Nativity

The school nativity play was obviously one of the highlights of the year. It was a time when parents appeared to discover their inner religiousness and could be heard muttering “Oh Christ! It’s that time of year again!” and everyone from first year infants to second year juniors joined together to celebrate the birth of Jesus.

For us kids it was a time to escape the boredom of normal afternoon lessons from the end of November to the big day itself as we rehearsed and practiced under the tutelage of Miss Dent, our somewhat earnest ‘Music and Movement’ teacher.

The format of the play was pretty much set in stone, there wasn’t much scope for radical change, Miss Dent was not noted for her avant garde ideas and the Pythons had not come up with the ‘Life of Brian’ at that point. As it had been for years of school nativity plays and continues up to this day, Mary and Joseph go to Bethlehem, get put up in a stable filled with kids dressed in costumes vaguely resembling sheep and cows and the rocking horse from the pre-schoolers classroom disguised as a Donkey, are visited by shepherds aka more kids with their mums best tea towel on their heads, three wise men (more kids but those whose parents could make a better looking costume) and a bunch of angels (all the girls who failed to get the starring role of Mary in sheets and glittery wings made from coat hangers). At some point the infant Jesus is miraculously born, miraculously meaning skipping the childbirth thing lest it traumatise the parents and turns out to be a doll that lost an arm sometime round 1969 wrapped in a towel. All the kids sing some hymns in praise of this, the assembled parents go “Ahhhh!” and the teachers think “Thank God that’s over for another year!” and head home for a stiff gin. Not a lot can go wrong.

Well, not a lot can go wrong unless you decide to add a squad of Roman soldiers to the mix as Miss Dent decided to do. It was quite an innocent idea really, to have three Roman soldiers stop the weary Joseph and Mary on the road to Bethlehem and ask who they were so that Joseph and Mary could introduce themselves to the audience. During rehearsals this went fine, the centurion played by Damian simply said “Halt! Who seeks entrance to Bethlehem?” and Joseph answered “Two tired travellers, Mary and Joseph from Gallillee”

However, come the big day things did not quite work out so nicely. Part of it might have been my fault but much of the blame fell on Miss Dent and her quest for authenticity as she demanded that the Roman soldiers were armed with swords and spears to add to their military authority. Even aged seven I had a fair collection of toy weapons and two of these were modelled on the Roman Gladius so being the good schoolboy I was I volunteered them for the school play. I believe the rest of the class described it as ‘sucking up to the teacher’. That’s my part in the sorry debacle that followed. The rest of the blame fell squarely on Damian and Simon, the latter of whom was playing Joseph. A minor playground spat over some Matchbox cars had blown up into all out warfare with Damians ‘gang’ who happened to consist of the other two ‘soldiers’ and Simons gang constantly at each others throats.

So, come the afternoon of the play the local church hall that was used was filled with parents and grandparents, some of whom had not had several large drinks before coming to numb them to the pain of a primary school nativity, most of the teachers who were wishing they had had several stiff drinks and of course the vicar.

The lights were dimmed and the play began and began well with the Angel of the Lord beginning her narration and Mary and Joseph appearing from one side of the stage trudging their weary way to Bethlehem. It went quite well for about thirty seconds more until the Romans appeared. Costume problems meant that their breast plates and helmets were made out of cardboard covered with tinfoil so they looked less like Romans than a bunch of schoolkids who had gone a bit mental in the stationery cupboard. They were however, armed. Armed with my toy swords and a dangerous looking spear consisting of a cardboard point stuck to one of the caretakers broom handles.

“Halt!” cried Damian in his best centurions voice…and then in a total deviation from the script demanded “Your papers please!” in his best impression of a boys war comic Gestapo officer. From where the rest of us were standing in the wings you could see teachers beginning to twitch.

“Wha’? We haven’t got any papers.” Said Simon, confusion written on his face.

“Then you’re not getting into Bethlehem. Push off!” replied Damian poking Simon with his sword.

“Yes we are!” was Simons answer only to be told “No you’re not!” and rewarded with another poke of the sword. By now, the audience was beginning to pay attention, even the ones who had previously been planning to sleep off their several large whiskies. A number of the teachers had begun to move down the aisle.

“Don’t poke me with that again or I’ll duff you up!” snapped Simon. Poke went the sword and all hell broke loose. Imagine the scene in ‘Gladiator’ when the Romans are doing battle with the Germanic hordes. It was like that with seven year olds. Simon jumped on Damian, Damians two mates jumped on Simon. The shepherds who consisted of three of Simons friends rushed on stage and began battering the Romans with their crooks and the Angel of the Lord who was Damians older sister jumped from her podium and began to lay into them yelling “Stop hitting my brother or I’ll bash you!” in a most un-angelic manner. Fists were flying, glittery wings, tea towels and cardboard armour were sailing to the four winds and Miss Dent looked like she was about to burst into tears as several of the other teachers waded in to separate the combatants and cart them off to the room at the back of the hall.

With the loss of several of the leads the performance was doomed to conclude in a rather half hearted rendition of ‘Oh come all ye faithful’ by the non-combatants and afterwards we were sworn to “Never talk of this again!” by Miss Dent who was seen shortly afterwards buying several bottles of vodka in the local off licence.

I never got my swords back either.

Stuntman

Public information films were all the rage during my formative years. Switch on the TV and between Robin Hood and Tomorrow People you could be told not to throw Frisbees at electricity pylons, lock yourself in the fridge, hurl yourself into unknown waters or muck about with farm machinery if you found yourself out in the countryside. Of course, having a best friend, Alastair who happened to live on a farm meant that most of us knew these warnings were for the townie kids who might see the countryside once in a lifetime. We already knew that you stayed away from pointy things, did not climb inside the threshing machine and did not press the big button marked ‘Do NOT press this big button if your friend has crawled inside the threshing machine (unless you want to turn them into four stone of mince)’. Oh and if these failed there was always Alastair’s dad who gave us dire warnings of what to expect if any of us did muck about with the machinery…he would most likely kill us himself and that included the one who had been minced, bailed, threshed or trampled by annoyed sheep as well. In fact, not only would he kill them but would drag their remains back home for their parents to kill as well.

Thus it was with such a warning to stay away from the unlocked shed full of agricultural chemicals that nowadays would have a trainee suicide bomber salivating at the thought and an even bigger warning to stay away from the open cesspit that had been dug out and was waiting to be filled in that we found ourselves left alone with our bicycles in the farmyard one winter morning during the school holidays.

So, what were we to do? It was too cold to go up to the old pigsty that we used as a den and Paul had to be home by lunchtime as his grandmother was coming to visit so cycling to town was out as well. We were still trying to decide when Alastair who had been kicking stones into the old cesspit suddenly announced “I bet I could jump that on my bike!” Naturally we tried to dissuade him with that age old method used by nine year olds of “Go on then!”, “Bet you can’t!”, “Give you this bag of Blackjacks if you do!”

We had of course completely forgotten the dire warnings that his dad had given us less than half an hour earlier and having banished it from our thoughts, scouted around for something to make a ramp for Alastair to make his daredevil attempt. An old plank was dragged out of one of the outbuildings and set up against a pile of earth to one side of the excavation. Alastair cycled to the end of the yard and as we watched, pedalled as fast as he could. He hit the ramp perfectly, sailed into the air and…

…performed a perfect landing on the other side earning himself a chorus of “You jammy sod!” and a crumpled bag of sweets that had seen better days. Then for the next fifteen minutes or so the rest of emulated his feat and we all cleared the pit every time until Paul announced “I’m going to try it from the other way” and of course we tried our utmost to put him off doing so with “Bet you can’t!”, “Give you the sweets if you do!” etc etc.

So, the plank was moved to another pile of earth, this time at the end of the cesspit and Paul cycled to the top of the yard and as Alastair before him, pedalled furiously down towards the pit. He hit the plank and sailed across the 8’ gap to perform a perfect landing on the other side, not even suffering testicular trauma from the gear stick on his Raleigh Chopper which was a shame as that was what we had wanted to see. He was however, travelling quite fast having gained a fair speed from distance he had travelled in his run up and the slight slope of the yard. Also, it being winter and Alastairs’s dad having hosed the yard after bringing the cows in for milking in the early hours of the morning meant there was a large patch of ice and Paul hit it, skidding and losing control of his bicycle.

We could only watch in stunned silence as he slid towards the wall of the milking shed and the by product of a largish herd of cows that lay waiting for Alastair’s dad to return with the tractor to remove it sometime after lunch. Boy and bicycle met manure pile and shed with a sickening SQUELCH…THUD…ARGH! Long seconds passed as we stared open mouthed as Paul picked himself up and tottered towards us resembling some nightmare creature from the bog and as usual, being the lovely, caring children we were, ran away screaming “Argh! Crapmonster!”

However, that did not last for long as we realised we had to get away before Alastairs dad returned and discovered that we had disobeyed him. Not that the evidence of a bent bike in the middle of a pile of cow dung wasn’t enough to convict us in our absence. Ignoring that fact completely we cycled off rather hurriedly, propelling Paul ahead of us with a long stick from the hedgerow outside the farm gate until we reached his house…just as his grandmother arrived in a taxi to be presented not with the well scrubbed and well behaved young man she expected but by three urchins and a grandson liberally smeared in cow shit. Her face remains imprinted on my memory and the look that Pauls mum gave us indicated we would all soon find ourselves in much deeper shit than Paul had ever been in.

Still, at least we did not go near the unlocked shed full of agricultural chemicals. At least, not that time.

Apologies for lack of updates

Apologies to readers of this blog for the lack of recent posts. Due to illness (my own and other members of the family) and needing time outside of work to deal with this I have not been able to write as much as I would like. However, there are more tales yet to come so keep checking as I promise there will be an update at some point.

A sense of chemistry

It may have been years of sniffing fumes that the not quite as efficient as they could be fume cupboards at our school had allowed to escape. It could just have been a natural propensity towards insanity but most of our chemistry masters showed a shocking tendency to lean in the direction of the more mentalist end of the spectrum.

Mr Roberts was incredibly trusting to the point of naivety and would leave entire classes to their own devices for periods at a time, returning only at the sound of fire alarms or clouds of poisonous gases rolling down the corridor. Mr Peters bordered on the psychotic and his accuracy with a board rubber was legendary as many of us discovered with a chalky smack to the back of the head and Mr Burton was well, in a league of his own. Mr Burton was definitely not all there but Mr Burton liked practical demonstrations. He liked them a lot and did not take much note of health and safety, not that there was much of that back in 1983 and providing he did not burn the school down or lose too many pupils his little ‘accidents’ were on the whole overlooked.

His favourite demonstration was of distillation. He would mix up some copper sulphate, a pleasantly poisonous substance, in water, attach it to a set of distillation apparatus, distil the water off and drink it to show that pure water was produced from the toxic solution. He would do this every year without fail as the fourth lesson for the first years in the lab next door to the sixth form library.

Now, as it happened a number of us sixth formers were in the sixth form library that fateful afternoon. We were supposed to be studying. In fact most us were lounging around in a state of fitful torpor following a lunchtime not at all underage drinking session at the local pub whose landlord had appalling eyesight and who apparently could not tell a sixteen year old from a sixty year old. The lab and the library had a connecting door and it was Pete, spying through the keyhole that realised that Mr Burton was going to carry out his famous demonstration. It was also Pete who suggested pulling a practical joke and it was Pete who had the means to do so in his pocket.

Pete was our resident delinquent and punk rocker. He spent most of his out of school hours hanging around the local park with the older punks drinking whatever concoctions they had managed to steal from the local supermarket or in the case of Pete, his dads cocktail bar. Nowadays hanging around in parks drinking cider is the preserve of the local chavs, back then it was the preserve of middle class schoolboys with safety pins in their blazer as a sign of rebellion. As a result of this Pete habitually carried a half bottle of vodka around with him in his rucksack, something that would lead to him being carried out of the boys toilets one lunchtime during the A-Level exams, half conscious and mumbling something about how he fancied Mrs O’Hara, the head of biology and a lady who made Mrs Thatcher look sweet and cuddly.

Anyhow, a plan was swiftly hatched and put into action. Andy was sent to knock on the door of the lab and when Mr Burton answered, informed him that the headmaster wished to see him rather urgently. As Mr Burton left Pete was through the connecting door like a shot and began phase two of the plan. The distilled water in a lab beaker at the end of the apparatus was quickly poured down the sink and replaced with a generous helping of vodka whilst the rest of us threatened the class of new first years with the direst of punishments if they breathed a word when Mr Burton returned. The whole operation took less than two minutes and we were all back in the library before Mr Burton wandered back looking slightly more confused than he normally did.

Unaware that he had an extra audience peering through the keyhole and any chinks in the painted glass of the door he launched into his spiel, something about the “Distillate being pure water and perfectly safe to drink as the toxic impurities had been left at the other end of the apparatus”. With this he raised the beaker and took a huge swig…coughed…gagged…gasped…swore…gasped a bit more and staggered towards the door. We all looked at each other as the sounds of him lurching across the corridor were followed by the sounds of someone being violently ill in the staff toilets.

A couple of days later in the morning assembly the headmaster reported that Mr Burton was expected to make a full recovery after a lab experiment had gone tragically wrong although he may not return for a while due to the accident exacerbating a few other problems in Mr Burtons private life.

It wasn’t until weeks later we discovered that he was a recovering alcoholic taking some seriously unpleasant drugs that would make him throw up if he so much as looked at a bottle of booze or walked within fifty yards of a pub. We just thought that the far away look was part and parcel of being a chemistry teacher inhaling all those noxious fumes, not that he was a bit partial to a bottle or two of Scotch of an evening to help him forget his days teaching horrible little bastards like us. Perhaps fortunately for us he eventually made a complete recovery but according to younger siblings who attended the school after we left he never performed the copper sulphate trick ever again without taking a good long sniff of what had emerged from the apparatus even if he had been standing watching the process from beginning to end.