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.
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| Helen/Alan |
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| Bertrand |
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
[6] Actually 'Domesday' because Barry is an idiot
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