by Rikki Brown
‘What did you just say?’
‘Winker sir, that’s Watson’s nickname.’
He opened the door and shoved us both out into the corridor.
‘You pair of thugs, I promise you that if I ever catch you at anything ever again I’ll skin you alive and Nesbitt won’t stop me.’
He went back into his room and slammed the door.
As we walked back along the corridor Winker spoke, ‘That man’s gonnie give himself a stroke so he is.’
We sat our prelims in December and eagerly awaited the results as it was the first time that we had learned they would have any direct bearing on our futures. The exams were conducted in a room with the desks placed a few feet apart, out of whisper range, and an adjudicator roamed up and down the aisles to watch for cheating. We were given an hour and a half to complete each exam and I was confident that I would pass everything except Maths.
During Maths I sat and scratched my head while Spig, a pupil who carried his books in a briefcase, sat in the adjacent desk scribbling away like a demon, I thought to myself, ‘What a bastard.’
I had written my name on the paper and little else. The rest was as usual totally beyond me … y plus x equals what. Nope, haven’t got a scooby. After about half an hour I thought that I’d better write something on the exam paper so without any rhyme or reason I started writing answers which probably bore no relation to the question. I lived in hope.
On Arithmetic I sailed through and was supremely confident that I’d passed. I finished the paper with half an hour to go and spent the remainder of the time sniggering at the facial expressions of the two arithmetic lepers who looked as lost as ever. Me, I was good at this, so good I hadn’t even put my workings down on the paper. I was putting the mental into mental arithmetic.
The results were due in January after the Christmas break so we’d have a good Christmas and worry about the outcome in the New Year.
The school dances were looming and due to lack of people in fourth, fifth and sixth year we would have to amalgamate for the purpose of filling the hall. We were to play the gig accompanied by a mobile disco worked by Tiger Tim Stevens. Tim had risen to fame after a stint as a contestant on the telly game show The Sky’s the Limit.
Tim lived across the back from me and we’d played football many times prior to his telly debut but he had never cracked a light about it to any of us. When the news broke that he’d been on the telly he became the butt of a million inane jokes. Of course he didn’t help his street cred by getting posters printed with the words ‘star of The Sky’s the Limit’ on them. I periodically still hear from Tim and in the early nineties we even did a radio panto together in which I played the roles of Taggart and Rambo. I won’t bore you with details but the show was taped and Tim lent me the mastercopy, which I promptly lost. So, every so often I get a call from Tim asking me if I’ve found the tape, and each time I tell him that it’s lost, lost forever. In fact, as lost things go, this is the most lost anything has ever been. This doesn’t stop Tim periodically phoning looking for it and the last tape inquiry was made between the hours of 1pm and 3pm on Sunday, 4 July 2009. I know the exact date because I was having my son Joshua christened by the Reverend Kenneth Main at the Old Martyrs Church in Paisley and I’d left my mate Lorraine in my house to deal with the caterers. On my return she informed me that Tiger Tim had called and left the message that he was going to kick my c*** in. That’s not only a terrible word that I never use or write in its full entirety, but it’s also in my case anatomically completely incorrect. But that’s Tim for you, never a man to let biological impossibilities get in the way of a good threat.
The band had gone through a few changes since we played our previous school dance glory gig. Ronnie had left after contracting some brain virus or another and had to spend six months in the Southern General. Kenny and I went to see him and the steroid treatment he was receiving had made his eyes look as though they were popping out of his head. Even so he was still the least ill person on his ward as there was some sorry sights, and it was quite frightening seeing all the people with shaved heads and enormous scars. I tried not to stare but no matter how hard I tried my eyes were strangely drawn.
Ally told us he was leaving the band because his new girlfriend had told him to because she didn’t like us. We referred to her forever after that as Yoko. Kenny’s father had forbidden him with the warning that ‘damn banjos, tarts and education don’t mix’. As Kenny’s father was really scary I’d have heeded his warning too. Kenny’s dad was so scary that when I was up at Kenny’s with a girl I’d been dating a couple of weeks and he came into the bedroom and asked, ‘And who’s this young lady?’ him just even talking to me put me into a state of panic and I could not remember her name. My mind went completely blank and I prefer to blame the fear Kenny’s father instilled rather than me simply not bothering to learn her name off by heart. She wasn’t really that good looking and was really just one of those stop-gap girls you go about with until something better comes along. And she would have remained my interim love interest if she hadn’t chucked me for not knowing what she was called. Talk about touchy.
There’s a great Warren Zevon song called ‘Looking for the Next Best Thing’. This could have been whatever-her-name-was’s theme song.
My musical interlude did pay off eventually when I co-wrote two songs with Michael Mara for a Wildcat theatre show. I’d always been a fan of Michael Mara and I was chuffed to bits with the opportunity to work with him. I remember the two songs well, but I’m willing to bet he doesn’t.
Romance, if you could indeed get it, was a funny thing, full of holding hands, making plans for the future and being in love, or at least thinking you were. The first really romantic couple in our year was Linda Brady and Gordon ‘Gags’ Thomson, who became known as the Puke Twins. God, they made everyone sick eating each other’s faces in the common room, the goo-goo eyes they made at each other in the classrooms and the writing of each other’s names on their school bags in big enormous letters covered by a love heart.
Ally viewed the spectacle with more distaste than the rest of us. ‘He’s a big poof,’ said Ally.
Winker didn’t agree with this, ‘Well how come he’s got a burd then?’
Ally explained, ‘That’s just a front in’t it. I mean look at his hair, he tongs it and in my book that makes him a poof.’
Winker was still confused, ‘I don’t get it.’
‘Look,’ Ally went on, ‘the first thing poofs dae is to get themselves a burd to allay suspicion, everyone knows that.’
We were still a bit lost.
‘Well whit about the guys who’ve got burds and arenae poofs then?’
‘Look don’t confuse the issue, I’m telling ye the guy’s a poof, have ye seen him in the shower after P.E., he’s always first in and last oot. He’s a knob watcher.’
Winker wouldn’t believe it. ‘You’re only jealous cos he’s going out with Linda Brady and you’re not.’
‘Aye right, I widnae have her in a Lucky Bag.’
About a week later it was rumoured that Linda was pregnant, even though she wasn’t. She missed her period and had told her pal Jenny Fraser in confidence and Jenny had told me in confidence. I might have mentioned it to other people and they couldn’t keep a secret. In other words, I can keep a secret, the people I tell can’t. Her missed period refuelled the discussion.
‘So what,’ said Ally. ‘I could get a burd up the duff if I wanted tae, he’s still a big poof.’
Gags was a big guy and when he heard that Ally was slinging aspersions in his direction he beat him up. All Ally would say after his humiliating doing was that he couldn’t fight him properly cos he was too busy protecting his arse in case Gags tried to shag him. He wasn’t believed.
Bullying was part of the normal school curriculum, usually a double period on a Friday afternoon. The bigger boys bullying the smaller boys, the smaller boys bullying the tiny boys and the tiny boys bullying insects and small woo
dland creatures.
It was all done on a descending scale and as I fell into the category of the smaller boys I was bullied by a couple of fat blokes called Tanya and Panda. These two would waddle about the school looking like Oliver Hardy and Oliver Hardy and neither had any bone in their body that any rational person could reason with.
They would pick on people incessantly with varying degrees of malice but one day they came up with this idea of turning bullying into a profit.
This wasn’t their first profitable operation though. Their previous at primary was to get a hold of your head and rub their knuckles into your scalp until you coughed up any money in your possession. Which was never much so it was actually only very marginally profitable. But if you factor in all the time and effort they went to they were probably running at a slight loss.
The knuckle rubbing was painful and the pre-runner for the hairdresser’s shiatsu massage they torture you with nowadays prior to a haircut.
This time their latest bullying venture, however, was much more cunning. So cunning that I’m sure the Dragons in Dragon’s Den would have invested in it. Tanya’s sister worked in the Penguin biscuit factory and one day Tanya and Panda brought into the school a large bag of broken Penguins, which they offered around.
We had our suspicions and thought that they might be laced with rat poison or whatever, but one pupil who was trying to curry favour with them ate one to please them. He never suffered any ill effects so we delved in.
Our suspicions were indeed justified, for about a week later they came into the school demanding money for the biscuits we’d eaten. Anyone not paying up found themselves on the receiving end of a doing.
Most paid up including Wilco, but Winker, Ally and myself refused despite the threats. We figured if we stayed together it would be three against two, which weren’t great odds but they were better than giving them money we didn’t actually have. I did have money but I was saving up for an Argent LP.
This plan worked fine until I had a Physics class with them and Winker and Ally were elsewhere. They approached me in the class before the teacher arrived in the room and demanded their money. Because the classroom was full of girls my mouth and my brain didn’t confer and I said to them, ‘Fuck off ya pair of fat bastards.’
Tanya hit me across the face with a metre stick and I went down beside a fire bucket. Panda reached into the bucket and scooped up a handful of sand and threw it in my face, which was by then covered in blood. They’d caught me across the bridge of my nose with the stick and to this day I still have the scar to remind me, in times of mortal danger, to keep my mouth well and truly shut. By the time the teacher came in I was dabbing the blood and sand off my face with a hankie. Not being a grass I told the teacher I had fallen into the bucket. I was well pissed off but would have to wait for back up to seek revenge.
I didn’t wait long. The next day Winker, Ally and myself hid in a recess on the second floor corridor and waited till Tanya and Panda had passed heading towards the stairs. We sneaked after them and when they both had one foot in the air to descend to the first step we rushed forward and pushed them both head-long down the stairs.
As they tumbled down with pencils, books and biscuits flying everywhere, we made our escape unseen. Both of them escaped with just bruises but justice, we felt, had been served. They couldn’t prove who’d done it but had their suspicions and very much left us alone after that.
15
FORTY-FIVE AND A QUARTER DEGREES
During the winter break I attended my first non-smarty party, that is to say that there was drink there, real drink and not some alcoholic poison that Ally provided. I didn’t imbibe as I still remembered too well what had happened on the previous occasion. Everyone else, however, ended up blitzed or at the very least a bit more tipsy. We played Postman’s Knock and Spin the Bottle, games designed to help the shy amongst us forget our inane patter and cut to the winching. I ended up in an embrace with Slack Alice – this name was not based on observations of her sexual exploits but because she had a loose brace on her front teeth. Every time we kissed my filling touched her metal brace and I almost shot through the roof in pain. As usual there were those who had drunk too much and the smell of vomit became so overpowering that I had to go out on the veranda every so often to get some fresh air. On the subject of air, I adopted an air of pompous superiority, ‘Well you shouldn’t really have drunk so much, you were bound to be sick weren’t you?’
And, ‘You know you shouldn’t really have to drink to enjoy yourself.’
Ally after one bout with his head down the pan looked up at me sitting next to him on the bath and said, ‘You’d better fuck up.’ His head then went back into the pan and he barfed up what looked like most of his lower intestine. It was kind of a weird party musically. The host of the party’s entire record collection comprised of Barbra Streisand, Bette Midler and Musicals LP’s and it was only many years later, when I discovered that certain sections of society like Barbra Streisand, Bette Midler and show tunes, that the penny dropped and it explained why the host excused himself from spin the bottle.
In January we returned for the new term and to our prelim results. I passed every subject except Maths, Arithmetic and Physics. Failing in Maths was a foregone conclusion as I been awarded 7%, and that was about 7% more than I’d expected to get, but failing in Arithmetic certainly wasn’t.
Precious told me the bad news that I had scored 30% as he handed me the paper. I looked at it and all the answers were correct so I was puzzled and demanded to know why I hadn’t been given full marks.
‘Because you never showed how you worked the answers out.’
I went into indignant mode.
‘What do you mean I didn’t work the answers out, I did, I worked them out in my fuckin’ head.’
He gave me two weeks detention for swearing but I still wouldn’t let it go. He was yelling at me to sit down and I was yelling that I wouldn’t until he reconsidered the mark.
‘This isn’t fair sir, the answers are right, what the fuck does it matter how I got them?’
He gave me another week.
In all I got two months detention before he backed down and gave me a pass. To him it had got past the stage of being worth the bother. I had gained a pass but lost my freedom.
Back in the Maths class Tranny said he was disappointed in me, adding that algebra was like riding a bike, once you had figured out the basics, the rest was easy.
I looked up from glancing indifferently over my paper.
‘They say the same about shagging sir.’
Tranny being deaf didn’t hear me but the class did and went into laughter with Tranny joining in, oblivious to what he was laughing at.
I failed my Physics prelim miserably too and for me the subject was another complete waste of time, and not just my time but the teacher’s time too. The Physics teacher was a highly-strung man we called Shazzan because he had a goatee beard and looked like one of the characters on the Arabian Nights segment on The Banana Splits show. He had the wrong temperament for teaching and after trying to teach kids who wouldn’t listen, he was at the end of his tether, and I just happened to be in his class for a double period when the end of his tether was reached and his tether audibly snapped.
He had asked the class a question and everyone was shouting out answers.
‘A million sir.’
‘A cabbage.’
‘Forty-five and a quarter degrees sir.’
‘Tuesday.’
He shouted above the melee, ‘Right who said forty-five and a quarter degrees?’
Thinking that it was the right answer and although I hadn’t said it I was going to take the credit for it, I stuck my hand up.
‘Me sir.’
He flipped and dragged me out of my seat, out into the corridor and began to belt me with a vengeance.
I protested my innocence, I was the one who shouted out cabbage and surely that was a stupider answer than the one I was being punished
for. He continued to belt me. Mr Smart, an English teacher in the adjacent classroom, heard the smacks and assumed he must be belting the whole class and came out to give him a hand.
When Mr Smart saw that only one pupil was on the receiving end, he ran along and grabbed the belt from the by now slabbering at the mouth Shazzan.
‘For God’s sake man, what has he done?’
Smart must have thought that I’d assassinated the whole class to merit this.
Shazzan was shouting, ‘He said forty-five and a quarter degrees!’
He was still trying to get at me and Smart had to hold him back. Shazzan had lost it completely. I thought so, as did Mr Smart. I was ordered back into the classroom and told to wait there while Smart took Shazzan off to see the Headie. I opened the classroom door and all those who had been behind it scurried back to their seats. A cheer went up.
Shuggie said I had been given thirteen strokes but Winker said it had been fourteen. Winker was the smartest so I believed him. If Winker was right, I’d set a new school record. On the downside though, ugly wheals were starting to appear from my wrists right up to my elbows because everything happened so quickly that I didn’t even have the time to roll my sleeves down to my wrists – which was what you did when getting the belt to limit the target area. I was checking my wheals when a relief teacher entered the class and told me to report to the Headmaster.
I wandered off fully expecting another thumping.
I knocked on the door and a smiling headmaster opened it and bade me to sit down. He then told me that he regretted the incident and asked me if I would be taking the matter further. I wondered what he meant. Obviously he assumed that I would tell my parents and they in turn would kick up a stink in the education department.
Actually he was very straight with me. He said that my punishment far exceeded what the department deemed reasonable, then he got to the point. Would I be charging Shazzan with assault?
We had been goading Shazzan all year and as far as I was concerned the ice we had been walking on with him was thin to say the least.