by Rikki Brown
The thud of the music was still throbbing in my head. All the way home I could feel it and when my head hit the pillow it kept me awake long enough to reflect on the night’s events.
I had visited my first grown up disco, I had seen my first sex act and I had survived my first late night in George Square. I fell asleep with mixed feelings.
We made many more forays to the bright lights after that and every one was a battle of contrition with the bouncers. Sometimes they let us in and other times they didn’t and there was no point in trying the other clubs because we were far too young for the Electric Garden and even at the age of fifteen/sixteen we were far too old for Terminal One. We did one time go to the White Elephant in Sauchiehall Street but got into a fight and were thrown out. The bouncers told us not to even attempt to get back in because we were barred and as they informed us ‘the Elephant never forgets’. Not getting into Clouds didn’t always mean a ruined night because downstairs was the Apollo and if you failed the club entrance exam you could always take in a gig. After one Clouds knockback we went to see the Electric Light Orchestra and after another knockback we got into the sell out Fleetwood Mac concert. It was sold out, but for £1 the bouncer would hand you a raffle ticket as a ticket and sneak you in through a fire exit. You didn’t get a seat and you had to look as though you were either coming from or going to the toilets to stop the bouncer’s bosses from finding out that the hall was way, way, way beyond its legal capacity.
14
WELL NOBODY’S PREFECT ARE THEY?
We returned to school that August as the creème de la creème – our words, not Miss Jean Brodie’s. There were only twenty-three of us left out of the 120 or so who had commenced first year, which, of course, is a very small percentage and this had advantages and disadvantages.
The pros being that the teaching was much more intense, and the cons being that in times of trouble it would be extremely difficult to get lost amongst the throng.
During morning assembly the Headmaster called out a list of names of those who were to report to his office after registration and Winker’s and mine were tagged on last. We hadn’t had any time to get up to any mischief so we were a bit confused about why he wanted to see us.
We found out – he wanted to make us prefects and we of course declined because prefects are usually crawley bummie licks and we didn’t want to be tarred with the same brush. He insisted, in fact he insisted strongly, saying it would build our character and with no option we left his presence sporting our badges of office.
We entered our first class of the term, Miss Goudie’s history double period. She was in the middle of her ‘how dare you come into my class late’ speech when we flashed our badges, ‘School polis mam.’ She then accused us of stealing them and it took quite a bit of convincing that the badges were genuine authorised issue. She was as incredulous as we were of the dubious honour accorded us.
During the break Winker outlined the plan he had been working on in History to get us the sack as prefects and out of the extra work involved and that lunchtime we put the plan into action. One of the duties was to station ourselves at the bottom of the two sets of stairs leading up to the classrooms and direct first years to their lessons. At one stair I succeeded in sending a whole class of first years to Blairtummock primary school half a mile away by telling them we were using it as a school annexe. Winker for his part sent thirty pupils to the Headmaster for misbehaving and he also gave the first-year Geography class the afternoon off because the teacher was off sick.
The result was chaos.
The Headmistress from the primary school phoned to say she had found an entire class wandering her corridors, the pupils sent to the Headie were wandering about lost because they had no idea where the Headie’s office was, and the Geography class had disappeared completely into a parallel dimension.
Winker and I were sitting in the common room on a free period when we were summoned.
We knocked on his door, he debadged us, called us a couple of morons and said he was giving us a week’s detention.
‘What’s detention, Sir?’ asked Winker.
The belt was to be phased out as much as possible this term and replacing it would be detention classes. This meant a class laid aside for an extra hour’s schooling each night as a punishment. We had been sentenced to five.
As we left his office Winker didn’t seem too bothered.
‘It’s only an hour, it’ll be a laugh.’
I looked at him, ‘But a whole week?’
‘We’ll have been pardoned by Wednesday. They’ll have some poor diddy student in charge and he’ll not be able to handle it.’
He couldn’t have been more wrong because on entering the detention class we found McConnell positioned behind the desk.
‘Typical, I wondered how long it would take you two to end up in here.’
He warned us in no uncertain terms what would happen and basically told us that he’d bury us in a shallow grave if we gave him any grief.
Apparently he was not one of the corporal punishment reformers.
Winker and I stared at the clock whilst he did the Glasgow Herald crossword. Every so often he would look up to see if we were misbehaving before returning to his paper.
That went on for the whole week, an hour’s silence each night. Winker and I were the only pupils and this was almost the pattern for the entire term.
Being fourth years we now had a common room, which was a great place to hide if you were dodging lessons. It had a telly, which for some reason only ever picked up educational programmes, a table tennis table and a dartboard.
Darts became a great favourite until someone stuck a dart in the school captain’s bum and the armoury was removed.
Winker would pull the valves out of the telly and throw them four floors to the ground to hear them going off with a bang. No matter how many valves he removed somehow the telly still worked. Obviously they don’t make them like that anymore.
We had fewer classes now as we had all picked the subjects we wanted to specialise in and concentrated on those subjects. But to sit the O-grades, the prelims had to be passed first.
That year the school board had introduced a new grading system, for instance:
A pass = 85% and over
B pass = 75% and over
C pass = 50% and over
D pass = 40% and over
E pass = 30% and over
There was a catch however. Although you’d have to be a complete dunce to fail, to get any sort of pass you could only sit the O-grade if you achieved 50% or over in the prelims. Much is made of the dumbing down of exams nowadays, and in my opinion they must be dumbed down. In recent exams it was reported that 97% of pupils had passed their Maths O-levels. 97%? Aye, so they completely and utterly did.
A lack of teachers in the seventies meant you couldn’t sit O-levels in every subject. At least I’m assuming that was the reason. For instance you couldn’t sit Geography and History, it was one or the other. In science you could either sit Chemistry or Biology, not both. And it was just too bad if you required both Chemistry and Biology O-levels and then Highers for the university course you wanted to move on to.
We settled down to our studies and I still couldn’t understand bloody algebra, maybe it’s simple when you get the gist of it, you know the wee tricks, but it was and still is totally beyond me.
In all our classes we had a few fifth years repeating the subjects they had failed the O-grade in. Of course, there was no shame in this, except in Arithmetic.
Failing in Arithmetic was the same as contracting leprosy and we had two resident lepers. Our teacher in this subject was a small but muscular Malaysian man who we called Precious McKenzie because he looked like Precious McKenzie the Commonwealth champion weightlifter.
Arithmetic is basic common sense, two plus two equals four, but our two lepers couldn’t quite comprehend this difficult equation. Every time they were asked a question in class the room would fall silent t
o hear their comedy gem of an answer.
Leper One was gRant and although the hippy era had drawn to a close he hadn’t noticed. lt was rumoured that LSD was responsible for his dull wit and low intelligence. His one redeeming aspect was that he was a brilliant artist and the reason he was still at school was to gain enough passes to get into art school. No doubt for a career in illustrating Noggin the Nog.
From what I’ve seen since leaving school and what now passes for art, gRant should have been able to get in with a metalwork O-level, that and an ability to talk a complete load of bollocks.
Leper Two was Thuggie Millar whose name was actually Shuggie but he had a world class lisp, he could have lisped for Scotland. Thuggie’s ambition was to go to Sandhurst for Officer training. He had overdosed on Commando comics.
Precious, I think, felt sorry for Thuggie and indeed there was a lot to feel sorry for as he had the lot. Short hair, thick neck, thick lips, unlevel ears and his eyes were looking permanently in different directions. One was almost looking at you while the other was away to the shops for sweeties.
Precious would spend a lot of time on Thuggie just trying to make him understand. ‘If I have one apple in this hand and I take it away, how many apples would I have?’ Nine out of ten times he got it wrong.
There was no higher Arithmetic as it only went as far as O-grade and was classed as an easy subject. As yet, no one in the school had failed it twice but these two were sure candidates.
In fourth year we now had to visit the Careers Officer in order for him to advise us and give us help to achieve our gainful employment dreams. Of course we were still at the age of wanting to be pop stars and footballers, with the girls coming a close second in the fantasy stakes as air hostesses. The Careers Officer was an intolerant man who was always throwing pupils out of his office and telling them to return when they’d grown up: ‘Bloody pop star, indeed.’
Winker, on his visit, told him that he’d like to be a careers officer. He’d meant it as a joke but the C.O. took him seriously and all through fourth year bombarded him with leaflets and application forms.
I told the C.O. that I would like to be a dentist. It was the first thing that sprang to mind as I had just visited one that morning and he had a gorgeous receptionist. He took one look at my reports and told me to set my aim a bit lower, well a lot lower actually, and waved me out of his office after handing me a wad of pamphlets on employment in Cowglen Savings Bank.
The pamphlets featured pictures of happy faces seated at desks with big broad smiles and articles on the Cowglen Tennis Club, the Cowglen Badminton Club, the Cowglen Highland Dancing Club and the prospects within the Civil Service for the dedicated civil servant.
‘YES – YOU can have a glowing career in banking.’
The pamphlets ended up in the bin. Especially since they mentioned badminton because badminton is pathetic, it’s just tennis for people with weak arms.
In October we had the ‘egg incident’, which led to me and Winker being expelled. We were in Nutty’s science class for the last double period of the week and Nutty had to leave the room for five minutes. While he was away, Winker strolled down to Nutty’s desk, took an egg out of his pocket, cracked it open with a ruler and poured the contents on Nutty’s textbook. Winker shut the book and returned to his seat.
Everyone in the class looked at him as though he was mad.
‘What did you do that for?’
‘Dunno.’
Nutty returned to the class and told us to open our books at page fifty-two. Nutty opened his book and the egg dribbled out and onto his desk.
He went completely, completely mental.
He shouted, ‘Who’s responsible for this?’ in a voice so many octaves higher than his normal voice that only dogs could hear him.
There was total silence, because we weren’t dogs after all, were we?
‘I said which one of you bloody wee bastards did this?’
Ally went, ‘Wooooooooo, you swore Sir.’
‘Right Dixon, out now.’
He tried to give Ally two of the belt but he kept parting his hands at the last second and the belt flew harmlessly in between them. This made him worse. He screamed again: ‘Who did this?’
Winker wouldn’t own up and no one pointed the finger.
Nutty then went round checking everyone’s bags for evidence of eggs.
I opened mine and about half a ton of red ash fell out.
‘Sorry sir, red ash sir, my football boots are in the bag.’
He went round the whole class and found nothing so he sent someone to get the Housemaster Mr Nesbitt.
Nesbitt came in looking weary as an awful lot of the trouble in the school came from Nutty’s Chemistry class. Nutty showed him the book and said, ‘I’ll get to the bottom of this if these swine have to stay here all weekend.’
Mr Nesbitt addressed the class resignedly, ‘If the culprit owns up now it will save everyone a lot of time and trouble.’
No one’s eyes moved and we all sat and stared straight ahead. We all thought that the whole class being punished was worth it just to see Nutty’s rampant indignation.
Mr Nesbitt had a plan and as it happened it was a very, very good plan. He took all the pupils along to the common room and interviewed us one by one in his office next door.
My turn came.
‘Did you see anything?’
‘No sir.’
‘Is that all you have to say?’
‘Yes sir.’
He knew that the most dominant members of the class wouldn’t talk but there were others who would. He could have got the information at any point but he interviewed every class member anyway to allay suspicion. After it was all over Winker and myself were told to stay behind.
The other pupils left for home and none of them could look us in the eye except Ally who said, ‘Aw well, there you go eh.’
We stood looking out of the window.
‘I wonder who grassed ye Wink?’
‘Havenae got a scooby.’
I had no idea why I was there, after all I hadn’t actually done anything.
Nutty came in with Nesbitt. Nutty was all for giving us a thrashing but Nesbitt just said matter of factly that we were both expelled.
‘Both expelled!’ said Winker. ‘He didn’t do it, I did.’
Nutty growled that I was his accomplice.
‘Aye, right enough, sir, it was him who laid the egg.’
The humour and injustice of Winker’s statement was lost on Nutty.
Nesbitt beckoned us into his office and handed us notes to give to our parents to explain why we were being booted out.
‘Look, sir, it was a joke.’ I thought for one horrible minute he was going to say yolk. It would have been on his mind but on this occasion he declined to be humorous.
‘We didn’t mean any harm.’
‘That’s as maybe Watson but it’s too late for apologies.’
‘So what happens now sir?’
He explained that we were to pay for the book, make handwritten sorries to Nutty and return with our parents who would then be informed of our behaviour.
I was innocent so I started to protest.
‘But sir, I didn’t do anything.’
‘Yes, but there are varying degrees of guilt, Watson is your pal and you didn’t try to stop him did you?’
There was no answer to such logic. As we left his office Winker apologised.
‘Helluva sorry about this wee man.’
The weekend was spent trying to explain my innocence to my parents who received my denials with the usual disbelief. My father said that there was no smoke without fire – now he was also accusing me of arson.
My parents were never the type to run up to the school to complain that somebody had belted their wee boy. I suppose they were parents of that era. Nowadays teachers always seem to be having charges of assault laid against them by parents of wee angels. No, mine were of the attitude that if I was belted it was for a good
reason. They were right. Seems today’s kids can do no wrong.
Monday morning came and we appeared in front of the Headie with our mums and dads and both my dad and Winker’s were angry that they were missing work. You’d have thought we were at the Old Bailey and the judge was wearing a black cap the way our parents sucked up to the Headmaster.
The Headmaster for his part said that we obviously came from good homes and we were an embarrassment to our families. I just sat there thinking that, probably for the first time, I hadn’t actually done anything. So where was Emile Zola to write a J’accuse open letter to the school board when I needed him?
The book had to be paid for, which it was, and after we had written and delivered our apologies to Nutty the matter would be closed. So, school honour satisfied, the parents left and Winker and I trotted off to Nutty’s class with our hastily scribbled notes.
We knocked on his classroom door and entered.
He had a class full of first years who were sitting in the usual frightened silence. Nutty looked at us with extreme distaste.
We handed over our notes, which he read and threw straight into the bin.
‘If I had my way I would have had both of you taken outside and shot.’
Winker piped up, ‘Not legal any more sir.’
‘What?’ growled Nutty.
‘Murder sir, not legal anymore.’
‘Get out!’ he shouted.
As we were leaving I whispered under my breath, ‘Wanker.’
Nutty shot out of his desk and came after me and grabbed me by the hair.
