As the gates swung slowly shut behind them they dropped their packs on the hard dusty ground and surveyed their new surroundings. There were the barrack huts, the toilet block, the simple hall and last of all the electric fence that enclosed it all. So this was where the troublemakers finally got sent. They stood in numbed disbelief as the commandant strode onto the parade ground.
“Zere vill be no escape! Any attempts to do so und you vill be shot…und ze village shop is out of bounds unless you are accompanied by a teacher!”
Class 4S had arrived at school camp.
It was late September 1976, the long hot summer was a distant memory and we had been packed off to school camp. None of us were sure why. It could have been to foster a sense of camaraderie in our last year at primary school. It could have been to toughen us up for a future career in the Foreign Legion or it could have simply been because our parents wanted to get rid of us for a couple of weeks so they could head for the local Berni Inn to stuff their faces with Avocado and Prawn salad and steak all washed down with a bottle of Blue Nun in peace. Whatever it was, it meant we found ourselves sharing semi-derelict huts with 20 of our mates and a variety of wildlife all set in a place whose resemblance to one of the prison camps most of us had only seen in the ‘Wooden Horse’ was reinforced by the graffiti on the toilet walls…’Hauptman Willi Schmitt 1943’.
For the next two weeks every day would be the same. Wake up sharing the bed with an assortment of bugs and the odd Badger who had crawled into your sleeping bag overnight as it was warmer and drier than their usual hedge. Be driven out of the hut by our shouty gym master and forced to dive into the outdoor pool that was colder than a seals arse during an arctic winter, although to be fair to him he usually dived in soon after, such behaviour not arousing much suspicion in those more innocent days. This was followed by breakfast served by a group of dinner ladies whose sense of humour had been surgically removed at birth and then we would go on an ‘educational’ trip that usually consisted of a ten mile hike up a windswept hill. In the afternoon we would return to be allowed a few hours freedom which would invariably involve electrocuting the class swot on the electric fence that surrounded the camp unless they had fallen down a cliff or wandered off in a fog bank on the hike. Most of us would go foraging in the surrounding woods for nuts and Damsons to supplement our diet before being served with dinner by an even more humour-impaired bunch of staff.
Within a day of arrival classmates could be seen wandering around the scrubby football pitch with earth trickling from their trouser legs, there were rumours of a tunnel going out from under the ‘concert hall’ stage and most of the spoons had vanished from the canteen for digging purposes. At least two of our number went ‘over the wire’ but were recaptured after running into a couple of guar...teachers staggering back from the local pub. Suffice it to say school camp was not that enjoyable, at least not until the penultimate day.
We had been hounded out of our hut, leaving our warm sleeping bags and whatever creatures that had joined us behind and were headed for the pool. The front ranks however, had halted on the edge and were staring at the frigid water whilst jumping up and down to work some warmth back into their limbs. As we reached them we saw why but from behind us we heard a yell of
“Come on you lot, don’t be such a bunch of nancies! Get in the water!” as our shouty gym teacher pounded down the path.
“But sir!” began Dave…
“Don’t but me lad! I’ll show you how it’s done!” came the reply as Mr Shouty dived into the pool, surfacing almost exactly in the centre of what we had been looking at.
During the night the cows in the field had managed to break the fence and were now milling around the football pitch. One of them was probably the one who had decided that the pool was the ideal place to drop a rather large load of cow dung, cow dung that had formed a dungy slick that our gym teacher had just surfaced in the middle of. For a teacher who had just called us a bunch of ‘nancies’ he could certainly scream like a girl as he launched himself, flailing from the pool, a dollop of cow poo running down his face and ran back down the path towards the toilet block where he locked himself in a shower stall for several hours. The memory of him emerging screaming from the pool plastered in cow manure stayed with us for the rest of the year and did far more to bond us together than any educational trip up a hill ever did. Years later I heard that the nickname we had bestowed upon him stayed with him throughout his school career and for the next twenty years pupils would know him as ‘Mr Sh*thead’.
“Zere vill be no escape! Any attempts to do so und you vill be shot…und ze village shop is out of bounds unless you are accompanied by a teacher!”
Class 4S had arrived at school camp.
It was late September 1976, the long hot summer was a distant memory and we had been packed off to school camp. None of us were sure why. It could have been to foster a sense of camaraderie in our last year at primary school. It could have been to toughen us up for a future career in the Foreign Legion or it could have simply been because our parents wanted to get rid of us for a couple of weeks so they could head for the local Berni Inn to stuff their faces with Avocado and Prawn salad and steak all washed down with a bottle of Blue Nun in peace. Whatever it was, it meant we found ourselves sharing semi-derelict huts with 20 of our mates and a variety of wildlife all set in a place whose resemblance to one of the prison camps most of us had only seen in the ‘Wooden Horse’ was reinforced by the graffiti on the toilet walls…’Hauptman Willi Schmitt 1943’.
For the next two weeks every day would be the same. Wake up sharing the bed with an assortment of bugs and the odd Badger who had crawled into your sleeping bag overnight as it was warmer and drier than their usual hedge. Be driven out of the hut by our shouty gym master and forced to dive into the outdoor pool that was colder than a seals arse during an arctic winter, although to be fair to him he usually dived in soon after, such behaviour not arousing much suspicion in those more innocent days. This was followed by breakfast served by a group of dinner ladies whose sense of humour had been surgically removed at birth and then we would go on an ‘educational’ trip that usually consisted of a ten mile hike up a windswept hill. In the afternoon we would return to be allowed a few hours freedom which would invariably involve electrocuting the class swot on the electric fence that surrounded the camp unless they had fallen down a cliff or wandered off in a fog bank on the hike. Most of us would go foraging in the surrounding woods for nuts and Damsons to supplement our diet before being served with dinner by an even more humour-impaired bunch of staff.
Within a day of arrival classmates could be seen wandering around the scrubby football pitch with earth trickling from their trouser legs, there were rumours of a tunnel going out from under the ‘concert hall’ stage and most of the spoons had vanished from the canteen for digging purposes. At least two of our number went ‘over the wire’ but were recaptured after running into a couple of guar...teachers staggering back from the local pub. Suffice it to say school camp was not that enjoyable, at least not until the penultimate day.
We had been hounded out of our hut, leaving our warm sleeping bags and whatever creatures that had joined us behind and were headed for the pool. The front ranks however, had halted on the edge and were staring at the frigid water whilst jumping up and down to work some warmth back into their limbs. As we reached them we saw why but from behind us we heard a yell of
“Come on you lot, don’t be such a bunch of nancies! Get in the water!” as our shouty gym teacher pounded down the path.
“But sir!” began Dave…
“Don’t but me lad! I’ll show you how it’s done!” came the reply as Mr Shouty dived into the pool, surfacing almost exactly in the centre of what we had been looking at.
During the night the cows in the field had managed to break the fence and were now milling around the football pitch. One of them was probably the one who had decided that the pool was the ideal place to drop a rather large load of cow dung, cow dung that had formed a dungy slick that our gym teacher had just surfaced in the middle of. For a teacher who had just called us a bunch of ‘nancies’ he could certainly scream like a girl as he launched himself, flailing from the pool, a dollop of cow poo running down his face and ran back down the path towards the toilet block where he locked himself in a shower stall for several hours. The memory of him emerging screaming from the pool plastered in cow manure stayed with us for the rest of the year and did far more to bond us together than any educational trip up a hill ever did. Years later I heard that the nickname we had bestowed upon him stayed with him throughout his school career and for the next twenty years pupils would know him as ‘Mr Sh*thead’.
No comments:
Post a Comment