Porterhouse II

I’m sure that the liberal minded do-gooder who decided that it would be wise to educate us in the mysteries of human sexuality regretted it afterwards. If they did not they really should have given the mayhem their afternoon lecture caused the following day.

It wasn’t so much that the lecture, delivered to half of the sixth form, namely thirty or so seventeen year old boys, most of who were already engaging or at least trying to, in carnal ramblings with the other half of the sixth form that consisted of thirty or so seventeen year old girls that caused the mayhem. It was the packets of condoms that were handed out to us to promote safe sex and responsibility. No doubt the person who donated them presumed they would mummify in our wallets as most condoms handed out to teenage boys had tended to do in previous more sexually unenlightened times. How wrong they were!

So, there we were, thirty or so seventeen year olds, most of whom already had wallets stuffed to bursting with prophylactics stolen from older siblings bedside cabinets, from the local barbers having endured the gazes and knowing nods of the older gents when Mr Ginelli asked “Something for the weekend sir?” and in the case of Pete whose parents ran the local chemist, from the stockroom out at the back and all of a sudden we each had an extra packet of three. If we tried to cram any more in our wallets there was a serious risk of condom overload and resulting eruption that would cover the school playground from end to end with things that were ribbed, bobbled, nubbled and tentacled for his and her pleasure. So what could we do with them?

The answer was simple, why not inflate them and fill the sixth form year masters broom cupboard-like office with them. Brilliant idea! Mr Dart the previous incumbent had just retired and his successor was to be named the next day. An office filled with inflated condoms would be a jolly jape to welcome him or her into the post. Er…maybe not. Unfortunately, being seventeen our reading matter tended to consist of 2000AD and lurid books about SS Panzer battalions from the cheap bookshop in town. It did not stretch to ‘Porterhouse Blue’ and its potential warning about inflated condoms. What’s more we should never have trusted Pete with the inflation of said condoms as he had never read the book either.

The following morning we all arrived bright and early which in itself was unusual given that most of us rolled in sometime after morning assembly just in time for mid morning break and a game of poker before the first lesson of the day. Pete had obviously been in since the crack of dawn as the year masters office was filled with inflated johnnies that resembled oversized maggots. The 90 or so that we had all contributed had been supplemented by a fair few more stolen from Petes parents chemists shop and the room was stuffed as full as it possibly could be. Now all we had to do was attend assembly and discover who the lucky recipient of our splendid wheeze was.

Standing at the back we endured the usual badly sung hymns, the congratulations to the first 11 who had managed to escape with a 25-0 mauling against another local school and how the study garden was not to be used to play cricket in. Finally the revelation of who the new sixth form master was came…Mr Bowles, probably the single most humourless individual in the school. Over the years his reputation had grown worse with each passing term. Here was a man who would give a pupil a weeks detention for just standing in the wrong way. We had arranged for his office to be filled with contraceptives. In the back row the entire sixth form went a very pale shade of their usual colour and one thought passed silently through all our minds…”Oooooh fuck!” We were doomed to a lifetime of detention, in fact we would probably be old and grey before we would be let out.

Perhaps fortunately for us, at the back of the hall was a cupboard that connected with the PE department changing rooms. Hurriedly, three of us, Nigel, Andy and myself shielded by the rest of the sixth form crawled through this and fled the building, running across to the sixth form common rooms as fast as we could. We had only a short time to get rid of the contraceptives before Mr Bowles turned up as was tradition after the assembly in which he had been named but how could we do it. There were so many in the tiny room we could only just get the door open a crack. There was only one way, burst them with something. But what could we use? Darts! There was a dartboard in the common room, we all used it, we could poke the condoms with darts. There was only one problem with the plan, there were not any darts in the board, most of the players brought their own and kept them in their rucksacks. What about something sharp from the woodwork block next door suggested Nigel so he and I scurried off leaving Andy behind.

We had only just reached the door of the woodwork block when behind us we heard what sounded like a series of muffled car backfires, a slightly louder bang and the sound of breaking glass. Running back we crashed back into the common room to find Andy standing by the office door looking somewhat traumatised with a cigarette lighter in hand. Beyond him the sixth form masters office resembled an explosion in a contraceptive factory, which, as we found out later was not far off the mark. We had just enough time to bundle him out of the fire door and run round the building as the rest of the sixth form arrived with Mr Bowles. We had joined the tail end and were witnesses to the look of utter astonishment on his face as he surveyed what was supposed to have been his office but which was now an area of devastation, missing a window pane and littered with singed paper and bits of pink latex. Suffice it to say he was not a happy chap.

It was only later we pieced together the whole sorry tale. Pete had indeed arrived early that morning and faced with inflating almost a hundred condoms had cheated a bit and using the gas hose from the oven in the common room kitchen, had filled them with good old North Sea gas. Andy had not really expected them to be inflated with anything but air when, desperate to get rid of the Zeppelin like prophylactics, he had applied his lighter after managing to open the door a crack. At first there had been a brief chain reaction but this, as chain reactions have a tendency to do had turned into something bigger. The resulting gas explosion had blown out one of the window panes and shot a sheet of flame past Andy who had been lucky to have been shielded by the door.

The entire sixth form had their privileges revoked for two months, no darts, no cards and were expected to spend their free breaks and lunchtimes studying in the library. We were sternly reminded that condoms were meant for other purposes than blowing up the school, something that may also have been regretted when the head boy was discovered in bed with Miss Wilder, the new gym mistress at an end of term party that year.

The Great Rubber Band War

It probably started like so many conflicts with a relatively minor incident, an Archduke Franz Ferdinand style assassination attempt round the back of the boys toilets perhaps but soon the ‘Great Rubber Band War’ of 1978 had taken a momentum of its own. The minor incident became forgotten as the cries to arms went out. Hit and run border raids on the second year corner of the playground were unleashed and retaliated against and by the end of the week full scale open warfare had broken out. Just about every able-bodied boy in the 1st and 2nd years began packing heat in the form of rubber bands purloined from the bursars stationery cupboard and a pocket full of folded paper pellets.

From the stalemate of trench warfare hiding behind the walled flowerbeds of the ‘study garden’ to grand sweeping charges across the playing field nowhere in the school was safe and every break reverberated to the ping of rubber bands and the yelps of the victims as a lucky shot caught them in the back of the neck. Naturally the masters attempted to ‘discourage’ us by confiscating rubber bands and having us turn out our pockets, rucksacks, briefcases and bags but it was not like we were turning up to school with an Uzi and a couple of Glocks like most pupils of today seem to do so on the whole they were fairly laid back about it. After all, nobody was going to get killed, that task was covered by the PE department and their ten mile runs. At least they were laid back about it until the ‘East bank massacre’.

The ‘war’ had been humming along nicely for best part of a month. The massed battles had given way to a more static and ambush based conflict. Us 1st years defended our corner of the playground and had made significant gains around the library, Physics building and lower school toilet block. Along with our allies in the 3rd year we also held a chunk of the upper school playground. After a long stalemate and threats of a sound thrashing if we disturbed its solitude ever again, the ‘study garden’ had become neutral territory guarded by the fearsome Mrs Trotter of the music department. The 2nd years held the area around the biology labs, the school gym and the newly built ‘Home Economics’ suite as well as good portion of the area of land that bordered the playing fields. As in other wars our ‘generals’, three of the quieter kids who were members of the school war game club, decided that a major offensive must be launched.

Maybe events would have been different if Mike had not decided to up the ante a little with his homemade multi-banded miniature crossbow that could be used to launch inky pellets with the potential to mark our foe as victims of war. Maybe they would have been drastically different if he had not shared his design with the rest of us and we, instead of being the blood-thirsty warriors of the playground out for honour in battle had not copied it in our dads sheds and garages over the weekend and turned up at school the following Monday with an assortment of inky paper projectile launching devices that would make Dennis the Menace go white with fear. Maybe too, things would have not culminated in the ‘East bank massacre’ if our generals had, like generals before and after not been relying on faulty intelligence.

Word had gone out that the 2nd form commanders would be gathering on the East bank of the playing fields at lunch break. Here was our chance to break the stalemate by not only capturing the area, but also humiliating their leaders with our new inky artillery. Double maths seemed to last forever that morning as we strained at the leash to launch our attack. No sooner had the lunch break bell rung than we were out of the classroom, stuffing our pre-Jamie Oliver sugar loaded snacks and fish paste sandwiches down our throats as we went, ready to do battle. Our advance parties were already in position, ready to sweep the opposition around the biology labs aside whilst our raiding party moved through to deliver the humiliating blow. At exactly 1pm we went over the top in more ways than one.

The few second years that had gathered by the labs were swept aside and our flank attack seized the high ground only to discover that the bank was deserted, no-one in sight. We stood confused for several moments then Mike yelled “I hear them, they’re in the bushes!”

With a bloodthirsty scream twenty or so 1st years piled over the top of the bank firing inky pellets. It took at least ten seconds, in which, thanks to Mikes brilliant design of multiple firing mini-crossbows several hundred pellets soaked in blue Quink had been fired, for us to realise that it was not our 2nd form foe that stood before us but Miss Ashton, the biology teacher who had been out gathering bugs for the forthcoming 3rd year double biology period that afternoon. What’s more her white coat looked like it had developed a strange case of blue measles. I can’t remember what I thought at that moment. I think it was something on the lines of “Oh bother!”

Suffice it to say that we found ourselves hauled up before the headmaster who, to put it mildly was a little on the unhappy side that one of his staff had been assaulted in such a way. We were lucky to escape with several thousand lines each especially after almost all of us had been forced to desperately hide our sniggers with a variety of coughs, snorts and sneezes when he demanded “So who was it that shot Miss Ashton in the bush then?”