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 KwikSave
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
[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
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.
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 4th 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 4th 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 3rd 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).
[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.
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.
[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.
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 5th 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!!
[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.
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].
[1] Physical
Education, or as some people call it, Sigourney's torture
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
After registration me and Brazzy made our way to the Maths
room which is directly above the French room.
Mrs Function clearly has a creepy fascination with numbers as they’re
all over the room!! They’re on the blackboard, in our books and she even talks
in numbers sometimes. Today she said, “One had two go two the canteenfour dinner. I eight my
dinner there off their tables.” Canteen is the number after thirteen I think. We all had to measure each other and write it
in a graph. Apparently you can tell what
mode it is by looking in the middle of your fingers. I’ll remember that for exam time.
TIS WITCHCRAFT!!!!!
I worked out that the average height of the
class is 8 foot six, but we’re metric now so that’s 8 meters six[2]. I can also do two cubed by median quadratic
matrix square root venn diagrams.
They’re not on the exam though.
We got homework; we had to add up everything that we see from the end of
the lesson until next lesson and hand it in.
Actual footage of someone else's Maths homework
The bell went to signal last break – so I went to Dairylea
house to play table tennis.It’s really
difficult to hit a table back and forward across a net with a racquet.I decided to hide behind the curtains and
pretend I was a bluebottle for a bit until the bell sounded once more to signal
last lesson – Physics.
Barry hiding behind a curtain pretending he's a bluebottle looked nothing like this
Physics is apparently all about movement and density. Kazzy, the slapbag, is dense and doesn’t move
very fast so he should be good at this subject.
He’s not though. Mr Tedious likes
to demonstrate stuff so I like this lesson.
He made some iron filings stick to a magnet. It’s probably the most exciting thing that’s
ever happened to me in my life ever. He
then went too far; he depolarised the magnet and the filings just fell
off. My heart rate still hasn’t gone
back to normal.
Dutch footballer, Arjen Filings
He showed us Fleming's left hand
rule (for electric motors) which shows the direction of the thrust on a
conductor carrying a current in a magnetic field. At least I think that’s what he said – it
looked more like how to accentuate your point whilst rapping.
Yo, yo, yo, homie. West side.
Personally, I think they should give Physics
homework out to people who have to do community service. That’ll teach them! Well, it’ll teach them
Physics at least. At the beginning of
the lesson we managed to trap a first year between our chairs and the leg holes
in the lab tables. We let him out after
10 minutes of struggling. He had chewed one of the metal chair legs off. The teacher gave him detention for chewing in
class. Me and Drazzy were talking so the
teacher came over, pressed his forehead against mine and in a thick Yorkshire
accent said “Have you feeneeshed[1]?”. Still not sure what I did to deserve that. After the lesson I timed it just right so that I left the classroom behind Shazzy, who I fancy. Once out of the room, she went left and I went right. If I do that often enough she might marry me one day.
[1]The
English translation is ‘Have you finished your work because if you haven’t, you
shouldn’t be talking’
[2] Eight metres six metres - so, ten metres in total
Third lesson was Environmental Studies, which the teacher,
Mr Bunsen calls E.V. for some reason. Surely
that would be Environmental Vudies? We all got on the school mini-bus which
every sponsored school event over the past 26 years paid for[1]. It’s got no seat belts.
Who knows?
We drove to a river in the country and
collected a sample of the green foamy acidic water to study. The teacher said that we could tell how
polluted the water was by the insects living in it. I asked if you could tell
by the insects floating upside down coughing up insect-bile in it – he said you
could. I saw a mayfly, a stone fly, a Macfly
and a Fly Tattendent. The teacher said
that the water was very polluted. That
was worth a 20 minute drive in a bus with no suspension over cobbled roads. We got back to the classroom and put the
water samples in the cupboard for next week, or until the teacher gets thirsty
(whichever is soonest). I’m going to
invent an aerosol that sprays ozone back into the air and is propelled with
CFC’s. I might also look into inventing a chicken that lays ozone then we can have loads of ozone layers.
Either the ozone layer or the start bit off Superman
After lunch I ran around the playground and got a stitch,
indigestion and diahorrea, all at the same time. Max[2]
once burped, sneezed, coughed, farted and wee’d all at the same time. He hasn’t been invited back to the computer
club since. There were some girls
playing hopscotch in the corner, one had to go to hospital as her shin bone had
come out through her kneecap. Me, Lazzy
and Cazzy decided to make the corner near the French rooms popular by standing
in it. Loads of people came over to see what the fuss was about until the
entire school yard was empty except for our corner. Everyone is an idiot.
This has been heavily photoshopped and airbrushed.
[1]Each
time they’d raised enough money, inflation had put the price of the mini-bus up
meaning they had to raise more money and so forth until inflation was scrapped
in 1983.
The bell went to signal second lesson of the day, which for
me was IT (Information Technology). Frazzy
says IT stands for ‘Incapacitate Terminals’ which he likes to do by pouring Sprite[1]
down the back of them. He regrets this
when the teacher, Mr Campbell, says that if we’ve finished our work we can load
up ‘JCB Explosion Fatalities[2]’ on
the computers and play that until break-time.
We always start the lesson with a good chuckle at the size of the
teacher’s nostrils and then we get to work scanning and printing dinner
tickets. Razzy sometimes scans in his genitalia
but the computer doesn’t have that good a zoom function so the picture always
comes out blocky. Hazzy told me he saw them
in the showers once and it hadn’t been zoomed at all, they were all blocky in
real life!
I found a way of sending messages to other computers in the
room. I sent a little box pop up which said “Take your glasses off and stand on
them” to Lazzy, which he did. I then
sent one to Brian which said “Look out”, so he stood by the door and one which
accidentally went to the teacher which said “Call that a haircut?”, and he sent
one back which said “No, I call it Colin”.
We all played games for the last ten minutes
of the lesson. Hazzy played kissy-catchy
with himself.
The bell went for first break and I moseyed on down to the Music
block. The caretaker was fixing the door
which had jammed after someone slammed a trumpet in it. We had to go round the
outside of the school to get in from the back way but someone had slammed a
flute in that door. We all stood around
outside watching Qazzy spray graffiti on the wall about how Mr Bladam and Mr Wigwam
were meeting in secret in the staff toilets.
He didn’t have enough wall to explain why they were meeting, people were
making their own stories up by that point anyway. I heard one rumour saying they were meeting
to discuss the offside rule. Dirty boys.
[1]The soft
drink, not the enchanted creature.
[2] An early
version of ‘get-the-ball-in-the-hole’.
I was on time for tutor this morning, Mr Chipolata called
the register. Gazzy was off, apparently
his homework ate his dog[1]. The tutor room is used as an English classroom during
the day and there are copies of the greatest works of English Literature on the
shelves, ‘Great Expectations’, ‘Moby Dick’, ‘Budgie the little Helicopter’. The Oxford Scenglish[2] Dictionary has recently added a few words which have somehow crow-barred themselves into today's dialect such as 'Fantakka'[3], 'Arse'[4] and 'Top Deck'[5]. I use all three all the time, sometimes in the same sentence but never in my diary on a Tuesday.
This is 'Fantakka'
The bell sounded to signify first lesson, French. It was a bit grey outside and when we went
into the classroom, Mr Londis[6] yelled, “Il fait brouilliard” whilst pointing out
of the window. We assumed he’d gone mad
and took our seats. I’ve been doing
French for four years now and I can still only say ‘hello’, ‘goodbye’ and ‘What
damp patch?’ We had to do a listening
test this morning – I thought he said we were having a whistling test so I
failed straight away. We got some
question sheets and we had to answer by listening to the French dialogue on a
tape the teacher played at the front of the class. I have a problem with this – firstly because
the tape player he uses was bought at a car boot sale for 23p and has no volume
dial; secondly, I can’t understand French and thirdly, whenever it gets to the
part of the conversation where they’re about to give you the answer to the
question, a massive articulated lorry goes past in the background and drowns it
out. Why they have to set the listening
test role plays next to busy motorways, I don’t know. I spent the lesson putting speech bubbles on
the people in the French textbook. One woman was saying “Alors!!” and the man
was saying, “No, parliament haven’t passed the bill yet so it’s still legal”.
The most vandalised book of the 20th Century.
We then had a role play, the teacher is a bit
kinky like that. I don’t know what the
curriculum is coming to, I really don’t.
[1] His homework was to make a cyborg from the future out of sellotape and offal
[2] Scottish is now part of English culture
[3] A contraction of the word Phantasmagorical
[4] A contraction of the anus
[5] A 'soft drink' with actual alcohol that children can drink. 302767 cans will cause your liver to fail.
[6] Full name Mr Londis-tenforapoundonechildintheshopatanyonetime
We pushed the door to the main building tentatively, peering
around the heavy set wooden flap into the spooky corridor beyond. Outside the woodwork room, a trail of sawdust
led into the Gent’s toilets and another trail led from the toilets to the stairs
which lead to home economics and beyond.
The Craft Block after it's refurbishment
The metalwork room is just around a corner where darkness seems to bleed
from the walls. Then, without warning,
Mr Midlife leapt out from behind a drinks dispenser with an Incredible Hulk mask on, wishing to be
accepted. We ignored him and went into
the workshop. The room is full of
lathes, cutty machines, grindy machines and glue. I sit right at the front in this room so the
teacher can see me at all times. I can’t be trusted with a hacksaw since that
nasty business with the Archbishop of Leeds.
Arch
Bishop
Leads
Grazzy made a big metal wig which looked great in profile. It completely changed his appearance, making
him look like Phargg off Space Battle
Futures[1]. I’m not very good at metal work so I drew a
picture of a glove that had been left on a Badger on a farm. I got a ‘D’, which isn’t bad as Grazzy only
got a C for his and he used Metal!
Gareth got caught passing chewing gum about and he got
detention – it’s in the school rules apparently that you’re not allowed to chew,
pretend to chew, look like you’re about to chew, chew 10 seconds before
entering and 11 seconds after exiting the room or pass chewing gum about with
intent to chew. He wasn’t even going to
chew – and neither was I. I sneezed,
which the teacher said was still a kind of ‘choo’ and I had to stay back after
class for 0.1 second as detention because he had to get back in case he missed Home and Away otherwise I’d have been
there for 1 and a bit minutes.
Oscar winning film, Home and Away
The bell went to signal the end of school, but after school
we always have band[2] practice
on a Monday. We usually play the entire ‘Hootie and the Blowfish’ back catalogue without
stopping and then go home. We practice
on the stage in the main school hall which is very grand. It’s brightly lit and makes you feel important. They have these really rickety wooden steps
at the side of the stage where you get on and off and it’s really difficult
while holding a brass instrument in your right hand[3]. We’ve got the Musician of the year concert on Friday – I’m playing a solo : ‘Trombones in Vinegar’ by Harold Gherkin.
It’s a haunting piece featuring Bazzy going mental on the gong and
cymbals. Dazzy (who plays the tenor
horn) plays this really high, loud hemi-demi-semiquaver in the middle which the
composer thought added a jaunty air to an already lively piece of music.
Dazzy's actual music for 'Trombones in Vinegar'
I have to twirl my trombone round my head 27
times when I have 2 bars rest in the middle. I’ve let go twice during rehearsals and knocked
out an entire row of Baritones. I’ll
take my bone[4]home
with me and practice there. I’ve got a
chance of winning the Musician of the
year because everyone else in the band are on tune-a-day book one, lesson two; a tune called ‘Dancing about with my socks aflame’. I’m on tune-a-day
book seven, lesson 8; a tune called ‘The
little F march’, which only has the note ‘F’ in it repeated for 8 minutes. We’ll just have to see what happens. I walked home through Tazzy’s garden, it’s a
short cut. So is his hair.
[1] Sadly
cancelled after 0.5 episodes
[2]
Sometimes people didn’t turn up, saying they thought the practice had been
‘banned’.
[3]This
happened in medieval times with stone steps and swords, it’s so someone coming up
the steps can’t attack you with their Xylophone sticks.
[4] All the
cool kids used to say ‘bone’ instead of ‘Trombone’ but the cool kids never used
the word ‘cool’.
