I suppose we should be grateful
that the casual clouting and habitual hitting of my school days is a thing of
the past. However, I want to tell you
about two occasions when violence nearly took place, but didn't.
The first occasion was in my first
year at Anglesey Secondary Modern, when we were all very much in awe of the
young men, in their final year at school, who towered above us. We rarely came into contact with these giants
because pressure on space, as a consequence of the post-war baby boom, meant
that the First and Second Year students were farmed out to the old Techinical
High School building at Bond End. The
only time we attended the Clarence Street HQ was for the practical lessons such
as Woodwork, Metalwork and Domestic Science.
Philip in his early years at Anglesey Secondary Modern
It must have been on one such
occasion when I found myself heading down an empty corridor going toward the
playground. I had probably been detained
in class, or perhaps sent on an errand to the smoke-filled Staff Room, but for
whatever reason, the rest of the school was out at play and I was on my
own. Suddenly, I spotted something that
made my heart miss a beat, and my stomach lurch. Coming toward me was the one Fourth Year that
I really did not want to meet. He was as
wide as he was high (and he was pretty tall.)
He had a reputation for mindless violence, in a school for which
mindless violence was the norm. All in
all, he was not someone that a small, skinny kid would want to meet in a
deserted corridor.
In these situations, I usually
adopted my patented technique of trying to blend into the background. By and large, this seemed to work, in crowded
playgrounds and so on, but was never going to succeed in this scenario. Nevertheless, I hugged the wall and hoped not
to be noticed. No such luck! The huge form shuffled in my direction. I was aware of a large, moon-like face
(complete with craters) topped by unkempt ginger hair, about an inch from my
nose. "Ere" the face grunted,
"are you divvi?" By this time
I was more or less trying to prise myself into the mortar that held the bricks
together in the wall. I had no idea what
the question meant, so I just burbled and stammered. Fortunately he obviously decided that I was
beyond contempt and, with a disparaging "Huh", shuffled off. I made my escape, feeling that a minor
miracle had occurred, purely by being too pathetic to bother with.
The second occasion that violence
didn't happen was some years later. My
mum had often told me about the 'musical canings', as she called them, that
used to happen at her school.
Apparently, from time to time the whole school would be assembled to
witness a miscreant being beaten for some heinous crime or other and the school
trooped into the hall to stirring piano music.
I had never experienced this until one afternoon when the whole of
Anglesey was ordered into the School Hall.
The atmosphere was very tense and the teachers stationed around the Hall
were obviously ill at ease. As we waited
to see what this was all about, the Deputy Headmaster strode in, clutching a
young lad by the collar in one hand, and a cane in the other. He was
accompanied by a phalanx of senior staff, who didn't look too happy about the
situation. The lad was writhing and shouting
all the way to the stage but, on reaching there, he did something I would never
have thought of. He simply broke free
from his captor and headed straight to the back of the stage and out of the
door to freedom. Teachers and staff were
sent to find him, but he was too quick.
I never did find out what terrible crime he was supposed to have
committed, or why it was deemed appropriate for his punishment to be a public
flogging, but I'm glad he got away, for everyone's sake.
This is the unedited version of the April column in the Derby Telegraph. You will find this shortly in the new collection of stories "A Kick at the Pantry Door". You can find much more like this in Steady Past Your Granny's and Crutches for Ducks
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