has come to the attention of every teacher in the school, they get their tabs confiscated.  Mr Gout has never had to buy tabs for 15 years.  Turns out the smokers have disproved Darwin’s theory of conditioned instinct and natural selection. If it were true, they’d move on to another favourable habitat in which they could exist and not have their tabs taken off them every day at 8:55 by the same teacher.  Or at least they would have evolved a method of smoking the tabs without being seen.

Only really cool, hard and clever kids will know what this is

Registration was strange this morning. No one spoke at all. Everyone just sat looking shiftily at each other.  Because no one was talking, no one wanted to speak first because the whole room would hear what they said and no one was confident that the thing they wanted to say was interesting enough for everyone else not to think they were (a) boring (b) a socialist or (c) a spanner.  We sat in silence through the whole of registration, only the sound of Mr Chipolata's pen scratching on the register cutting through the eerie silence.  Razzy farted which broke the peace 0.1 second before the bell went for first lesson. 

First lesson today was Economics.  I love this subject because it makes you feel all grown up, learning about the stock exchange and finance and why orange juice is 87p at Tesco and 3p at Netto – that sort of thing.  Mrs Highair takes this subject as well as Business Studies. I guess they’re intrinsically linked or whatever.  She did a few of those transparent plastic paper things on the overhead projector about fecundity.  Uzzy laughed everytime she said the word fecundity because he’s immature and thought it sounded a bit rude.  I didn’t think it sounded rude, I thought it sounded like ******. I didn’t laugh though, it’s immature. 

Fecundity/play time

The teacher thinks I’m a really hard worker. I’m not, I sit next to Tizzy who is dead clever and I copy off him.  Once, I copied off him so literally, I put his name at the top of my test paper.  This other time though, I copied his work word for word and I got 98% and he got 97%.  Unable to hold my curiosity, I asked the teacher how that could be and she stripped me of all my marks for that term for cheating – I still didn’t find out why I got 1% more than him too – double whammy!!  Mmmm… that reminds me, I really fancied a Wham bar – tuck shop is on a Friday in Edam house. 

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[1] Cool people used to say ‘beast’ or ‘mint’.  Which I think is kinda cool.

[2] I remember that ski-mask.  It had ‘Darren Gold’ embroidered on the forehead in white wool.

[3] Physically or mentally tough.

[4] One cigarette is called a single although the top shop did sell Adam Ant’s new single in 1982.

Thursday, Fifth Lesson, Textiles

Afternoon break soon encroached.  I went to the Music block to hang about. Mr Wigwam’s door was locked and there were only a few practice rooms open but they were all empty.  I decided to read the notice board until someone else turned up to talk to.  There are a few announcements pinned on there: 

Found – small child in Tuba. Answers to Izzy

and 

40 dinner tickets – unused, excellent condition. 9p each  

There was a slogan printed across the top of the notice board too: 

If you miss one day’s practice, you know. 

If you miss two days practice, your friends know. 

If you miss 3 days practice, the caretaker knows. 

If you miss four days practice, you’ve probably got a life. 

If you miss five days practice you’re probably not serious about your music. 

If you miss six or more days practice, that’s the reason the people you meet in Kwik Save stare at you and judge you.  

It’s a really long banner and stretches out of the music block and round the corner into the Art block.

Fifth lesson is Textiles. Sewing and making doilies is not for me so I wag off[1] and go up the top shop for some tabs[2] and an ice pop[3].  

Coloured cold sticks

I sit in the park just past the shop and go on the swings.  Hazzy and Grazzy are almost always here too and we talk about ‘what they’ll be doing now’ in textiles.  We then discuss the possibility that they might be making jumpers, while we sit in the park with the sky growing darker, the temperature dropping and the conversation waning.  I always wish I’d gone to Textiles after my tab and cola ice pop.  

Swing low, sweet... erm... swings

Mrs Pillowcase once gave us a feedback sheet to evaluate our projects and one question was ‘What part of the course did you dislike’ and I put ‘filling out this sheet’.  She was most disgruntled and I had to incur her wrath - I got an F, which was better than I expected! 

I trudged off home in the rain eventually.  I could see the classrooms in the craft block all lit up as I passed.  I could see Mr O’Lordy pointing angrily at a fifth year with one of those poles you use to open high windows.  On the roof I could see Big Steve McTall, who hadn’t left since second lesson.  He was giving Razzy a Swot knot.  That cheered me up.  It’s the concert tomorrow. I’m still wet from the walk home[4].

A Swot Knot, yesterday

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[1] Play truant. 

[2] Cigarettes.

[3] Iced pop or Icy pop. Pop that is now ice.

[4] This comment was pencilled into the diary at least thirteen years after the original entry

Thursday, Fourth Lesson, Vocational Guidance

The bell went to signal dinner time.  We congregate on the asphalt covered netball court at the back of the PE block and play football on Thursday lunchtimes.  Normally we play ‘rush and scramble’ or ‘first one back is the keeper’.  Every week we play for 5 minutes until Tazzy McNoskill hoofs the ball over the fence into the pub car park next to the school.  He was off school today so we managed to play for most of lunch time break. Hakka did this save but landed badly (his foot moved so we only gave him a 5.6).  I scored a goal from 80 yards (in relative distance on a full size pitch) in the top corner (of where the posts would have been if we’d had some).  I had time to eat my sandwiches[1] as I walked to registration. 

We always play in black and white, makes it feel more betterer

Mr Chipolata had a go at me for not being on the school photo. I apologised and said I’d bring a small photograph of myself in that they could stick on but he said that wasn’t acceptable.  I suspect it’s not the fact I’m not on the photo, it’s just I’m one less person they can fleece by charging £80 for 4 individual prints and £100 for a group shot.  It’s more if you want colour.

We (me and Fazzy) went over to the sixth form block where the V.G. classroom is.  V.G. stands for Vocational Guidance, of which we get very little.  We do however get free condoms, practice in how to stare at a boring teacher who tells you nothing and then shows you a video on an unfeasibly small television about car thieves and how to ask the person next to you their name and an interesting fact about themselves.  Mr Brum, the careers teacher, gave us all a pile of prospectuses for different universities and colleges.  Looking around the room, it didn’t seem appropriate as half of the class are quasi-illiterate, about a quarter are on drugs or sell them and the others have the educational standard of a 9 year old. Actually, 9 year olds usually know their own names.  We had to interview each other about where we think we’ll be in the future.  I said I’d be a banker. Mr Brum said I already was one. He’s a bit deaf.  Razzy said he’d be in prison and I couldn’t disagree with him, he managed to steal my pen, trousers and identity during the interview without me noticing.  I asked Mr Brum why he became a careers teacher and he said it was because he couldn’t think of anything else he'd be good at.  He’s a good careers councilor to have isn’t he? The tiny eyed moron.

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[1] This isn’t a euphemism.

Thursday, English, Technical Drawing and Revision Library

It’s a new day, it’s a new dawn, it’s a deserted tutor room!?  This always happens, seeing as how I never listen to anything I’m told.   I just played table tennis on my own, running round the table to hit the ball back to myself.  It didn’t occur to me until the bell went that I could have hit the ball off the wall to myself.  I’m not blessed with logic solving things. 

I went to first lesson, English, but no one turned up.  It wasn’t until half way through the lesson when I was on chapter 4 of ‘A Clockwork Orange’ which is apparently on the 4^th year curriculum for reasons beyond Kevin, people started turning up for the lesson. They all had nice hair and smart clothes on.  Turns out it was school photo day, which I was gutted about because I like to stick my fingers up at the back and ruin everything for everyone constantly.  They insist on taking the pictures outside and the wind always blows my parting the wrong way and girls with long hair look like they’re being attacked by ethereal beings.  

Helen/Alan

Bertrand

Kit

Never mind – the teacher, Mrs Boring, told us to get out our copies of ‘The floppy faced Welshman’ and read page 463 then put it away and forget everything we’d learned.  She’s an angry little woman who argues with you even if you’re both right.  She asked what nationality you’d be if you came from Switzerland and I put my hand up and said “Swiss” and she said “No, Switzerlish”. I was like “Eh? No, it’s Swiss”.  Then she said “What nationality are you if you come from Finland”, and again I put my hand up and said “Finnish”, and she nearly knocked me out with the corner of her Thesaurus.  I even showed her the page in the back of my dictionary that tells you nationalities and she just slammed it, catching her own thumb which she argued didn’t hurt at all and gave everyone detention.  She’s like a quiz machine that won’t pay out.  

Mrs Boring's Mam

She told us to write a story so I wrote one about digging a tunnel to Bournemouth with a teaspoon called Malcolmb[1]. Then the story twisted and turned until the main character, a goldfish who had no friends, was surprised when his Fairy Godmother appeared and offered him a wish.  He wishes for loads of friends but then in a pelvis-dislocatingly obvious twist, wishes for a breeze block instead. 

Best alternative to loads of mates. A Breeze Block.

Bell went thankfully and we all piled out, trampling over anyone who had been unfortunate enough to slam face first into the tiled floor and made our way to the 4^th floor of the craft block for Technical Drawing.  This is my favourite classroom in the whole school. It’s light with massive windows and smells of chips.  Mr O’Lordy always smells of chip fat[2].  We have these really complicated desks which unfold 8 ways and form a bureau type thing with rulers and things on.  We had to draw plans for a new Intergalactic Shopping Centre in space but I’m not very good and designed a hovercraft that can disappoint wasps instead.  Mr O’Lordy has got a massive beard and you can’t see his teeth through it[3].  My pencil snapped half way though and I had to go to the front of the class to sharpen it.  Mr O’Lordy saw me sidling up to the pencil sharpener and said he wanted to see me outside. We went out of the classroom and had a cigar.  I was much more relaxed when I went back in and drew two intergalactic shopping centres on the trot.

Stupid

The lesson ended and break followed.  We climbed up the ladder at the back of the top corridor and onto the roof. It’s literally amazing up there, all the first years look like ants.  I had to tell big Steve McTall that he was looking at us when he made that observation and the first years were actually over the side on the ground.  We come up here when the school have a football match on, it’s a great view.  Problem is we can’t hear the bell from up here so we don’t know when break is over. Also the craft block doesn’t have a lift so it takes us 6 minutes to get from the roof to the ground.  It’s ok though because third lesson is Revision Library.  No teachers invigilate during that lesson. The only way you can get into trouble for not being there is if a teacher sees you in a part of the school you shouldn’t be in like the tuck shop cupboard.  

The Craft Block is about this high

I decided to turn up to the library this week having spent last week’s lesson flicking through a copy of ‘What Brouge’ in the Drama prop storage area behind the stage.  I literally had the best time of my life.  I came to the Revision Library lesson today because they have some great books (they have pictures in) to flick through.  We found a copy of the Doomsday book (c.1986) and it had a photo of Cazzy playing football whilst at primary school in a parka with all fur round the hood[4].  We photocopied it and then blew it up really big and put loads of copies on the walls all over the school.  He got loads of attention after that because Parkas are back in fashion right now.  He’s literally got the biggest teeth in the 3^rd year.

Cazzy and his family

After milling about generally in the library, realising that the books haven’t been updated since 1948 and the Biology books all say that plants get their food from Tesco, and not as we now know, the sun, me and Vazzy played skis by attaching a hard back book to each foot with an elastic band and trying to skid as far as we could along the floor.  Vazzy ski’ed (sic) into a table, fracturing his trousers and dislocating his shoes[5].  I just left him there. Well, I didn’t want to get into trouble did I?  I spent the rest of the lesson staring wistfully out of the window wondering where my life went wrong.  I deduced it was when I took French as one of my options instead of electronics. I could have invented a time machine, or as I call it, the ‘Wist remover’ (guaranteed to remove any need for wistfulness. Simply relive those golden moments and realise they’re not quite as good as you remember).  I half blinded myself by staring at the photocopier light – I forgot to close the lid.  I got some excellent black and white scans of me with a contorted and slightly haunted expression for use possibly in the next edition of the Doomsday[6] book (c.2086).

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[1] The name Malcolm is always funnier with a ‘b’ on the end.

[2] He used to hide a bottle of chip-fat in his desk to chug on when there were no classes.

[3] Later investigation discovered his teeth had all fallen out in 1977 although they’re friends again now.

[4] In and out of fashion for the last 20 years. Not unlike Cazzy’s haircut.

[5] I remember this vaguely. If I remember rightly, both his shoes flew off as he landed.

[6] Actually 'Domesday' because Barry is an idiot

Wednesday, Fifth Lesson, Business Studies

The bell went for afternoon break during which I raced Nazzy down the yard. He won but didn’t stop, skidded on some silt the wind had collected in the corner and slammed face first into a brick wall.  He also won the ‘oddest angle for a nose’ competition we held next.  We plan to have a sponsored slam-into-a-wall next term for a new minibus[1].  We had 2 minutes left on break so me, Mazzy and Bazzy pretended the world was going to explode and ran around screaming.  People’s faces were funny for 2 entire minutes.

Hilarious[3] mememe about the end of the world

Fifth lesson; Business Studies.  Mrs Highair wears massive glasses and I make sure I don’t sit where the sun can be magnified through them and set fire to me.  I asked Tazzy out in the cupboard in there once, she’s ginger.  I’m really good at computers so people always ask me how to log on, log off, log out, log in and what motivates Lumberjacks.  Today the teacher waffled on and on about breaking even, tax and advertising.  I asked if I could use my Dictaphone. She said “No, use your finger like everyone else”.  I didn’t get it?  While she was waffling, I doodled a life-size picture of an ant on Mars.  I got told off a few times for doodling and eventually she took the A1 flip chart and pack of 100 coloured felt tips off me altogether.  

More pens than you can hold in a massive hand

I did a poster; it had a ghost on a bike on the front being chased by two lizards dressed as policemen.  It was advertising sundries, miscellaneous items and general products.  Mrs Highair says she’s going to put it up in the main school building for people to laugh at. I’m so proud.  I’ll work for Nestle one day... packing boxes. Aazzy kept making faces at Zzzy behind his back. Zzzy kept making backs behind Aazzy's faces.

The teacher then showed us a computer program called ‘Lemonade[2] Tycoon’ to teach us the basics of running a business.  I’ve already drawn up plans to open my own Lettuce shop.  Lettuces are free because they occur naturally in the ground.  I just have to pick them and get people to buy them for 30p a cabbage and I’ll be a cauliflower millionaire in no time. I might just write a computer game called Sim-Cabbage 3D (Broccoli Apocalypse); one or the other.

The teacher got us all to sit at our desks again at the end of the lesson while she summed up.  She didn’t, she just stood staring in a creepy way, her eyes magnified by the double strength lenses.  Maybe she meant ‘summoning up’ and a demon or some other denizen of the underworld was about to appear?  Then the bell went and she didn’t say anything so we just erratically got up and left – she was still staring straight ahead. I think her batteries must have gone flat or something.  She once threatened me when I was looking out of the window.  She said “If you don’t stop looking out of the window, I’ll shut it!”  That terrified the life out of me and I’m still traumatised by it today. 

           

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[1] The reintroduction of inflation in 1983 prevented this from being a success.

[2] It isn’t fizzy as this shoves the production costs up.

[3] Hilarity is in the mouth of the beholder

Wednesday, Fourth Lesson, Geography

Bell went for registration but today was assembly[1] in the big hall.  Dazzy is a hymn book monitor and has to give them out as people enter the hall. He likes to slip rude pictures between the pages, hoping one day Mrs Crab will get one and faint with shock.  Mr Wigwam plays the piano really loud as we all walk in, usually with unnecessary bass notes that make Mrs Crab’s teeth work loose in her mouth and then they fly out when she begins to sing.  Mr Gout stands at the front, eyeing us suspiciously as we file in, working our way across the rows before sitting down.  Each year, you get 2 rows closer to the back until in 5^th year you have to sit in the corridor outside because there aren’t enough rows.  

Better than being chased by a rabid Woodlouse

Me and Lazzy always change the words to whatever hymn we’ve got to sing. We changed ‘When a Knight won his spurs’ to ‘When United beat Spurs’ and ‘All things bright and beautiful’ to ‘All Kings kite and beautiful’, which cracks us up.  Lawzy came out with a classic today, instead of ‘Morning has broken’ he sang ‘I’ve got the key, I’ve got the secret’ along with the tune. Hilarity ensued as we sang various other Techno and House classics along with the tunes.  

We eventually sat down and had to listen to Mr Gout going on about how his office has been set on fire twice this week, someone had shoved a first year up the air conditioning and they can’t get him out and how horses are banned from the sports hall.  He then introduced a policeman who waffled on about unimportant stuff like crime prevention, cycling proficiency and how not to die in a nuclear war.  Once the policeman went away, we had to say the Lord’s Prayer[2].

We don’t generally give our hymn books back to the monitors, we just chuck them in the book case until they all fall out and the monitor has to pick them all up.  We collected our bags, which we’d thrown in a pile outside the door, freeing the first year who’d fallen in his endeavours as we were all piling into the room.  He wasn’t too upset at missing assembly.

This, but better, stronger, faster, longer, higher, wider, thinner, uglier and fatter.

Fourth lesson today was Geography with Mr. Tweed who thinks he’s hilarious and he’s just not.  The floors in the Geography room are really weird, they’re like this foamy lino stuff that makes you feel like you’re going to sink into the back of a giant octopus – or maybe it’s just me.  Yeah, that's right, people think they're going to sink into me.

Mr Tweed tells jokes all lesson but they’re all really boring. He’d like to be a stand up comedian. He is the compare at school concerts and will be again at the musician of the year concert on Friday.  I made a concerted effort to be nice to him today, just in case he has any sway on who wins.  I carried his folders for him, pointed at the photo of his wife on his desk and said it doesn’t look like she has a full moustache, told him that his jacket was spiffing and cleaned his white board for him.  Turned out he’d spent 20 minutes writing the lesson plan on it before we came in. He wasn’t happy.

If you're thinkin' of being my brother, it don't matter if you're black or white

He set us a test. I said the Fens were really steep and that Holland had the highest mountain in the world.  I said Venice was used as a rally track and Azerbaijan was in Scotland.  I got an F.  Better than I expected!   “I admire the atlas’ honesty, you always know where you are with it.”  That was one of Mr Tweed’s jokes during which 76% of the class fell asleep.  I worked that out by dividing the amount of people awake with how many people there were asleep and multiplying by 100.  GCSE’s – here I come!!

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[1] Not putting together a flat pack table.

[2] Jebus, the Lord of the Dance, the lord of the flies, the lord of the manor and oh, Lordy, I've got a sore tongue.

Wednesday, Second and Third lesson, P.E. and German

Second lesson was PE[1].  We all lined up outside the PE block, waiting for the signal to go in and get changed.  I brought the wrong note to excuse me from games; the teacher didn’t believe it was my time of the month so I had to get changed and play climbing frames.  

Invented by Henry VIII as a form of torture

We have this really hard teacher called Mr Flap and he gives us a really hard training regime.  We had to do wheelbarrows, climb up a rope, do a triple-back half-pike thrust turn and Edison lighthouse with tuck before playing Basketball, Hockey and Rounders all at the same time.  I won, surprisingly.  Razzy climbed up the wall bars and touched the ceiling.  Everyone was impressed – as he plummeted to the floor, snapping both his ankles.  He went to hospital.  

Me, doing gym. I look a lot like Danny out of Grease

People whip each other with towels in the showers and think it’s funny. I don’t.  Yazzy got hit in the eye once and developed towel-eye.  He had to do cross country in a wheel chair.  As a punishment, we all had to stand on one leg for the entire next lesson until the culprit owned up. Yazzy eventually admitted it wasn’t a towel that caused it to swell, it was the infection he got off Brenda Charlton in the goal post store room. 

Brenda's house

The bell sounded, we all got changed and made our way to third lesson – German.  We spent break drying our hair and putting our blazers on.  Mrs Achtung is an elderly German national who croaks at us in her broken dialect.  I sit at the back with Snazzy and don’t answer any questions.  I can count to ten though.  Ein, Zwei, dry, erm… anyway, it gets a bit confusing with the German word for ‘no’ being ‘nein’ but sounding exactly like the German word for ‘nine’.  If you’re in a pub and the barman says “Du bist ein steine?” and you say “Nein” and he actually serves you with 9 beers – that’s why I have learned how to say “Nicht!” which is nothing. No really, it’s nothing.

Ich bin funf zehn jahre alt und ich bin nein old enough to drink

Wazzy is fluent in German as his Nan is from Austria.  He was having some right old craic with the teacher. It seemed they were talking about toilet habits but then it became clear that they were reminiscing about the good old days[2].

The bell went to signal dinner time.  On Wednesday’s I have my sandwiches in Mr Wigwam’s room with all the brass instruments.  Vazzy entertained us by playing the tune to ‘Crime stoppers’ on the piano.  He also played ‘Tubular bells’ (it took him ages to set them up and put them away after).  I tried to pick the lock on Mr Wigwam’s desk drawer, convinced the winners of the musician of the year would be in there (the names, not the people).  He came in as I was crouched; he asked what I was doing and I said I’d crouched.  He seemed to accept this and left the room. 

A few of the orchestra members came in after dinner, just to hang around so I suggested we all get our instruments out and have a bit of a blow.  Everyone agreed so we played through some Brass band arrangements of AC/DC, Backstreet Boys and that one off Noel’s House Party[3].

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[1] Physical Education, or as some people call it, Sigourney's torture

[2] Last week’s lesson.

[3] Noel's beard

Wednesday, First Lesson, Cookery

Wednesday’s are the best days ever (at school.  Saturdays are better, Sundays are better and any day that’s better than School Wednesdays are better).  All my favourite lessons are on a Wednesday apart from Drama, IT, Music and Revision Library.  

Revision library always gets out of hand

First lesson is Cookery.  I always manage to spill the ingredients of whatever we’re making all over my school bag.  Today we were making Watery-liquid-juice puree and chips.  I forgot my potatoes so I had to use wood chips.  

Watery-liquid-juice puree and chips (with less watery-liquid-juice and more fish and peas)

The cookery classroom is on the third floor of the craft block (above the metalwork classrooms) probably because cookers are easier to carry upstairs than lathes are.  Mrs Icedbun is four millimeters tall and can hardly reach the black board to write up the ingredients and recipe.  

Excerpt from Mrs Icedbun's wedding album

I like washing up. I forgot my ingredients one week and spent the entire lesson washing up. I stared out of the window and watched the lads play rugby on the field outside.  Best seat in the house.  They weren’t supposed to be playing rugby, they were supposed to be painting the new railings but things got a little out of hand.  The cookers are all very old-fashioned in the Cookery classroom; one of them still wears platform shoes.  At the end of the lesson we had to display our efforts on the middle table while the teacher sampled each one.  After she’d sampled the tables she sampled what we’d cooked.  She had to go to hospital. I quickly put my concoction in my locker and ran over to the PE block.

A peach who's just been told he's gone mouldy and will soon be put in the bin