Catmachine

The smells of September always stir in me memories of going back to school for the Autumn term. It wasn't all bad; there were the occasional subjects I enjoyed. Well two subjects, English and Art. And fifty per cent of the time English was boring so it was more like one and a half subjects. One problem with Art was that even though I liked it I wasn't exactly talented at it. Despite being one of the few good guys, the teacher kept expecting us to paint and I usually ended up making a mess. Drawing I enjoyed and could be quite good at. But we rarely did drawing. The other problem with Art was that they seemed to think it would be enough if we only did it once a fortnight. Never mind that we had History or French every bloody day . On the weeks we didn't do Art we did something much worse. Woodwork. I still remember my first Woodwork lesson very clearly. We were ushered into the hallowed basement of the wood shop and gathered around as this rough voiced bloke who appare...

GILES IS A NAZI MOTHERFUCKER These words were sprayed in two foot high white letters along the redbrick fascia of my school on a major trunk route through North London. I would imagine that tens of thousands of people saw this heartfelt statement, because even though the school authorities did their best to scrub away the obscenity, the letters remained visible as ghosts on the brick beneath the tall Victorian classroom windows for many years afterwards. I often wondered about the motivation for this graffiti. "Giles" was the Headmaster and an inoffensive figurehead whom I always thought of as a bit like a cut-price version of a minor member of the royal family. I didn't consider such an ineffectual individual worthy of such bile. Furthermore the words had been written, so it was whispered, by a boy who had been expelled for some misdemeanour or other. I really didn't understand this. As far as I was concerned being at the school was a nightmare, the claustrophobic ...

It's rather worrying that sometimes people get so desperate for fleeting moments of superiority over others that they'll stop at almost nothing to achieve them no matter how pathetic they end up looking. Mr Clarke was one such person. A belligerent ghoul who made my life hell from 1976-1977, a so-called teacher who used to drink whiskey in the stationery cupboard between lessons as a result of which he had a large red nose which seemed to enjoy an existence quite separate from that of the rest of his face. He was almost universally hated because of his constant hectoring tone, violent outbursts against the more unruly elements in the class and sarcastic catchphrase " you just couldn't be bothered ". I suspect he knew very well just how much he was despised and feared, which is probably why he drank so much.  In retrospect he is an almost pathetic figure, but of course at the time I was terrified of him. Years later when I first heard The Headmaster Ritual ...