The absolute very first time I saw a girl’s knickers was in the playground of my primary school in the early 70s. I think it cost me a cola bottle or some sherbet dip dab but I don’t remember being asked to show my pants in return even though half a packet of Space Dust or a few spangles would probably have done the trick.
I didn’t really enjoy those early school days very much. I was in a constant state of fear that my mum would forget to pack my gym kit on the days we had PE and I’d be forced to perform in my Y-Fronts (and I’m pretty sure, if that were to happen, I’d not get so much as a fruit salad from my PE teacher let alone Space Dust or spangles).
The games of British Bulldog were equally embarrassing, especially when you’d been floored by the smallest kid in the school and could only watch helplessly as the girl who’d promised to go out with you just a couple of days earlier made alarmingly little effort to avoid the clutches of one of the sporty boys in the year above (you know who you are, Sarah T).
I seem to remember breaktimes at primary school far better than I do the actual lessons. There were the games of paper fortune-teller which were meant to identify future events like who you were going to marry (which, in my case when Sarah T was in charge of the game, often turned out to be the Headmaster) as well as conker contests which became so competitive that kids would bake them in the oven at home in an effort to cheat - presumably the same kids who'd grow up to be members of parliament and put in dubious expense claims for duck houses and porn films (for absolute clarity, I think these were on separate occasions and not part of the same claim - that really would've been weird).
When we moved up to the secondary school, the levels of bullying, sarcasm and ritual humiliation went up a few notches….although this was mainly from the teachers now to be fair. We had one who would draw chalk circles on his blackboard at the beginning of the lesson and punish pupils by making them stand at the front with their nose in one of them when they did something wrong. It was an odd punishment because it encouraged you to misdemean early so that you could pick one of the more accessible circles (the worst were at six feet and six inches) but only went to prove that the intention of the exercise was purely to provide an anecdote for him to tell his mates down the pub later that day (which meant lunchtime in his case).
Another form of torture, less subtle and bordering on GBH, created a real buzz in the staff room at break-time as league tables were updated with the results of how many pupils the teachers had managed to hit with the wooden blackboard dusters. Extra points were awarded for a perfect chalk rectangle on the blazer. You'd often be summoned to the staff room under the pretext of handing in your prep early just so they could check your teacher's claim.
And was mine the only school where the science teachers used to lie stretched out on the lab bench in front of the Bunsen burners and answer any “excuse me, sir” enquiry with “why, what have you done?” whilst looking very pleased with themselves? Why did teaching attract such weirdos in our day? Besides the sadists in our school, there was the odd hunchback plus the one who looked like a weeble (those egg-shaped toys which wobbled but didn't fall down....unless you used a hammer) and who would wear shorts & long white socks as soon as the temperatures rose above freezing, somehow oblivious to the fact that this made him the No.1 target for mickey-taking in the school (and not just by the pupils I assure you).
In our day, GCSEs were called O-Levels where the ‘O’ stood for ‘Ordinary’ which, let’s be honest, was a little deflating whether you were successful in them or not. Our exams had proper grades (A-F and U) and were marked strictly on the basis of reflecting the pupil’s ability rather than cheering them up to improve their mental health. My brother got a U in his Art O-Level for drawing a picture of a jockstrap (true story). His teacher felt he was very unlucky because it was such a realistic jockstrap…..although I couldn’t help but feel that might have been part of the problem.
Punishment came in the form of lines or dates, both of which involved spending hours writing out the same thing over and over again in your exercise book and led directly to one of us inventing copy & paste when we grew up (you’re welcome, kids). We also did our homework by looking through our textbooks and coming up with solutions ourselves rather than googling the answer and pressing print. It seems a bit naïve now but we found it an oddly reliable way of learning the subject.
In the days before ‘healthy eating’ campaigns, school dinners were truly dreadful and were served to us by inmates on day release from Borstal. We’d have been delighted to receive something as nutritious as turkey twizzlers but were given roadkill with lumpy potato and even lumpier gravy instead. Nowadays, it’s à la carte menus and Michelin-starred dishes with couscous, avocado and quinoa. If the potato gratin or jus is lumpy, it’s because Heston Blumenthal designed it that way.
After lunch, it was games so we’d jump in the minibus and drive off to get our heads kicked in by the posh school which our headmaster insisted on us playing so he could try and get a job on their staff. The only light relief was making signs to stick to the back windscreen, saying ‘smile if you did it last night’. A huge roar would go up from the whole minibus (including the teacher driving it) if we got a thumbs up from the car behind, even more so if his girlfriend was in the passenger seat at the time attempting to hide below the dashboard.
School discos were notoriously embarrassing affairs as groups of bumfluffed boys huddled together and pointed out which girls we fancied whilst having no intention whatsoever of plucking up the courage to ask them to dance. Instead, our idea of a mating ritual was to watch them sway gracefully to Soft Cell before piling onto the dancefloor and jumping around to the Jam to impress them. It's a tactic I've used on several occasions later in life but, funnily enough, with a success rate which has remained consistently and stubbornly low.
So, what's changed? If, nowadays, you offered a girl a few sweets to see her knickers in the playground, you’d be served with a restraining order and a suspended sentence. If you complained that one of your exam questions triggered some deep-rooted anxiety, you'd be awarded an A* and automatic entry to the Oxbridge college of your choice. Were you to ask car drivers to smile if they’d done it last night, they’d take a photo of you on their iPhone and have you expelled before the minibus had made it back to your school. And, although I sometimes dream that Sarah T still plays British Bulldog, if she made a dash for it once I'd finally tracked her down again, I don’t honestly think I’ve got the legs to catch her anymore.
Next: No idea. I've been posting new ones every week for 50 weeks now and my creative juices have gone the same way as all my other juices. Let me know which topics you'd still like me to cover and I'm sure I can persuade Rob at Posteritty to illustrate a few more every now and then!
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