If Carlsberg had to write nostalgia-tinted blogs of their first impressions of high school, they'd probably be the best nostalgia-tinted blogs in the world.
---
Well I started grammar school today and the move from being top dog at primary school to bottom rung here is really strange. I'm still mega chuffed to have gotten in here. [Editorial: but it would take me a few more years to realise how many wankers there were at this school.] The class sizes are huge. My form tutor is a Polish dude called Mr Gajowniczek. He's okay. We have his art room as our form room and it's almost never opened early. So, I have learnt a valuable lesson: arrive late for school. All the other guys in my class seem alright too.
---
Well I started grammar school today and the move from being top dog at primary school to bottom rung here is really strange. I'm still mega chuffed to have gotten in here. [Editorial: but it would take me a few more years to realise how many wankers there were at this school.] The class sizes are huge. My form tutor is a Polish dude called Mr Gajowniczek. He's okay. We have his art room as our form room and it's almost never opened early. So, I have learnt a valuable lesson: arrive late for school. All the other guys in my class seem alright too.
There's a fat kid who I think is called Nick Baumer who seems to be doing Quake 2 impersonations to a blatant Nazi called Westerman. Perhaps they share some love of guns or cartoon violence. Elsewhere, I'm really gonna have to watch my jacket pockets because some Asian twat called Mustafa Habib has been stealing stuff off the other kids all morning. There appears to be a Scouser quietly sitting in a corner of the room called John Kelly. Mostly he reads physics textbooks and proselytizes his thoughts on quantum mechanics. He's probably an undiscovered Einstein, but then again, Einstein wasn't a Scouser. There are a few Chinese lads too; Amos, Darren, and Sze Lup, who says to call him Derek. In the other corner is a Sri Lankan boy called Vibeiss. He seems to just be driving everyone crazy in general and appears to have brought a cold vindaloo "sandwich" for lunch.
Mr Gajowniczek arrives, takes the register, sits back in his faux-carpet slippers and has a smoke. Then the bell rings for the first lesson of the day, and we're off.
---
HISTORY, with Mr. McCann.
Fuck me this is boring. We've been seated alphabetically as though we were in a Viking infantry and, although it is still relatively early in the morning, it seems that several of us are having problems staying awake. The teacher is droning on and on and on and just occasionally he will intersperse a completely irrelevant joke about Crystal Palace. I can tell right off that I'm gonna flunk history in style. Live for the future man, not for some dead geezers! Just when my mind is drifting away, and I'm wondering what the canteen will poison us with, John Kelly lets out a massive fart. Mr McCann looks super annoyed and notes this breach of his rules with a 'black mark' in his book. Fortunately, the bell rings a little while later and we all troop off for next class. Ben Gibbs was right at the front of the class just then and he told me that, when speaking, Mr McCann spits like a trooper. Be warned, the first 3 rows get wet in this one.
---
I.T., with Mr. Dryden.
Hey, this is more like it. Computers and video games. This is my kind of lesson. It's .... argh, SHIT. The most exciting icon on the computers is Internet Explorer. I am left feeling more than a little underwhelmed as a silver haired sextagenarian comes into the room and introduces himself as Mr. Dryden. (Apparently - and this is just unqualified rumour - if you ask him for a bit of one-to-one tuition, he'll invite you into his office at lunchtime, at which point he drops the window blinds and other things too.) I spend most of this lesson making shapes with the highlighted cells in Excel because I'm sat right at the back and can't hear a word that Dryden is saying. Evidently he has never heard of amplification, a microphone, or just plain speaking up. So it seems that Mr. Dryden is a man who rewards favours with favours. I wonder if he'll give me another 20 Mb of network space if I suck him off.
---
BREAKTIME
I'm now thinking that Tiffin isn't all it's cracked up to be. We can't even play with regular footballs at break and lunch - we have to use these crappy airflow balls instead, and they break so easily. Someone has taken the initiative and already bought half a dozen, so a small game is organised. Our class, 7IG, is abject, pathetic, miserable at this game.
Baumer appears to be a good defender, but that's only because he's so fucking huge that nobody can get past him. Sze Lup/Derek is playing in goal and is a complete lunatic - keepers aren't supposed to tackle with two legs! Westerman has inexplicably spent three quarters of the game making Nazi salutes at a tree, and the only form of attack or offence comes from Vibeiss, who on current form is very offensive to all five of my senses indeed.
---
MATHS, with Mrs. Willey.
I can tell right off that she's got a Liverpudlian accent. Not long after, John Kelly also picks up on this and spends the best part of five minutes beaming at her. This looks like a class I could do well in. Mrs. Willey sets us some algebra to do and we get on with our work. Minutes later, James Zelenczuk swigs some Cherry Coke and sets about manufacturing a paper plane. He launches it with the intention of blitzing Rodgerson, but the plane ends up in Malcolm Horner's hair instead. Rodgerson soon builds a second plane, and a small scale war erupts at the back of the room. Mrs. Willey is not stupid, notices the whole thing, and sends the three of them out to see our head of year, Mr. Kibble. What follows is an eerie, desolate silence, followed by Kibble screaming: "I AM GOING TO SHIT ON YOU SO HARD!" You've got to hand it to grammar schools, they don't fuck around.
---
LATIN, with Mr. Hughes.
After the abundant hurly burly of the preceding class, we arrive for this one in earnest and await the teacher, but instead of getting a teacher, a smelly ancient hobo walks through the door instead. I wonder if the school knows about this, or if anyone should say something. He absolutely stinks. I make a mental note to buy the poor fucker a bottle of Radox and a washcloth or loofah for Christmas. The hobo opens a tattered, well-worn book and, through his massive untamed beard, starts speaking words I didn't know existed. I suspect he may have been swigging meths under Kingston Bridge before he somehow wandered into our class. The lesson drags on for far too long. At one point the hobo makes Vibeiss read a passage of Latin aloud, and he takes about forty minutes to read two words. This class is so boring that John Kelly actually pulls a newspaper out of his bag for his perusal. On closer inspection, it appears to be a Playboy.
---
LUNCHTIME
---
MATHS, with Mrs. Willey.
I can tell right off that she's got a Liverpudlian accent. Not long after, John Kelly also picks up on this and spends the best part of five minutes beaming at her. This looks like a class I could do well in. Mrs. Willey sets us some algebra to do and we get on with our work. Minutes later, James Zelenczuk swigs some Cherry Coke and sets about manufacturing a paper plane. He launches it with the intention of blitzing Rodgerson, but the plane ends up in Malcolm Horner's hair instead. Rodgerson soon builds a second plane, and a small scale war erupts at the back of the room. Mrs. Willey is not stupid, notices the whole thing, and sends the three of them out to see our head of year, Mr. Kibble. What follows is an eerie, desolate silence, followed by Kibble screaming: "I AM GOING TO SHIT ON YOU SO HARD!" You've got to hand it to grammar schools, they don't fuck around.
---
LATIN, with Mr. Hughes.
After the abundant hurly burly of the preceding class, we arrive for this one in earnest and await the teacher, but instead of getting a teacher, a smelly ancient hobo walks through the door instead. I wonder if the school knows about this, or if anyone should say something. He absolutely stinks. I make a mental note to buy the poor fucker a bottle of Radox and a washcloth or loofah for Christmas. The hobo opens a tattered, well-worn book and, through his massive untamed beard, starts speaking words I didn't know existed. I suspect he may have been swigging meths under Kingston Bridge before he somehow wandered into our class. The lesson drags on for far too long. At one point the hobo makes Vibeiss read a passage of Latin aloud, and he takes about forty minutes to read two words. This class is so boring that John Kelly actually pulls a newspaper out of his bag for his perusal. On closer inspection, it appears to be a Playboy.
---
LUNCHTIME
We have been given a list of all the clubs available at lunchtime. There is chess club with Mr Fogg, who teaches physics and smells like stale cheese; art club with Mr Plummer, who teaches art and looks like a circus reject; maths club with Mr Uppal, who obviously teaches maths and can’t pronounce ‘parallelogram’; and loads more.
Over in the music department, Mr Toyne is training a group of kids my age to sing some very high notes in a passage of choral music. I suspect their balls haven’t dropped yet. Mr Perry is busy gloating in the music studio room about how the new 4 track sequencers and audiocassette recorders make all our other equipment look obsolete. It seems that quietly, all is happy and everyone is getting on with their own thing.
I wander tentatively into the school canteen as my parents made the stupid choice of buying me a lunchcard. For this crappy piece of plastic I too can afford the daily luxury of “proper nutritious meals,” (aka regular semi-voluntary taking of poison) and so with a heavy heart I get a tray from the side and queue up.
Some others from my class are also in here. Westerman is gobbling down French fries like a German possessed; Baumer appears to have three lunchcards in his possession; Habib is taking a close interest in Westerman's unguarded blazer pockets, and Cheng is picking hesitantly at something which, he says, is cannelloni, but resembles four different kinds of food lumped together.
After munching my way through the poison, I make my way outside and try find the others to join another football game. Unbelievably I score straightaway, but I know this is only because the other side has no defence as Baumer is still in the canteen. As I turn away to celebrate the wundergoal, I feel a clammy hand come to rest on my lower back, which is how I meet Mr Morris for the first time. “You’ll be on the football team if you keep that up, son,” he says in a thick accent. At this point, I learn my second valuable lesson: teachers are compulsive liars.
After munching my way through the poison, I make my way outside and try find the others to join another football game. Unbelievably I score straightaway, but I know this is only because the other side has no defence as Baumer is still in the canteen. As I turn away to celebrate the wundergoal, I feel a clammy hand come to rest on my lower back, which is how I meet Mr Morris for the first time. “You’ll be on the football team if you keep that up, son,” he says in a thick accent. At this point, I learn my second valuable lesson: teachers are compulsive liars.
---
CHEMISTRY, with Mr. Whittaker.
Here goes nothing. The lab we walk into smells weird as you’d expect. Mr. Whittaker himself has the build, face and temperament of a hippo who has just discovered you in bed with his wife. I have never seen a man so red in the face for so long.
Here goes nothing. The lab we walk into smells weird as you’d expect. Mr. Whittaker himself has the build, face and temperament of a hippo who has just discovered you in bed with his wife. I have never seen a man so red in the face for so long.
I am sitting by the classroom door and it is slightly ajar. About halfway through the lesson we are busy mixing various chemicals and creepily I spot the smelly hobo from Latin in the hallway. He must be desperate for more meths. But really, right now I’m thinking about how much fun it would be to fling this test tube of sulphuric acid at Vibeiss, although it’s probably so diluted it would drip off him like water.
Everyone looks dead funny in their lab coats and goggles bought freshly from the Tiffin Shop. I think that, along with maths, I might enjoy this one too.
---
PHYSICS, with Mr. Madigan.
Hehe, this teacher is amusing. Ten minutes into the lesson, he caught Saffy eating something and made him do twenty press ups on the spot. Madigan allocates us seats in the classroom according to our test results with the brainiacs at the back of the class. At the moment I’m at the very front. John Kelly seems to be in some kind of otherworldly daze at how ‘brilliant Sir is.’ Personally I think he’s just messed his pants. I make another mental note on not making friends with brown-nosers. We got to do an interesting experiment involving the reflection of light today. I tried to aim the light reflecting off my piece of glass at Madigan’s eyeball but the bastard just never keeps still – he’s always barking orders at someone.
---
No comments:
Post a Comment