Lessons, Sport and Life!

His life at school settled into a pattern of lessons, which for the large majority were boring, sport which was, for the large, part good and break times which were always good! Unlike his brother, he was in the bottom or “C” steam, a group that was looked on with distaste by the majority of Teachers as the “thickies” but treated with respect by the other pupils as most of the “C” stream were the backbone of the sports teams and therefore well capable of looking after themselves, and others, if they got in the way!

His lessons were a struggle as you find that if your teacher’s have low expectations of what you can achieve you do not le them down. What is the point?  You were not going to go up a group as no one ever came down from the B stream; it wasn’t like the football divisions with promotion and relegations. No, if you were in the bottom stream the only way was stationary! He dabbled in Latin for a week or two and then his talent for languages was recognised and he gave it up; Maths was a nightmare, he didn’t get it and the Teacher didn’t get him so he played him up! He quite liked English, despite the teacher, and it was to become a favourite in later years, but that is still ahead.

Most of his Teacher’s were women or has-been men as the better staff were allocated to the top streams, so besides the one who he fancied, until the cigarettes incident, they were fat, ugly and useless; looking back now he can’t remember a Teacher at this time who made a positive impact on him. The closest were the PE and game’s staff but even they were nothing special. The PE teacher was a slight guy, who taught science and I think he thought PE was beneath him as I guess it had a low esteem in the academic staffroom. PE consisted of differing forms of circuit training and with all shapes and sizes in the class it was hard to get a median ability; but this did not put him off, especially when it came to demeaning someone. The climbing ropes were his speciality for ritual humiliation. We would line up at the bottom, holding a rope, waiting for the command, usually whispered,
“To the top, climb”

Now the dilemma began, you looked around to see who was in your group and, if you were all about the same ability there was no problem, you climbed to the top, waited and were told, “Come down”.

However if your group had a fat kid or a scrawny one, you were in trouble as on the call, “To the top, climb” you were torn between racing to the top as normal or taking it slowly as he would wait until everyone was at the top before letting you come back down. Now some never made it but that would not stop him,

“Do hurry up; can’t you see everyone’s waiting?”

We would be hanging there willing the stragglers to hurry up, but of course they couldn’t and we, and he, knew it! Just as you felt you couldn’t hang on any longer he’d call them, “pathetic” and let us down; no one blamed these kids they couldn’t do it and any way the teacher was a bastard and we stuck together; but there were times when it tried our loyalty!

Embarrassment was a common theme running through a lot of staff who took games sessions and if it was meant to galvanise him into better performance it did not work; only later when encouragement was introduced did he really begin to shine and become confident. He played well at most sports, he was in the cricket team as a fast bowler and a bit of a slogger with the bat; in athletics, he could run fast, with some success,  but rugby was his real love and he thought he was good too. Cricket brought him success, once taking seven wickets for six runs and scoring well with the bat; in athletics he won most sprint races, long jump and other field events too, but it was rugby he wanted to excel in. He was in the Team and whist playing at Fly-half he scored several tries and was the kicker for the team so accumulated the most points and was seen as a star by his fellow team players. However, when it came to the end of the season and colours were awarded he missed out and was devastated as all his mates had got them. The Teacher was an England International forward, a very good player but one who saw three-quarters as peripheral players, who got the glory for the forwards hard work and, worst of all, were fly-halves! So he left the junior section at the end of the year as an under achiever in both lessons and sport but with his reputation as a no-gooder in tact!

There was to be one more incident that almost ended his school career before it had really begun…