As mentioned on here several times in the past, the school I attended valued sporting prowess as much if not more than academic ability so if you were rubbish at sports you were almost certainly doomed to seven years of being treated with contempt by the sadistic bastards who made up the PE department. Of course the flip side of this was that if you were any good at sports you ended up in one of the school teams which meant after hours training and matches against other schools that were invariably held on a Saturday, a sneaky way of getting extra school attendance out of you when you should have been watching ‘TISWAS’ and stuffing your face with Tartrazine loaded snacks.
Thus it became a battle to try to strike a balance between making sure that you did not lose your chance to laze around at the weekend and making sure that you were not labelled a bone idle waster by Messrs Jackson and Stephens and forced to do the kind of physical jerks that could fell most SAS men in the playground in order to toughen you up whilst everyone else played basketball in the nice warm gym. In my case being unutterably crap at football meant that at least once a week I got sent on laps of the field but the rest of the time I managed to just about do enough not to be marked down as a weakling yet avoid getting on any teams. Rugby and cricket I was average at, I could run the four hundred yards and not stagger in last gasping for breath and throwing up behind the biology labs and as for cross country, well most of us had sussed that if we dropped out of sight on the first lap of the school we could have a crafty smoke for twenty minutes, nip out of the side gate and then reappear for the last two hundred yards just behind the keen types who really had done the running and it would look like we had completed the race in an average enough time that would not see us ending up on the cross country team either. There was only one time when we were almost caught out and that was when Kev’ crossed the line with a Lambert & Butler glued to his lip having forgotten to spit it out before he resumed the race. Luckily for us Mr Jackson happened to be looking the other way as Kev’ charged past emitting clouds of smoke like a runaway steam engine.
The one fly in the ointment though was school sports day. We have all had to do it at some time in our youth. It’s the day when the PE teachers not content with being the evil, sadistic bastards they are and hounding you round a cold, wet playing field for two hours make you do the self same thing but with an audience of parents and peers to see you stagger in last or try to throw a lump of iron like an uncoordinated chimpanzee on Mogadon in the one sporting event you are absolutely rubbish at yet have been made to do by the PE teachers because they want a bit of a laugh. After all, the sight of Neil in his coke bottle glasses veering off at a tangent into the crowds and the second year kid with the withered arm trying to putt the shot obviously had great comedy value amongst the staff.
Apart from football the other event I wasn’t any good at was throwing the javelin or at least it appeared that way. I was in fact very good at it but to ensure that my leisure time was not dented by hurling pointy sticks on a weekend I made it look like I wasn’t that brilliant at it, not completely cack-handed like Pete who managed to spear himself through the foot the first time we were let loose with javelins but not good enough to be noticed and appointed school spear chucker either. Thus on the last sports day before we left school after our ‘O’ levels I found, by some twist of perverse logic in one of the PE masters mind, that I was representing my house in the javelin events.
It was possibly because this was the last sports day we would ever have to attend as in the sixth form sport was optional that a certain spirit of rebellion came over me and when it was my turn to throw I thought “Sod it!” and hurled the javelin with all my might which given that I had just hit sixteen was pretty mighty indeed. As it happened the annual spectacle of the teachers versus first year pupils egg and spoon two hundred metres race had just begun and as usual the teachers were about fifty yards ahead of the first year participants who seemed to consist of all the asthmatics and kids who liked their chips too much chosen in order to make the teachers, who apart from Miss Hancock were hardly the fittest of beings, look good.
Now, in most normal and sensible athletics stadiums the javelin triangle is marked so that stray missiles pose no threat to spectators and other athletes. At my school it had been decided that as it was obvious no pupil would ever hurl one more than about ten yards, probably because generations of pupils wanting an easy life had never really tried that hard, that the javelin triangle would be marked out straight across the field instead of down it. As I stood and watched the sharp pointy metal thing I had just thrown descend in a graceful arc my thought of “Sod it!” became one of “Ooooo! Shit!”
With a thud the javelin fell to earth… slap bang in the middle of the running track about six feet in front of Mr Tate, one of the geography masters, who, unable to stop or react in time went flat on his face over it closely followed by two of the French Masters a history teacher and the head of Biology. The fat and asthmatic kids meanwhile jogged serenely past the teachers lying in a heap on the track, or at least as serenely as it possibly is for someone who is gasping for breath and going a funny shade of blue to jog past and on to the finish line, the first time the teachers had been beaten in about a hundred years. Behind me I could hear the sounds of apoplectic rage and turned to face Mr Jackson who, red faced glared at me for long seconds. Next moment the whole audience of parents, teachers and fellow pupils heard his bellow of “WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU ARE BOY…A…A FUCKING ZULU????” echo across the playing field.
An hour later, as if to rub it in I was presented with the rosette for first place and over the polite applause of the parents and teachers another sound could be heard, that of three hundred or so of my fellow pupils stamping their feet in a rough approximation of the moment the natives are heard in a certain 1960s film starring Michael Caine and Stanley Baker. Perhaps not surprisingly when the athletics area was marked out the following year the javelin range pointed down the track, not across it.
Thus it became a battle to try to strike a balance between making sure that you did not lose your chance to laze around at the weekend and making sure that you were not labelled a bone idle waster by Messrs Jackson and Stephens and forced to do the kind of physical jerks that could fell most SAS men in the playground in order to toughen you up whilst everyone else played basketball in the nice warm gym. In my case being unutterably crap at football meant that at least once a week I got sent on laps of the field but the rest of the time I managed to just about do enough not to be marked down as a weakling yet avoid getting on any teams. Rugby and cricket I was average at, I could run the four hundred yards and not stagger in last gasping for breath and throwing up behind the biology labs and as for cross country, well most of us had sussed that if we dropped out of sight on the first lap of the school we could have a crafty smoke for twenty minutes, nip out of the side gate and then reappear for the last two hundred yards just behind the keen types who really had done the running and it would look like we had completed the race in an average enough time that would not see us ending up on the cross country team either. There was only one time when we were almost caught out and that was when Kev’ crossed the line with a Lambert & Butler glued to his lip having forgotten to spit it out before he resumed the race. Luckily for us Mr Jackson happened to be looking the other way as Kev’ charged past emitting clouds of smoke like a runaway steam engine.
The one fly in the ointment though was school sports day. We have all had to do it at some time in our youth. It’s the day when the PE teachers not content with being the evil, sadistic bastards they are and hounding you round a cold, wet playing field for two hours make you do the self same thing but with an audience of parents and peers to see you stagger in last or try to throw a lump of iron like an uncoordinated chimpanzee on Mogadon in the one sporting event you are absolutely rubbish at yet have been made to do by the PE teachers because they want a bit of a laugh. After all, the sight of Neil in his coke bottle glasses veering off at a tangent into the crowds and the second year kid with the withered arm trying to putt the shot obviously had great comedy value amongst the staff.
Apart from football the other event I wasn’t any good at was throwing the javelin or at least it appeared that way. I was in fact very good at it but to ensure that my leisure time was not dented by hurling pointy sticks on a weekend I made it look like I wasn’t that brilliant at it, not completely cack-handed like Pete who managed to spear himself through the foot the first time we were let loose with javelins but not good enough to be noticed and appointed school spear chucker either. Thus on the last sports day before we left school after our ‘O’ levels I found, by some twist of perverse logic in one of the PE masters mind, that I was representing my house in the javelin events.
It was possibly because this was the last sports day we would ever have to attend as in the sixth form sport was optional that a certain spirit of rebellion came over me and when it was my turn to throw I thought “Sod it!” and hurled the javelin with all my might which given that I had just hit sixteen was pretty mighty indeed. As it happened the annual spectacle of the teachers versus first year pupils egg and spoon two hundred metres race had just begun and as usual the teachers were about fifty yards ahead of the first year participants who seemed to consist of all the asthmatics and kids who liked their chips too much chosen in order to make the teachers, who apart from Miss Hancock were hardly the fittest of beings, look good.
Now, in most normal and sensible athletics stadiums the javelin triangle is marked so that stray missiles pose no threat to spectators and other athletes. At my school it had been decided that as it was obvious no pupil would ever hurl one more than about ten yards, probably because generations of pupils wanting an easy life had never really tried that hard, that the javelin triangle would be marked out straight across the field instead of down it. As I stood and watched the sharp pointy metal thing I had just thrown descend in a graceful arc my thought of “Sod it!” became one of “Ooooo! Shit!”
With a thud the javelin fell to earth… slap bang in the middle of the running track about six feet in front of Mr Tate, one of the geography masters, who, unable to stop or react in time went flat on his face over it closely followed by two of the French Masters a history teacher and the head of Biology. The fat and asthmatic kids meanwhile jogged serenely past the teachers lying in a heap on the track, or at least as serenely as it possibly is for someone who is gasping for breath and going a funny shade of blue to jog past and on to the finish line, the first time the teachers had been beaten in about a hundred years. Behind me I could hear the sounds of apoplectic rage and turned to face Mr Jackson who, red faced glared at me for long seconds. Next moment the whole audience of parents, teachers and fellow pupils heard his bellow of “WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU ARE BOY…A…A FUCKING ZULU????” echo across the playing field.
An hour later, as if to rub it in I was presented with the rosette for first place and over the polite applause of the parents and teachers another sound could be heard, that of three hundred or so of my fellow pupils stamping their feet in a rough approximation of the moment the natives are heard in a certain 1960s film starring Michael Caine and Stanley Baker. Perhaps not surprisingly when the athletics area was marked out the following year the javelin range pointed down the track, not across it.
1 comment:
It must be taught in teacher's college re the whole Zulu thing. My kids had to run in bare feet on Monday, like some struggling African athlete. Of course, my daughter stood on the ironically named honky nuts that seem to be strewn about the running track, thus falling on the home straight, and coming in third instead of her original first. Zola Budd has a lot to answer for, mark my words.
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