9: Bad Romance
AT ten on a drizzly, grey Saturday morning at the start of October and dressed in blue Reeboks with orange stripes, blue jeans and this cosy cobalt-blue woollen sweater over my favourite pale blue polo-shirt (with dark blue and red shoulder-stripes) and the blue Adidas baseball cap, I clambered into the back of a white Volvo estate and headed off to support Michael Crooks and Leo Trent in their first cross-country race of the season. Why? Oh, you know. Leo asked me. Mikey asked me. Leo, in a navy tracksuit and blue Barbour, was very excited and, bouncing about enthusiastically, crashed his sports-bag into my side more than once. He kept thanking me for coming but the truth was I wanted to be close to Michael again. Besides CD Review was doing Offenbach. Ticket to Snoozeville, right? 'Cept for the Can Can.
I felt tired. When I finally got to sleep, I had this weird dream in which I was sitting on a ledge halfway up a mountain with Nick Shelton. The mountain overlooked an angry sea. We were watching people of all ages trudging up a stony path. Refugees, they were dressed in rags and clutching cheap suitcases and plastic bags. Behind us, towards the summit of the barren grey peak was a white temple with friezes of scenes from ancient times carved in its walls. The friezes showed farmers driving cattle through water-logged fields. As we watched, the waves rose, raging more furiously under the leaden sky whilst the line of people oozed closer. Shelton was wearing this dark blue T-shirt and white shorts. His bare knees were drawn up to his chest, his bare feet rested on cinders. We were holding hands. Suddenly the sea swelled massively into one gigantic wall and lashed at the people on the path, like a tiger's claw at a mouse. Most of them were swallowed up in the grey-white water. Shelton leaned over and kissed me on the lips. Then we stood up, brushed ash and cinders from our clothes and, still hand-in-hand, walked to the temple. A bell began tolling. My alarm clock. What the hell? Maybe I shouldn't sleep under a poster of lava-spilling volcanoes. But at least I was dry. Painfully hard, but dry, so I spat into my hand and tossed off in under a minute, my body shuddering from top to toe as I squirted into a tissue which I flushed down the bog. But Nick Shelton? He was in 4D. That wasn't good. But he was sooo hot…
The match was a triangular against two other schools in some God-forsaken hole in Fuck-knows, Bollock-dale. Leo claimed the course had a near-vertical hill, a stream and a great deal of thick, dense woodland. Perfect for running, he reckoned, smacking his palms together with questionable relish. Now, probably like you, I've never understood why seemingly sane people volunteer to slog through six miles of mud, water and thorn-bushes. Seems the very definition of lunacy to me. And you, I guess.
When we arrived at school, Oggie Ogden, the bulbously nosed, curly-haired master-in-charge, promptly commandeered Mr Trent's Volvo as a 'support-vehicle' for the minibus so I found myself crushed with the rear-door handle jammed into my kidneys as Philip Brudenall and a Sixth Former called Hood piled in the back with captain Gary Dunn in the front. Leo was virtually sitting in my lap. Looping his left arm round my shoulders, he smiled happily and said ''This is cosy.''
''Loverly,'' I grunted. ''Keep still, for God's sake. You weigh a hell of a lot more than you look. You're crushing my knees.''
''Just hope he farts on your bollocks,'' chirruped Brudenall, who was also squashed against me, thigh to thigh. ''Get your cheapies free.''
Leo, blushing, giggled like a May Queen. My heart jolted. He was really pretty when he blushed. But what the fuck did Broody Minor mean?
''There was a young fellow called Smalls,'' he squeaked, ''Who performed magic tricks with his balls…''
''Are you running too, JP?'' asked Hood.
''No chance,'' I said, glad of the distraction. ''What do you take me for?''
''A sadist?'' Brudenall suggested.
Leo, giggling again, whispered something about boys' legs which made them both giggle and me redden like a robin 'cos Broody Minor had gorgeous legs. It was a bloody long journey, especially when Leo and Broody started describing last night's Terry and June, in which June got a job and accidentally poured hot tea over Terry's bollocks. Leo did these wicked impressions of Terry Scott going ''Oh Juuuune,'' and ignoring my attempts to shift the focus to a really good Starsky and Hutch (some woman had blasted from Starsky's past to kill him) or how the French had snatched Knockout from the Yugoslavs on the last game after the Yugoslavs fell into the pool - ''Oh, Juuuune,'' goes Trent again, then, thank God, Brudenall chirruped ''There was an old fellow from Harrow, who tried to have sex with a sparrow…,'' fished out this Rubik's Cube and started twisting it one way then another whilst the opening movement of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony, this epic, exciting dance, blasted from the CD player. Leo bounced happily on my lap with the last line of the show, ''Juuuune, I'm sitting on my nutcrackers.'' God Almighty. ''Piiiip, I'm sitting on Jonny's nutcrackers, ha ha ha…''
''Mary had a little lamb, it had a massive willy…''
''Bollocks.''
Brudenall had dropped the Rubik's Cube and was scrambling round my feet to retrieve it. Somehow his elbow ended up in my face, his hand in my lap. Godder Almightier.
''I like your cap,'' simpered Leo.
''Didn't we have a loverly time the day we did cross-country?'' I sang mentally.
My trusty Timex told me it was nearly eleven. God Almighty. It felt like I'd been here a lifetime. The rolling moors were undulating impressively into the distance, onto the foothills and stark, black crags of Ilkley Moor, the Dales rising majestically beyond. Oh bollocks. This was the Arse-cheek of Fuck-Dale. It reminded me of our Outdoor Centre, some converted, whitewashed farmhouse in Backside, Bollockland where the school scouts went for activity weekends, the Christian Union went for prayer retreats and classes went to 'bond' playing midnight poker in the eight-bed dormitories and hiking over the hills in bracing winter winds. I'd been twice, once in 4M and once with the Christian Union, when sneaking out to the pub was replaced by seemingly endless guitar-strumming and hand-waving over baked beans and bacon delicately charred over a camp-fire. We were due to go again in the new year with Bunny. I couldn't wait.
We crept towards a so-called village, a miserable clump of cottages and farmsteads huddling together for mutual protection under a grim, grit-stone crag. The road, a tortuous, twisting line of grey like a worn-out typewriter-ribbon, wound through a patchwork of fields, the freshly ploughed furrows reminding me of the channels in pieces of corduroy. A clutch of plump black rooks were the only living inhabitants of this landscape, perching cockily on the out-stretched arms of a tatty scarecrow constructed from some rough sticks of wood, a bag of straw and some baggy, faded old clothes. As the Volvo lumbered by, they rose from their slumber, sodden black rags squawking in protest, then settled back in their original positions, spying our progress with beady eyes.
'Crow laughed (wrote Ted Hughes)
He bit the Worm, God’s only son,
Into two writhing halves…
God went on sleeping.
Crow went on laughing.'
''Oh, Juuuune,'' said Leo, ''There was a young runner called Rick, who had an enormous… ''
Grumpily, I plugged in my earbuds: 'Didn't we have a lovely time the day we went to Fuck-dale?' On the brow of a hill stood a small, forlornly bedraggled gathering of sick-looking poplar trees, stark, aloof and rigid, guarding the landscape beneath.
Leaving civilisation behind, we jolted painfully up some stone-strewn cart-track through a sparse forest to a tarmacked area just below a wind-swept grassy slope. I could barely feel my legs as the load disgorged from the Volvo, first Hood, then Brudenall, then finally Leo, who like managed to brush his fingers suggestively over my groin. Like, ticket to Yikesville, right?
Crooks, with a green tracksuit top draped round his shoulders, was showing Hugh Stern from U5D these new banana-coloured running-shoes he'd got. His bare, beautifully sculpted legs made my stomach flip over. Again I wondered what might have been if his dad hadn't come in. Nothing, as it transpired. Mikey's news, jabbered into my ear with hot-bre
athed excitement, was that he had done it at last with Katie, and was consequently a virgin no more.
''Man, it was epic,'' he whispered, emerald eyes glowing. ''We were making out in my room and then she just… well, you know…''
Actually, Michael, I didn't fucking know, thanks for reminding me.
''Twenty minutes, Jonny. Twenty minutes! Oh God… you gotta do it with Claire. You'll love it. It's sooo amazing. Sex is the best thing EVER! I mean, like EVER!!!!''
Fucking hell. Mikey was two months younger than me. He'd only just turned fifteen, the lucky jammy bastard. Swallowing my searing jealousy, I offered my congratulations.
''One-nil to the Ginger Ninja,'' grinned Crooks.
Bollocks. Life is sooo unfair. I reckoned I was just about the only virgin left in the bloody class apart from saddoes like Fosbrook, who couldn't even get VD off a prozzie, and Huxley, who didn't want it anyway 'cos it would stop him swotting. I mean, I was such a loser.
The black clouds obscuring the sky looked very threatening. Mr Trent considered his muddy paintwork ruefully whilst I grumpily volunteered Leo's car-washing skills and eyed the course. It looked the kind some utterly insanely deranged mountaineer might enjoy. Leo touched knuckles with Brudenall, said ''Heghlu'mekh qaq jajvam,'' which, apparently, is Klingon for 'Today is a good day to die' and scampered to the minibus. Yikes. At least they were still virgins, and, given the Klingon, likely to remain so for a very long time.
I was glad not to be running even though I quite liked the inter-house cross-country competition we had to do every February. After two weeks of practice runs, the house-captains would choose the top ten runners for their teams then we'd do another practice run, as a team, before the race itself in the week after half-term. At first, I'd hated pounding grimly past these like moss-shrouded headstones in this creepy Victorian cemetery, trudging through these soggy woods, hurdling this gurgly stream with whippy branches lashing my thighs and arms, mud spattering my legs and face, rain soaking my hair and clothes, sweat stinging my eyes.
I always got this crippling stitch halfway round. Crying off with asthma or some other sick-note only worked for so long. You had to run twice, whatever, even by yourself in April after school. Ultimately there was no escape. Even Fozzie's eczema only worked so long. We joked that even if you only had one leg, they'd expect you to hop round the course. Forget about the end of your crutch sinking into the mud. To add insult to injury, the teachers, snugly wrapped in sheepskin coats and furry hats, huddled together under a selection of massive golf-umbrellas yelling that we all needed good, hard boots up our arses. Anyone caught cheating was sent twice round the pitches and pelted with mud. Character-building, they said. Anyway, it was always freezing and I usually wore black woollen Thinsulate gloves. Twice I'd actually like walked the six-mile course with Maxton and Stewart as a kind of protest and finished 202nd out of 224. Result. Got me out of the team and really fucked off Jennings, my idiot Maths teacher and Lower School house-tutor. Anyway, in 4M, Gray, who had to tie his black-framed specs round his head with some twatty piece of elastic to stop 'em falling off, said something like 'you gotta do it, JP, so make the best of it. You'll keep warmer and finish faster and the faster you finish, the sooner you go home.'
Which was true. Once you'd finished and reported your time, you could go home. Boys like Crooks, Hood and Dunn were usually off by three while we were still delicately picking our way across the stream. Me and Maxton weren't getting the bus till like quarter-to-five or something stupid. So I changed my approach and ran with Gray. He made me run through the inevitable stitch, timed my hurdle so I cleared the water, encouraged me to keep going when I collapsed, panting, against a tree, sobbing I couldn't run any more, I could hardly breathe, I'd left my inhaler in the changing room… I came in 51st, my highest placing ever, and won Jacko's approval and Gray's praise. He finished two places ahead of me. Usually he was in the top twenty. I know he got bollocked by Benjy Goddard, his house-tutor, but he didn't care. He'd made me into a runner. I got in the Murray team and finished 47th in the race (7th in the house), impressing myself and delighting Wingnut. Most importantly, I was able to enjoy Maxton and Stewart lumbering home a bazillion hours later and call them losers. Last year, I'd improved to 32nd (5th in Murray), and set myself the target of breaking into the top 30 this year whilst my loser mates blew smoke-rings in the crem.
Whilst the runners loosened up, I chatted with Leo's dad. He'd brought a flask of coffee and several cups, for which I was already grateful. The wind was chilling my fingers. Idly, I twisted Brudenall's Rubik's Cube to line up 3 reds. The Beethoven symphony was in the final frantic allegro con brio. I lined up 6 greens. Ha. Piece of piss. I couldn't see why Max thought it so awesome. Then I realised the reds were no longer aligned. Bollocks.
Suddenly Leo, in this gold and navy running-vest and slinky navy blue shorts, trainers dangling from his hand, dashed back to the car wailing that he'd forgotten his socks. Ragging everything from his bag, he said he couldn't run without socks.
''Course you can,'' his father reassured him.
''I can't! My feet'll blister.''
''Oh, for Heaven's sake,'' I said from the passenger-seat, ''You can borrow mine.''
His face lit up as I unlaced my trainers and stripped off my socks.
''Thanks so much, Jonny. You're a life-saver,'' he said breathlessly as he pulled them over his small, pale feet and scampered away.
''They'll come back filthy,'' remarked Mr Trent.
''Doesn't matter,'' I shrugged. ''They'll wash.''
''Still,'' he said, ''It was a kind thing to do.'' He watched his son warming up with the others, stretching and loosening muscles. ''He thinks the world of you, Jonathan, admires you very much. It's a kind of hero-worship, I guess, but you're like his role-model, you know? He wants to be just like you. Actor, musician, cricketer, all those things you excel in. You lending him your socks will be the best thing that's ever happened. Unfortunately he'll talk about it for days.'' There was genuine affection in his voice. ''But you're one of the good guys, Jonny. He could do a lot worse than have you as his role-model.''
Yikes. I'd never considered myself a role-model before, you know? I was almost proud, until I remembered the shameful secret buried deep in my soul, the worm of guilt which gnawed at my heart and burrowed into my every waking thought. If you knew, Mr Trent, what I was really like, you'd take your pretty little son and run for his life. Embarrassed, I picked up this Spiderman comic and leafed through some confrontation between Spidey and Doc Ock then dug out my Chemistry book. We had this massive fuck-off test coming up, like everything you never wanted to know about lead. Man. Who'd be a schoolboy? It's sooo shit. Especially with a Chemistry teacher like Mr Jones, unpredictable and a bit too 'down with the dudes' for someone who resembled Barney Rubble. I mean, come on. We don't even call each other 'dudes'. Who the fuck does?
'Lead (Pb)
Occurence(Bollocks. I'd misspelled it!)
It occurs as 'Galena' (Pb2+S2- - led sulphide). (Oh for God's sake…led?). It is found over most of the earths crust. (Is there an apostrophe here? I wasn't 100% on apostrophes.)
Atomic number is 82. It is a Group IVA element like carbon.
Ion: loses 2 electrons to form Pb2+ ion.
The IV oxidation state is also possible i.e. Pb4+O22-.'
What the hell did it mean? I had absolutely no fucking idea, you know?
Anyway
'Physical Properties
Lead is a typical metal; it is very soft and malleable and is a good conductor of heat and electricity.
It gives a blue flame with white streaks in the flame test.
Lead has a bluish-white lustre, but tarnishes quickly.
Lead exposed to moist air tarnishes due to an insoluble white layer of lead hydroxide/lead carbonate mixture forming on the surface…'
There were 14 bloody pages of this stuff, ranging from the formation of lead (II) oxide and the effect of dilute sulphuric and hydrochloric acid (no
ne) to uses
'1. Manufacture of sheets for lead roofing.
2. Manufacture of batteries.
3. Making various alloys e.g. solder and pewter.
4. Lead compounds used to be used in paints but less so now due to the risk of poisoning.'
I wondered if sucking the end of my pencil might poison me. Possibly. Though it wouldn't get me out of the test. Even if my head swelled up like a bloody barrage-balloon.
'Lead (II) nitrate is a soluble; forms an anhydrous white powder. It decrepitates and melts to give yellow lead (II) oxide, nitrogen dioxide and oxygen.
2Pb2+ (NO3-)2 (s) → 2Pb2+O2- (s) + 4NO2 (g) + O2 (g)
NB This is the best nitrate to use for preparing nitrogen dioxide because there is no water for crystallization.
2. In the test for hydrogen sulphate ide gas, filter paper soaked in lead (II) nitrate solution can be used instead of lead ethanoate solution giving the same black ppt of lead (II) sulphide.'
Mega-yawn-o-bloody-rama! God Almighty. Someone just shoot me. Why hadn't he picked silver? There were only 4 pages on silver. And it was more interesting than bloody lead. I mean, you didn't have a lead jubilee, did you? Or a lead anniversary? You didn't give your bird a lead bracelet for her birthday, did you? The Silver Fox sounded cooler, sexier than the Lead Fox. The FA Cup wasn't made of lead, was it? And him in the Fantastic Four was the Silver Surfer not the Lead Limper. Grinning, I began sketching in the back of my Chemistry book what the Lead Limper might look like in a stand-off with Doctor Octopus and Spiderman. Doc Ock's flailing tentacles reminded me now of the RE project I was supposed to be doing on Hindu Gods. There was this one called Brahma with like four arms and three faces. Bloody hell, he'd be hard to sneak up on, eh? Especially by the Lead Limper who moved at like Nought Miles an Hour 'cos his left leg was like half as long as his right one and he had this really heavy costume and no Super Powers except absorbing X-rays, so he might be all right in The Hulk or against the Silver Fox, who I was gonna do next.
Anyway, I liked projects. They were a chance to spend a month or so with my head buried in a bunch of books then writing a report. The best thing I'd ever done at school was my history project on the Napoleonic Wars for Bush-head Bleakley. I still had it, in two pink folders, 77 pages of foolscap covered in my angularly rounded blue-black script. It was entitled THE REVOLUTIONARY AND NAPOLEONIC WARS and was by Jonathan D. Peters, 4M. It was divided into two sections, the first containing biographies of four significant figures, Napoleon Blownapart (described on page 5 as 'poor, out of favour and often hungry' – in 1795, not when he was Emperor, obviously), Horatio Nelson, Arthur Wellesley and André Massèna, and the second, pages 14 to 76, twelve chapters beginning with 'The War of Inaction' and 'The First Italian Campaign' and concluding with 'The Last Attempt' and 'Peace'. It was illustrated with nine colour pictures and eighteen maps which I'd traced out of the history books (15 in the Bibliography on page 76!) from the local library or off my own bookshelf. The map of Holland 1793-5, with all the rivers, islands and Zuyder Zee to shade blue, had taken ages, as had Denmark and the Northern Powers. Bloody Skagerrak and Kattegat! Thank God for Russia, just a white page ('cos of all the snow, yeah?) with an orange dot for Smolensk and a red line for the Belorussia-Ukraine border.
I'd particularly enjoyed researching Wellington's battles in Spain and the Retreat from Moscow - 'On September 20th a rain-storm stopped the blaze. Napoleon decided to withdraw to Smolensk for food and supplies but he made a fatal error. He withdrew back the same way that he had come. There was nothing along that route and, when the French were halfway between Moscow and Smolensk, winter closed in. Cossacks and peasants also closed in, cutting off stragglers. The French had left Moscow with 100,000 men but when they reached Smolensk they only 40,000 left. [Had I really omitted 'had'?] There were no supplies and the withdrawal continued.
'The temperature fell to thirty degrees of frost and the French retreated as quickly as possible. The Grand Army that had crossed the River Nieman in June, 1812, now re-crossed it but this time a beaten horde of ragged men.'
Bush-head called it 'A highly competent project; carefully researched + well written.' He said I was a good story-teller, but I enjoyed telling those stories. I wasn't so sure about Wingnut's. Sure, the myths behind the gods were interesting, although the gazillion incarnations of Siva confused me, but why worshipping Kali, Vishnu and Ganesh was perfectly OK and worshipping Zeus, Poseidon and Hades was not confused me more. I mean, like if I said I worshipped Odin and Thor, I'd get a) laughed at and b) locked away. But if I worship some god with an elephant's head I don't, right? Or some old psycho-twat who sawed off his own kid's foreskin with a fucking flint-stone (YIKES AND YOUCH!) is not like child abuse (even though they still do it, albeit with a knife not a blunt stone) but fine 'cos it's Jewish, right? But Apollo who loved rather than mutilated a beautiful boy isn't OK 'cos he's Greek, yeah? And Thor with his mighty hammer doesn't like exist but the guy with the elephant head and a zillion flailing Doc Ock arms does? I mean, the world is such a load of old bollocks, you know? Anyway, it's not like any of them are actually real, is it? Not like Wellington and Blownapart.
In the back of the Chemistry book, I found where me and Maxton had predicted the Top 10 for 26th February. We'd both correctly named Blondie as Number One and the Ramones at number 8, but he got Elvis Costello new in at five and we both had the Whispers at two instead of three. Honourable draw. Facing page, the predictions for 4th March, and other lists by MWG, PL, GDH, Bob, and AC. For some reason MWG (Gray) had only bothered with the Top Five. Curiously, none of us had reckoned on 'the bravest animals in the land, [that's] Captain Beaky and his Band', leaping twenty-four places to number three, but who the fuck had, except Terry Wogan, who loved it? Though, to be fair, we loved it too and sang it at the tops of our voices in RE to piss off Wingnut. Fozzie did Batty Bat, 'who had a wheeze to fly up into the trees,' Max was Artful Owl, 'that clever fellow,' Gray was Timid Toad, 'his eyes a-popping', Stewart was Reckless Rat, who 'stood there in his reckless hat' and I was Captain Beaky himself, 'who, leaping off, said ''follow me'' and ran right into a tree'. The class loved it, so much so that when we went to Andy Collins' birthday do, he'd got us all 'HISSING SID IS INNOCENT' T-shirts. Wingnut, inevitably, hated it. With such a passion he made us pick up all the litter from his classroom floor, the nonce.
We'd also guessed the number of new entries to the Top Forty chart, listing by initial the eight of us who had passed the book round the back of Barney's boring lab. AEC had the lowest, at 14, GDH the highest at 27, JDP for 20 and MWG for 22. The correct number was 21, so me and Gray won bragging rights and shared the Mars Bar prize. Then there were four pages covered in Maxton's handwriting listing the Top Ten in reverse-order through May and June, some song called 'I'd do it in a heartbeat' (and I bloody would if I could, and so would you, eh?) entering at 24, and 'Gary Numan (pillock)' added in pencil. Shit. I'd only got 2 that week. Bloody Undertones and their perfect bloody cousin, eh?
I also found Stewart and Gray's epically awesome Pinka's Gang, an entire cast of animal cartoons inscribed in the back of my Chemistry book with my Waterman, because only I used blue-black ink. Mousey, Froggo, Munko, Fat Cat, Herbert Horse, Piggo (my favourite) and Pinka herself, a dog with massive floppy ears and her name on a collar, were arranged around the greeting '' 'Hi!' say the Pinka Gang!'' They cropped up at various places in all my Science books, mainly because I sat with Gray and Stewart quite a lot. I minded that my Chemistry book had become a graphic novel for the form because brainiacs like Huxley and Bainbridge sniggered at my shit homework. In a way, I preferred Gray doodling on the back on my hand. That was where Pinka had first appeared, a sketch in blue Pentel on my left hand. It'd made me laugh in an especially tedious Geography lesson on the movement of glacial moraine and I'd quite enjoyed having my skin graffitied. Gray had also tried balancing as many pencils as possible on my ears. Many French lessons passed with me sitting statue-still hoping the clatter of another failur
e would not alert whoever was droning on at the front. Our record, a rather respectable five, held for months, till Martin Cooke managed to get six on one of Huxley's, which wasn't fair, 'cos Huxley had massive elephant-ears, though Huxley was all right really. He had about as much movement as a tree in cement and could never decide whether to do PE with glasses on or glasses off. Glasses on and he was like an uncoordinated bear thrashing through a jug of custard. Glasses off, oh boy. It was like 'are those my feet?'
Anyway, fun though Pinka's Gang were, they were nothing compared to the characters Maxton and I had created in my music book under our setting of 'Hey diddle diddle, the cat and the fiddle' (G major, with one sharp, 3-4 dance rhythm, an allegro tempo, very simple and rather dull). The super-thin pencil-head of Jocelyn Nosepick was telling Mr D. Bimp of Kent that he was a pillock whilst Mr D. Bimp of Kent, a Sponge-Bob lookalike, appeared several times, announcing first ''I am bent'', then ''I hate cheese'' and proclaiming my sketched melody for 'If all the world were paper, and all the sea were ink' as ''silly.'' I had no idea where Mr D. Bimp of Kent had come from but I had created Miss Jocelyn Nosepick. Maxton had supplied the drawings and the legends LIVERPOOL FC and ZAPHOD BEEBLEBROX, the spaces shaded in pencil.
Bored, I returned to my swotting, wondering if, during the test, I dared insert one of my favourite Laurel and Hardy lines - 'you can lead a horse to water but a pencil must be led' ha ha ha. Perhaps I should. I was feeling fairly cocky, as Jane Maxton would've said if she'd actually bothered to talk to me, like, ever, like after Oliver when Philip had introduced me with a somewhat proud 'JP's my best mate' and she'd gone 'I loved you in 'Consider Yourself' with Adam (Austen who played the Artful Dodger and had a voice like a fucking food-mixer)' and I'd just gone ketchup-red and stammered a bit. Anyway, I'd done this brilliant History test and followed it up with an equally awesome German test. I was so proud of the History test I'd showed it to my folks:
'1. Stalin ruled strictly and ruthlessly yet he introduced voting etc. Industry picked up and the standard of living rose. But his purges were unfair and brutal. He was hated but made progress.' Got a massive red √. Yay!
'2. Industry. More money was put aside for industry but strikes were forbidden. The workers were fed but conditions remained bad. This improved greatly and coal, oil, steel, iron etc was produced, and improved. & increased.' Another red √.
'Agriculture
Excess food was bought from peasants but they still didn't own land. Conditions improved for them but they were still virtually serfs. State farms set up. More food produced. Peasants forced to produce more food.' Running out of time. Ungrammatical sentences. Know what I mean? Probably not. (See? Cocky. Massive √).
'Justice
This was almost non-existent. With Show Trials and sentences before trial in the Media and the newspapers people didn't have much chance in Stalin's courts. There were executions, deportations and tortures carried out by Cheka – the Secret Police. Terror reigned as it tried to combat Terror.'
18 from 20 and an 'intelligent engagement with the issues.' Ha. I knew my Stalin. Maxton got a lukewarm 10 for the list he copied from my book 'cos he just wrote down the list. He didn't add anything new. If I'd been Stalin…
Anyway, to the German quiz:
'1. Ich werde Sie nicht heute Abend am Bahnhof treffen. √
2. Er ablehnte meine Offerte ab. √
3. Ich habe meine Pfeife angezündete. √
4. Die Strasse ist gut anzünden. √
5. Es hat endlich zuregnen aufgehört.' √
Und so weiter for ten out of ten, as Beaky recited his favourite poem:
'As you set out on life's arduous hike,
You want to get what you want to like.
But when you look back with a sense of regret,
You learn to like what you bloody well get. '
And I'd responded with mine:
'If you can laugh when skies are grey,
If you can laugh when grief holds sway,
If you can laugh in the darkest day,
You'll probably laugh when they cart you away.'
Paulus had giggled like a gerbil while the rest of the class fell about and Beaky's craggy face softened as he presented me with another square of chocolate and my volcanic sneeze set Paulus off again.
I was smiling again when a filthy red Fiesta lumbered up the hill to make my life complete. To my surprised delight, Alistair Rose got out of the driver's door. He was dressed in black jeans, a navy blue hoodie and this black Peter Storm anorak. Bollocks, I forgot. Bobby, his twatty little brother, was in the race too. Ha. He'd have to wade through mud and rain, the little twat. Bobby Rose was a first-prize twat. He'd been in Oliver too, one of the also-rans in Fagin's gang who had clearly resented every moment I was on that stage intead of him.
Dumping my books, gabbling something to Mr Trent and grabbing my black Regatta parka, the one with the fur-trimmed hood, I left the Volvo and strolled over, this big grin on my face. Ali was here. Despite the angry black clouds blotting out the sky, my world had suddenly and unexpectedly brightened up like Mikey's banana-shaded shoes.
Out: A Schoolboy's Tale Page 9