To Bully, Or Not to Bully...

That is indeed, the question...

In a slight change of plan, I once again mused last night about school days, following on from my topic on sports, so for now – football hooliganism will have to wait. To call myself geeky would be an understatement which at school obviously resulted in a lot of bullying, but looking back I was not particularly guilt free myself and this set of musings will look at both sides of the story.

Starting a new school with a crappy basin haircut and Jack Duckworth glasses is always asking for trouble when I think about it, but that is exactly what I did. When I first started at secondary school, loads of the older kids called me John… Being young and naïve I just assumed I was very popular because they all knew my older brother - as was the case at primary school, where I was given the delightful nickname Rubber Jonny Junior, my elder brother being Rubber Jonny… Excellent. However I very quickly discovered that they were calling me John due to the uncanny resemblance which I had to the most pleasing former Prime Minister – John Major (still it could have been worse, they could have called me Gordon…). This didn’t really feel like bullying though to be honest as it did not particularly bother me. The first instance of real bullying came when we were made to queue up outside in the cold for a design and technology lesson. Up strolled one of the years notorious thugs – every school year has them, the sort who are always in trouble and the sort whose pain and suffering in the future brings you an unbelievable amount of joy and comfort as you think of them loitering the streets before crawling back into their gutter (anyway I digress) and he comes out with what can only be described as one of the wittiest bits of bullying ever “Oi, why are your glasses so thick?” to which my reply of “why are you so thick?”, swiftly got me punched in the kidney’s and a pair of dead legs… It made me feel good though! Luckily I had a decent set of mates, including a couple of big guys so most the time I managed to avoid any significant bullying, all I really got was the odd crunching tackle during football or the odd puddle being kicked, but I like to think I gave as good as I got in most instances. I was also lucky in the fact that whilst I was prime bully material, there were a group who were even more pathetic than myself, which allowed me to avoid a lot of the attention.

Rather than bullying, our lunchtimes generally consisted of a lot of messing around… our school used to have a three storey science block and we were unfortunate enough to have one of the labs as our tutor room, which meant we were not allowed to sit in there at lunch time, although we were allowed in the corridor outside. Plenty of workarounds were in place though, we would hide in the cupboards until the teacher had left and then stay in the lab all dinner or when that got found out, one person would hide and unlock the door when the teacher had gone! In much the same way as yesterdays musings, we created a plan to allow us to stay in the lab at dinner time, we would tunnel through the wall into the lab. This started as one person who had steel toe capped shoes repeatedly punting the concrete and plaster to breakthrough, but eventually people were bringing hammers and crowbars to chip away at the plaster. Occasionally the caretaker would put a wooden board across the hole but they clearly had no idea about the expertise our team had, the wooden board merely covered the work we were doing… It was like something out of prison break. Only after a few inches (by which time half the year group were helping) did we come across the problem which stopped us in our tracks, steel mesh throughout the concrete, this had not been planned for and by the time we worked out a way to get through it, the year had ended and we were moved to a different block, which incidentally we also got banned from being in at lunch times. Two years later the science block was demolished so in a way I suppose we kind of helped with that aspect of the schools development. Whilst not tunnelling we would make the most of the three storey fire escape which the science block had, a series of stairs (outside) which led from the top floor, to the fire doors right outside our tutor room. There was always a table outside each teaching room and therefore right next to the fire escape and in a moment of genius, three guys decided that they must slide down the fire escape on said table… We turned it over and with a mighty push from everyone, the three of them were off, bouncing down the three storeys with a thud and a yelp of pain as they hit each level… one guy was complaining for days of the back pain he was suffering! I would still love to know why we thought this would be a good idea, just like why it would be a good idea to ride the fire escape on the plastic part of a school chair… It was amazing none of us ever got hurt. None of us however considered the damage that sliding down concrete might cause to the table… the surface was practically ruined and our plans to put the table back where we found it were scuppered for this reason, we had to get rid of it. Even a teacher would realise that something was wrong and it would not take them long to match the scrapings on both the fire escape and the table… By propping the table up against the wall we jumped into it to smash the wooden part off and break it into numerous pieces, this was an excellent way to practise our favourite wrestling moves we had learnt. By now we were brilliant hole diggers and so disposing of the wood was easy, we broke it up and hid it in the ground, in bins etc, but disposing of the metal subframe proved mightily difficult. The best solution that was found involved a couple of guys chucking it over the wall into the verge next to the dual carriageway… I am not sure how this was determined to be the best or safest solution, but it is the one which was followed! Similarly I would love to know what the dinner ladies were doing whilst we were doing all of this!

During sixth form, me and a group of friends took Chemistry AS Level. On a side note, the teacher maintained throughout the year that we did not do the work and that is why the highest grade any of us got was a D, but at the end of the day there were a group of girls who also got high marks the previous year who were at a similar level during the AS Level, so I firmly maintain it was the teachers fault and I would suggest that the fact he was booted off the course the year after, would suggest likewise. Anywho, I again digress. During these lessons we came up with the ingenious idea that it would be fun to hide things in one of our friends bag… This started off as relatively small things during the chemistry lessons, such as test tubes, test tube racks and tripods but on seeing the most amusing reaction we got every time we did something, the paraphernalia we hid soon began to grow out of control. During chemistry experiments we would hide test tubes of petrochemicals in his pencil case along with bricks we had found around the school and during one physics lesson we are certain that one of our friends wrapped a pigs eye up and put it in the guys pencil case, but for some reason it never turned up… to this date it has not been accounted for. For some reason the guy whose bag it was would always shout out during the lesson “oh for God’s sake” when he realised, drawing attention from everybody in the room, and then he would proceed to pull whatever the object was from his bag… this would generally draw a lot of laughter from the rest of the group as they discovered what we had managed to smuggle into the lab and into the rucksack. For some reason no teachers ever realised it might have been the three students who were sat there in stitches! My personal favourite however was the day when he was sat at a computer during a lesson. I had noticed that in the ‘boys’ toilet a hand dryer had fallen off the wall (one of the big white things you put your hands under and then a hair dryer turns on to dry you/blow the water off) so we set ourselves the challenge of putting it in his bag. Whilst one of us distracted the soon to be victim, the others forced the hand dryer into the rucksack before leaving it as we found it. The hand dryer was obviously ridiculously heavy so as soon as the bag was lifted from the table, it crashed to the ground making a loud dunk, drawing attention from everybody in the lesson, to said bag… Needless to say the reaction on opening the bag and removing a hand dryer in front of numerous staff and pupils was fantastic… At one point when we were doing the Ten Tors expedition, one of my mates carried an old skull of a sheep he had found, 40 miles across Dartmoor, just to hide it in the rucksack… Some would call it desperate, but some would call it genius – the reaction of somebody as they realise there is a festering skull inside their bag is quite something! The skull popped up at numerous times in our bags and over the course of the years decomposed significantly!

The bag often seemed to be at the centre of attention and on one occasion a plan was hatched whereby it would be thrown onto the link bus, which ran between the three schools in the area, and we would film the doors closing and the bus driving off, before showing the video to our mate. I can’t remember if this ever happened or not, hopefully one of the other plan hatchers will be able to remember and will comment!

Whilst hiding things in the bag was fun, the most amusing game involved a tub of Vicks VapoRub. For some reason I carried a pot around in my bag – it must have been because I had a cold at some point… but one of my friends discovered that if you put the stuff on say a pen, unless you are looking hard you cannot notice it until you pick it up and get a stream of grease running down your hand… We took to putting the stuff on anything that people left around, pens, rulers, bag straps, folders etc and thoroughly enjoying the reaction when they came back and could instantly smell the menthol flavourings, but had no idea where we had put it… The smell of Vicks soon became associated with fear and anger, rather than the more common one of clear sinuses and unblocked passages. Similarly, if you had a cold, our chemistry and physics lessons were the place to be as you could guarantee the room would be rather menthol!

Some might see these games as evil, but we did realise and at the end of our school lives, we did hatch a number of plans for a big trick… However this was intended to have a nice outcome. The options considered included starting a fire and stealing the rucksack which we had used to hide things in so well and then running to the fire to chuck it on, but just as the owner realised what we had done, we would present him with a brand new bag to replace the one we had ruined over the course of two years… the idea of starting a fire was not particularly popular so we settled that we would have to hide something in the bag… During the last lesson of the year we nipped into town and purchased a four pack of beer and card saying good luck etc and sorry for destroying your possessions over the past year, before hiding them in the rucksack. The reaction on realising the weight of the bag was as funny and amusing as always, “for God’s sake… grumble grumble”, but on realising we had put something he would actually want in the bag, he was made up. Some might call it bullying, but it really was just fun and the following years since leaving school, we have made up for it I think.

As an end note, I started by saying how we all got bad grades during chemistry and the teacher actually said to my parents that I did not goto the lessons so would not get the work done, but I think my musings here show sufficiently that I DID goto the lessons. So I hear you say I did not do the work as I was messing around, well I did. We messed around just as much in the physics lessons, yet we all achieved very high grades in that. I to this day firmly maintain it was the teachers fault and the appalling quality of teaching that resulted in our bad grades. That brings me to the end of the current section of musings, I hope they have been entertaining and please keep checking back for my next updates which will include Part Deux of the North v South battle as well as some interesting scripture on hooliganism.

Sports at School...

Listening to the radio on holiday there was a discussion about why we are so poor at producing top quality athletes and the point that was brought up was that in the early school stages, the teachers are not specialist sports teachers and the games we play are not related to anything. Young kids are not playing sports like tennis until they get to secondary schools often – 11, 12 years old, where as the best players in world sport are being picked up significantly earlier than this. It got me thinking about the sport we used to play at school and made me wonder if I had been given the opportunity to do more than just doing roly-poly’s on a thin rubber mat, could I be one of the best sports stars in the world?

In reality the answer is obviously no. So on with the musings.

My first memories of sports at school revolve around every child’s nightmare, sports day. For the elite few, this is their chance to impress relatives of every kid in school, whilst for the majority of pupils – myself included – it is the chance to make a complete jockey out of yourself on a monumental scale. That said, I have a few fond memories of sports day, not least that in year four. Back in those days we had to elect our two favourite events from a list derived straight from Athens including: the egg and spoon race, the bean bag race, the sack race and the tennis ball throw – all designed perfectly to make you look an idiot.

The events of choice for myself this year were the sack race which obviously involved climbing into a stinking wicker sack and proceeding to jump 100m, trying to avoid the inevitable fall over and the bean bag race – this involved something like running to a bean bag, bringing it back to a bucket, running to another bean bag, putting it in the bucket and then the same again, before running to the finishing line with the bucket, whilst balancing a bean bag on your head… Whoever thought this event up was a complete genius to put it bluntly, lessons learnt here have proved invaluable in future life – i.e. don’t put the bean bag too far forward as it will cover your eyes…

I first realised that I may have a chance of winning the coveted 1^st place sticker when we had the first practise for the sack race. I for some reason had the brilliant idea that if I put a foot in either corner and ran in the sack, rather than jumped that I may move slightly quicker than most… The starting pistol (teachers whistle) rang out and we sprinted the first 10 yards to the sack location where the struggle into sack lost valuable seconds (I made a mental note that I would have to improve my method of entry to the sack if I wanted to score a competitive time) but I managed to get my feet into the corners… I proceeded to run the 70 yards to the finish line without looking back – only when I crossed the finish line and fell out of the sack did I realise that everyone else taking up the traditional jumping motion was a good 50 yards behind still (I say everyone, the token kid was still trying to get into the sack at the start) – I had discovered the winning tactic. Sports day quickly came around and the pre-race atmosphere as we lined up at the start was electric. We were following the days big events, the mum’s and dad’s races. Focussing purely on the sack and then the finish line I got ready to go, the whistle went and I screamed out of the blocks to the sack. Endless practising had let me get the perfect entry to the sack and my feet were quickly in position and I was off… After about 30 yards though I realised something was wrong, somebody else was at the same level as me, in fact no, they were in front of me – using my tactic… try as I might I could not catch them and I had to settle for second best. Pipped to the line by somebody who had stolen my tactic. To say the beanbag race was a disaster would be an understatement, numerous fumbles and drops saw me finish near the back of the pack and so second in the sack race was to remain my best ever sports day finish… Looking back it is not a bad achievement, second best at the sack race in that year, in that school is pretty big news to put it bluntly.

The one thing that everyone seems to dread is the day when you get your days mixed up at school and forget your PE kit. You would think this would be a decent excuse not to do PE, but oh no… every school has one, the box of spares. Tucked away in this festering box are a ready supply of used rugby shirts and shorts which have barely seen the light of day in the past 10 years, let alone a box of Persil. The days of primary school PE where if you forgot your kit you could do the lesson in your underpants suddenly seem highly attractive – talking of which, does nobody else find it slightly odd that at primary school we were made to do PE in just our pants and that everybody got changed in front of the teacher, in the same class room??? Suddenly once in this borrowed kit you find yourself looking forward to doing cross country as you know the smell of your own body odour and scrote can only improve upon the original.

The showers after PE seemed to be the main cause for people forgetting their kit and for the unlucky few who didn’t manage to get away with it, this usually spelled disaster. In our school the shower system never worked, we all just ran through with our PE shorts on and that was classed as washing… For those who forgot their kit and were given the dreaded loan kit though, it was demanded that they return the kit before the showers (forgive us for thinking that the kit might be glad of clean… I swear some of it could almost have got up and played football itself…) resulting in low and behold, having to shower naked. This would lead to endless teasing and taunting from the other 60 clothed boys, particularly when it happened to the same people generally… I won’t name names (I have starred them out), but this resulted in numerous nicknames including Small C***g etc, a nickname obtained in year seven and no doubt lasting a good few years! Realising we never actually showered or for that matter washed, the showers were mostly scrapped the year after we joined the school and suddenly the amount of people forgetting their kits deliberately rose. It often seemed to me that the ones who forgot their kit, were those who were good at sport outside of school, which I think speaks volumes in itself.

Some aspects of the physical education taught at schools still baffle the hell out of me. I am sure up until about year 11 we were made to do gymnastics for example… This was fine for the 5% of students who took it seriously as a hobby and could actually do it, but for the 95% of us who didn’t it was a nightmare… we were to be assessed on our ability to do gymnastics. In a sport like football or rugby this is not a problem as if you put the effort in, it will show and you will get some marks, but try and do a handstand when you are not physically capable and you end up looking a complete berk in a pile of arms and legs… the assessment for 95% of us therefore consisted of the odd forward roll followed by a star jump over a vault... I would love to know what this provided me with, other than a crap mark on my report.

The best part of physical education for those of us who couldn’t really give a toss about school sport was when we got to use the weights room, a small room situated next to the gym full of antique fitness equipment including weights, cycling and rowing machines. This room was rarely monitored by teachers during the latter stages of school so we generally had the free run of the room. This resulted in groups of students seeing if they could lift the full load on the weight machines, but my personal favourite was the attempt by some students to carve a hole through the wall of the room, into the shower block on the other side of the wall - it was a walk in shower so you could actually walk into it, but at the time it seemed a great idea. Initially this started with some people battering the wall with the handles of the dumbbells, but then a genius noticed that one of the cycle machines was broken. The strap on the front had snapped, so when you cycled, the razor sharp wheel spun ridiculously fast making the perfect angle grinder… This chopped through the tiles and concrete ridiculously fast and progress was made in no time through the shower wall. Within days a plan had been hatched to carve a new tunnel into the car park. Any plans were quickly ruined however when the cycling machine was removed…We had found a new game that if you spun the wheel in the cycling machine and tilted it forward, the whole bike would skid across the floor at break neck speed. We set the bike up to do this and just as it flew across the floor into the rowing machine a teacher walked through the door. Sufficed to say we did our best to cover it up, making excuses such as “so and so fell off and it just happened”, but along with the bike wheel shaped scars in the walls, we didn’t stand much chance…

The other aspect of PE that I loved was when we were given free reign of the gym, the ropes, the climbing frame, the crash mats… for a thirteen/fourteen year old this spells one thing, FUN. For some reason the teachers did not seem to have a problem with people climbing up the walls to about 10m and then swinging off on a rope… Whilst the horrific floor and wood burns were ridiculously painful, I struggle to think of something more boystrous which we could have got up to…

Whether it is the case for everyone I don’t know, but my experiences it is safe to say probably didn’t help me become the world beating athlete I could (or not)… I think one can assume that at the age of fourteen, Roger Federer was probably not carving holes through the walls of the school gym, just as David Beckham was probably not fannying around on a small mat, attempting to complete just one backward role. So does something need to be done about the sports teachings in school or is it the pupils? I think it is safe to say in my instances at least it is a mixture of both – when we were doing something I and others were interested in it was great, but other times it was dire and we had to make our own fun… On this note, my next musings will discuss football hooliganism, stay tuned.