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School – the best days of your life?

Well nothing grabbed my imagination in the news this week except maybe the fact that Michael Jackson has gone missing.  What that actually means of course is that the media vultures don’t know where his body is being kept until the day of his funeral.  Aaah shame it’s none of their business really is it?  So this weekend I’ve decided to write up a section from my forthcoming book.  It’s only at the fourth draft stage at the moment so no doubt it will change but this is the bare bones of an episode I witnessed during one lesson at my last school and it’s called…

THE BINDING OF HOWERD

Well for a start with his name was actually Heywood but our deputy head, a Welshman, would insist on calling him Howerd at registration and the name stuck.  As kids go pupil Howerd didn’t have a lot going for him, he did flourish in swat circles however but really that’s as far as it went.  Everything about him seemed out of proportion and without doubt he was the most gangly kid in my year and the lower years come to that.  He was tall for his age which didn’t help matters and to top up his mounting problems his bonce was the length and shape of a rugby ball.  He also appeared to have sunbathed under a colander on a regular basis because his entire face was covered in a mass of dark freckles.

If you ever watched Stingray as a kid you’ll probably remember the aquatic puppets that used to ride around in a huge fish chasing Troy Tempest about, the ones with the speech problem.  Well Raymond’s barnet was fashioned in the same way, straight across at the fringe, straight down at the sides and straight across at the back.  Between his well spaced eyes lay a nose that could’ve easily been used to steer a small boat and below that were a set of railings that a beaver would’ve been proud of.  In a cruel twist of fate God had seen fit to endow Howerd with a pronounced overbite too, and the only advantaged of this strange arrangement nay gift was it enabled him to bite off the back edge off a crusty pie!  He also had a whiny, nasal sounding voice which led me to believe he might’ve been a relative of Janet Street Porter.  Poor sod, he might as well  have been born with a target on his back.

On the day of his binding my class were making their way to the science lab for an afternoon lesson.  When we arrived we were greeted by an open door and no teacher so we piled in and did what most unsupervised kids did in that situation.  Gas taps were lit and turned up full blast, all ten of them.  Fish were frightened in their tanks and paper darts were made and lobbed.  Asbestos was licked only to discover it was in fact tasteless and there was always one kid who would pick up the armadillo shell and use it as a hat for as long as he could get away with it.

The larks and japes carried on but as we clipped the ten minute mark we found we were struggling to keep ourselves amused.  It was then we realised that this was the longest period of time we’d ever been left to our own devices but as is usual in a situation like this you could always rely on the class thug to come up with some new form of entertainment.

The order was passed to a thug subordinate on the back bench and he walked over to the bench in front and said, “Give us yer tie Cassidy, pass it on.”  Within a matter of  minutes the lower ranked thug  had enough school neck wear to rope a Giraffe and then he dutifully handed them over to his leader.  He sat there rocking back an forth on his stool surrounded by his loyal group of Jackals and they were grinning mischievously waiting to find out which weakling was to be persecuted in the name of boredom.  There was an air of mystery around the lab as the reason for the collection wasn’t immediately apparent but it didn’t take long to work out once operation Howerd got underway.

He was unwillingly plucked from his seat at the front of the class and dragged to the back of the room by Nottley’s hoods where he was bound, gagged and finally lashed to a radiator out of view.  At the very point the raiding party sat down the deputy head walked in and informed us that our science teacher had phoned in sick so he would be taking the lesson instead.

The atmosphere was tense to say the least as we knew Roberts was a stickler for the rules and would insist on reading out the register.  Names were called and answered as slowly as possible to put off the inevitable but it was no good he was always going to reach the letter ‘H’ no mater what we did.   “Howerd?”  Nothing!  The silence was deafening.  “Howerd,” he said with a bit more attack in his voice.  In the pin drop silence you could just make out a muffled whimper and the sound of a rubber soled shoe kicking a radiator pipe.  There were a few stifled sniggers from around the room but Roberts hadn’t heard the desperate signs of a school boy gently roasting at the back of the lab.

He boomed, “Where is Howerd, has anybody seen him?”  The class fell silent again.  Well at this stage Howerd must have broken free of some of his restraints because now you could hear the vibrations of the side of a shoe being strummed up and down the length of the radiator like it was a harp.  His mumbling became more audible and so did the laughter from around the class.  Roberts strode up the length of the lab, clipboard in hand, to  the scene of the disturbance with his quarter tips accenting every step he made.  ” Howerd,” he bellowed, “What the hell do think you’re doing down there, get up and don’t be so stupid.   Naturally the whole class erupted in fits of laughter which was only made worse when Roberts informed pupil Howerd that he would be joining him later for a detention.

It was a priceless school moment and I swear it’s all true.  I have no idea what the teachers were on back then (1972) but it seemed the case that if you were a swat you got more detentions than the class oik.  I mean, Roberts didn’t even bother to ask Heywood who tied him up in the first place – unbelievable!

Enjoy the rain at the weekend.  BB signing off ’til next time…

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