Monday, Second Lesson, Art

The bell went again to signal second lesson, Art.  I’ll never work out why they’ve scheduled a lesson in the Science block before one in the Art block which is a ten minute walk away.  I don’t know why they don’t just let us do Art with the Chemicals in the Hazards cupboard.  I bet that’s how Damian Hirst started.

All the poisons locked in a cupboard which is a happy joyful shade of sunshine yellow

Me, Fazzy, Gazzy and Yazzy all trudged off down the stairs, upon which a fifth year lay, face down, covered in shoe laces[1].

The Art classroom is massive, one you could fit lots of Gorillas into if you had lots of Gorillas and they were at a loose end.  It has lots of windows for looking out of, tables to sit at, chairs to sit on and pictures on the walls to curl your face at and say, “Surely not?”  It reminds me rather of that program that used to be on TV where they’d show you art that people had sent in[2].  They’d show you a picture made out of shells and it would say, ‘Dave, 32’ at the bottom.  The pictures on the walls in the Art room are like that.

Hazzy with his lass, yesterday

Mrs Reed is a hunched weirdly shaped woman who never speaks apart from telling you what work you should be getting on with and to ‘stop doing that as the floors have just been polished’.  As always, she shuffled into the room and grunted the word “collage” before sitting down, nearly breaking her jaw on the desk.  I can’t help feeling I’ll never get into ‘collage’ unless I get some proper tuition in this subject.  I decided to make a model of two spiders with massive heads having a fight on the back of a raisin out of Papier Mache. Scazzy painted a picture he called ‘Debonair man haunted by goat ghost’ and Razzy sprayed WD40 all over Pazzy and called it ‘Can’t squeak; won’t squeak’.  Pazzy then fell over on the Parquet floor (which had just been polished) and slipped about so much, Tazzy plugged some mini-speakers into his personal stereo and put on a song called “Ain’t no stopping us (breakin’)” by Ollie and Jerry.  He later revealed that he wasn’t in fact break dancing, he was just trying to stand up.

Ollie and his best friend Jerrry, doing some boogaloo

My project went well, but I didn’t get it finished. I feel a bit like Schubert in that respect.

The bell finally went, interrupting my day dream about what it must be like to paint the ceiling of the Sistine chapel and just how long your brush would have to be, signalling break time.  We get 15 minutes to generally mill around the school grounds, play table tennis in the house blocks or chase each other meaninglessly for sport.  I choose to spend most of my breaks in the Music block where you can be sure of finding like-minded individuals or other people who don’t quite fit in with society.

Jazzy was in Mr Wigwam’s room, playing his saxophone.  He’s one of the best players in the school orchestra.  None of us have the heart to tell him that there are no saxophones in a symphony orchestra but he seems content playing whatever pops into his head whenever he likes.  I play the Trombone; it’s an awful instrument.  The horrible tuning is compensated for by being able to ‘hook’ personal possessions from the Euphoniums who sit in front of me and knock them out ‘accidentally’ with the end of the slide if they annoy me.

The only thing a trombone is good for

In the music room there was a first year who’d lost his glasses in a fight with another first year who had done that thing where you whirl your fist around in what the first years have termed a ‘supersonic-haymaker’ – on the final upward twirl, he’d snagged his thumb knuckle on the poor lad’s glasses and sent them across the room – hence his lack of eyesight enhancing framed-glass apparatus.
He’s in hospital now.  Mr Wigwam has got a big cupboard and it has lots of books in it.  We sometimes lock Mazzy in there because he has got big teeth and no one likes him.

[1] The liquorice ones, not real ones, obviously.

[2] The Gallery, presented by Alan ‘Art’ Garfunkle’s Uncle

Monday, First Lesson, Chemistry

Monday 13^th September

Dear diary (it was £4.99),

This morning I ate a bowl of choke-o-pops.  I’ve called them that ever since my aunty choked on some last year.  I also call Artichokes, ‘Aunty-chokes’ after she choked on one last Thursday.  I really wish she’d stop trying to swallow things whole.

They'd look like this if they existed probably, but probably not as well

I’d only just set foot inside the school gates when the bell went.  I don’t know where it goes, but every day someone seems to say, “There goes the bell”. I’ve never seen it go anywhere personally.

Whilst trudging across the school yard towards my house-block I was trying to remember what I’d just been thinking about when I saw two first years dressed as Terry Wogan practicing skateboarding.  I thought this a little strange because the sponsored ‘Terry Wogan Skate-a-thon’ isn’t for a few months yet and everyone knows big Archie Parting is going to win anyway – he was on telly the other day shouting things at people. 

I reached my house-block via a tunnel dug by some fifth years in 1964 (there’s an old grubby book in the library about it[1]) – I actually thought of something really profound when I was in the tunnel about walls having no boundaries when you can dig tunnels but it doesn’t sound as clever right now.  No wonder I failed English in the second year and had to repeat.  Is it ironic that I failed English because I couldn’t answer the question on irony?  Dunno.  Anyway, I opened the door to my tutor room tentatively, hoping I could sneak in unnoticed.  Mr Chipolata saw me immediately, being as he sits directly behind the door and the handle hit him in the back of the head.  He asked me why I was late. I told him I’d been standing near the craft block.  He said that was no excuse and gave me detention.  Next time I’m going to say I was standing near the biology pond; honestly.

This isn't the biology pond, nor is it a 2 week vacation in Chester-le-Street

The bell went for first lesson, Chemistry.  I trudged out of the tutor room with Bazzy, Hazzy and Shazzy.  We traipsed over the yard then plodded into the main building, over the pile of first years that had been knocked out by big Angus McMassive – he stinks.  We had to stand outside the classroom in a line to wait for the teacher Mr Bladam to turn up. He’s always drunk in the staff room so Gary had to go and get him. Gary likes trains. 

Domas the Dank Engine

When I reached my desk, I set my bag on the floor and got my Chemistry notebook out – it’s blue and has stickers of people engaged in various wrestling moves on the front.  One man is receiving a DDT from someone in a half-nelson.  Mr Bladam was obviously getting withdrawal symptoms from the lack of alcohol (he hadn’t had any for three minutes) as he had to leave the room, returning to find the room stinking of gas and a first year in the corner trying to extinguish his blazer (ironically).  The first year had only entered the room to hand his homework in. We learned that some blue stuff added to some red stuff makes this like white foamy stuff that went all over Grippa’s hand and made it all red, melty and sore.  We suggested he leave it like that until the afternoon when we had Biology and we could look at what a real human hand skeleton looks like, but he declined and went to see the school nurse instead.  We got home work – learn the periodic table.  I already know it; my mum’s got one in the dining room.

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[1] It’s called ‘Everything you wanted to know about tunnels but were afraid to ask’ by Doug Attunnell

Introduction

Introduction to the uplifting/horrific/mediocre diary of Barry Surreal (By Kevin Spangles)

Since I’ve known him, Barry Surreal’s life has been a series of random non-linear events that may or may not be connected.  I found this diary in a metal mop bucket with wheels on outside the School Janitor’s cupboard over eight years ago[1] and now for the first time ever, I can reveal the secrets behind Barry’s St. Evander’s School Orchestra musician of the year award preparations, the day he managed to get the top off a highlighter pen in a partially-haunted cupboard, the day he slipped into a pair of apple-catchers, and the adventure(s) he had in the tunnel under the all-weather pitch (apart from the last three).  

Metal Mop Bucket (Sans roues)

All the facts in this blog are not facts and any resemblance the characters bear to people alive or living is purely intercontinental.  Barry attended St. Evander’s between the twentieth and thirtieth centuries and excelled in many subjects including but not limited to dinner time and playtime.  His favourite food was Orange (the colour, not the fruit) and his favourite pastime was indolence.

           

Read on brave listener and allow Barry Surreal[2] to encloak you with his own words from his own pen with the absurd asymmetrical world he saw through his wide innocent eyes somewhere between tranquillity and Wales.  I have added footnotes to explain things you may not be interested in nor care about.  Barry wanted someone to find this diary and read it.  If you know why, please tell me because he won’t.

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[1] Thirteen years ago

[2] Barry is now twenty nine and living in a small chest of drawers in Hartlepool.