British Winters Page 6

  Chapter Six

  The Fabrication of Education

  It turns out that Toby’s favour is indeed the need for people to help carry heavy shit.

  Whilst doing a write-up on the local high school’s newly built I.T. lab (sorry, I mean I.C.T. lab - apparently we are now also communicating the information with the technology) Toby got himself a little crush on the school’s Maths teacher. A one Ms Sidebottom, a name I find highly amusing as one of my few pleasures in life is catching a little glimpse of some ‘side-bottom’ when Deb darts for the bathroom, post sex. Her first name is Doris, named after Doris Day, or at least that’s the tale she tells though I reckon it’s more likely that she is named after a spinster aunt with more cats than marbles. So, Toby has a crush on a Maths teacher call Doris Sidebottom. Picturing her in my mind I place her in her mid-sixties; had Toby become king of the granny grabbers? Toby assures me she is way below pensioner age and that, if caught, she would be quite the catch: twenty-seven; tall; long brunette hair; and with eyes that just pop, which he said in an upbeat manner so I took it as a good thing and not a literal thing.

  Doris, although not the teacher Toby had to interview, was given the duty of showing him around. It was whilst carrying out this duty she mentioned there were a number of disused PCs that needed disposing of and then continued to explain the school’s predicament. It turns out that there was a firm who would pay for the old computers, but would not collect them. This meant, due to the sheer quantity of abused and disused computers, the school would have to pay for someone to take them and this in turn would cut heavily into any money they would make out of the deal. Hence, the favour of me having to carry heavy shit.

  “I could get a van and some friends. We’ll do it for free,” he says.

  “Really? That would be marvellous,” she says.

  So, here I am on the grounds of my old high school, with Nails for back up, doing someone else’s favour.

  The PCs represent many stages of technological evolution, most of them being big chunky ones from the late 90s; their colour is a creamy grey like a nicotine-stained storm trooper figure. Nostalgic thoughts of my childhood are sparked by the sight of the odd Commodore 64 amongst the stockpile of towers and monitors, but the happy find of the day is an old BBC Acorn Archimedes A310. The thing looks brand new, not a blemish to be seen, not a scuff or scratch on its screen; its orange function keys as vibrant as the day they were made. This item is not going to make it to its destination. I’m no thief but the school is getting a twenty quid standard rate per PC, so one way or another I’ll end up with a mint condition Acorn Archimedes and the school will get its twenty pieces of gold, plus a little extra because hey, it’s for the kids.

  So here I am at the old school, the old stomping ground and by stomping ground I am referring to the numerous times I’ve been given a good stomping on these grounds. I was a fragile child and I never understood the mean-heartedness of school life. As an adult I look back on those days and put it down to me being too weak, too easily wounded. The light-hearted banter between boys seemed, at least to me, like a sadistic assault on the human psyche. However, now I’m back in those same halls, I see the kids of today repeating the same actions as their forebears and I see that the high jinks are laced with malice; there are no light-hearted jibes. It’s Darwin’s survival of the fittest in real time: take down the weak; let the others know them to be lepers; and do not allow them to infect our superior gene pool. When looking for the missing link look no further than our schools - chimps being taught like Pavlov’s dog - the bell rings, time to move on, little drones. Their brains have reason and logic but they don’t know and don’t want to know how to use these cognitive tools. They still live by instinct, ruled by alpha males and females; in school hallways the tribal borders are set in stone.

  Outside, Nails and I are taking a break; we’ve done no actual lifting but have spent a good hour standing about checking out the load and the van. It’s time for a tea and a fag.

  “Why did I agree to this?” Nails gripes, with good cause; he’s been roped into this favour third hand.

  “Sorry, man, I needed someone who’d make the day a little more social. Toby’s gonna spend most of the day batting his eyelids at Ms Sidebottom.”

  “So, if I start being meaner to you, you’ll stop asking me to do shit like this?”

  “Yep, but it’ll have to be a lot meaner than a ‘your mama’s so fat’ joke.”

  “I’ve been secretly filming you in the Gents and selling the tapes to the randy Yank.”

  “No worries. Remember that night you passed out and woke up back at mine with no recollection of how you got there?”

  “Not really.”

  “Rohypnol. And Kev paid handsomely for that night of bum fun.”

  “That explains the tenderness.”

  During my stint as an attending student, the school was being upgraded. Every lesson was hindered by the sound of construction work, drilling and banging and such. A lot of the classes were moved into portacabins because of the renovations and the place looked like a holiday camp in downtown Baghdad. Now, the current students get to reap the benefits; the place is massive and new wings have sprouted where in my day only foundations and girders stood. Gone are the Neanderthal builders, the very definition of their stereotype: overweight; hairy shoulders; balding heads; chain smoking on the job, then having extra long cigarette breaks; and leering at the jail bait - the word paedophile not at the heights of hysteria it is today. The school is now finished and today’s youth, these hairless apes, get all the reward off the backs of our torment and they are so blissfully unaware that other children even existed prior to their conception, but let’s not confuse arrogance with stupidity. Fuck ‘em, let them play in the halls of my pain, let them learn French without the hindrance of a pneumatic drill screeching through the window. This bubble-wrapped generation is going to feel the sting of adulthood more than most.

  “Guys?” Toby has found us and come to use us to impress a woman. Women seem to like a guy who can make other men do their bidding, instead of seeing them as lazy-good-for-nothings who need others to achieve things.

  “What?” I respond in an innocent tone.

  “The cigarette, that’s what. What kind of example are you setting for the kids?”

  “A bad one?” Nails answers sardonically.

  “Yes, put them out.” Toby’s such a grownup. That’s where this feeling of disconnection is coming from; he has matured into his age bracket, whereas I have soured. I see a small group of chimps watching us and try to correct the bad example Nails and I are setting.

  “Don’t smoke, kids, it’s not big or clever and it’s true that it stunts your growth. Look at this guy.” I point at Toby who, at the best of times, is a foot shorter than me and at this point in time was a good two feet shorter as he was standing on a lower level than Nails and me.

  “That saying about eat your crusts is also true.” I continue now pointing at Nails and his mass of curly locks. I do this to the annoyance of my two friends, both a little too sensitive about their traits, especially Nails who in actual fact always refused to eat his bread crusts because he hated that his hair was curly. Have I become like the taunters of my adolescence; has the victim become the villain? No, friends jibe whilst bullies taunt; I am a jiber, the banter is light-hearted and the jokes are without malice.

  “Why are you so tall then, Grandad?” comes an unexpected reply from the kids.

  “Well, I was meant to be eight foot, and less of the old jokes. I’m not even old enough to be your dad, never mind your dad’s dad.”

  “Whatever, Santa.” Another comeback.

  “Santa?” I query the remark with my comrades.

  “I think it’s a beard comment,” Toby explains.

  “Oh.”

  “Not a very good one,” Nails adds.

  “Hey, Jarhead, come over and say that and I’ll use your head as an ashtray, ya pubeless ball sack!” I stub my cigar
ette out on the wall in defiance and smirk triumphantly.

  “Shit, they’re coming over. Back inside, back inside.”

  Why are teenagers such a fearful force these days? I think it is this sense of them being above the law that the media depicts. Give them a slap you get nicked, call the cops on the kids and nothing seems to come from it, like they are untouchables. This will all end with a couple of ASBOs strung up in a public elevator with the words ‘touchable’ written in blood on the wall, because hoodies always bring a knife to a gun fight - hell hoodies bring a knife to a day out at the zoo.

  From the window of the new I.C.T. lab I notice some dissembled scaffolding and realise the school’s construction is still ongoing. Across the way I can see different yet identical builders taking one of their prolonged smoke breaks; still leering at the underage girls, ‘paedo’ hysteria be damned. The construction work is in no way as intense as it was back in my day, but there it is nonetheless. Is the headmaster some insane perfectionist? Will he not be content until the whole school is all marble and precious metals; a cathedral of education built into a sculpture of his likeness, or is it just that the contractors have been scamming him for years?

  “Oooo, ya gonna need that fixing, mate, it’s all but falling down,” say the imaginary builders in my head in a very strong cockney accent.

  I inform Ms Sidebottom of the menacing behaviour of the children outside, to which she gives me a mini lecture of how we, and by we I assume she is referring to the teachers, prefer to call them young adults or young people. The idea being that by calling them adults they’ll behave more mature like adults and by calling these flowering young people children or kids we’re belittling them by lessening their status. I hate this term ‘young adults’. I think all it does is send a mixed message; you’re not an adult as you can’t vote or have sex, and you can’t kill yourself with booze and fags. You are a child. Be happy that you are a child and enjoy the freedom that comes with that label: the cheaper bus fares; the school holidays; enjoying a time where all that is important is your favourite band and what the latest film releases are. Besides, the term itself is inaccurate: a young adult is someone who is seventeen or eighteen years of age, sixteen at a push, because to be a young adult you still have to be an adult. You wouldn’t refer to an eight-year-old as a young teenager, would you? Oh God, that’s not what the word tweenie means, is it? Would someone please write a modern day user guide because I am completely lost? There, I admit it. I know how it all began but I haven’t got a clue of how we got to where we are now. So, could someone please give me a cheat sheet to modern society? Either that or take me outside and shoot me. Preferably, the latter.

  As I mull that over, in walks the headmaster and with her entrance she highlights my previous sexism, as she is a her not a him. I do shamelessly give a male persona to any unknown presences. I’d like to think that is because I am male and would hope women do the same, in that they give an unknown person a female persona. Failing that I blame the deep rooted programming of an unjust society. The next thing I notice is her mad unkempt hair and coffee stained blouse. She is no perfectionist and I don’t think any contractors are getting the better of her, as when I mention the BBC Acorn she barters me up to forty quid which is a hefty price when you take into account the fact that we are doing this lifting and shifting for free. No, this is a shrewd and savvy lady, meaning the mystery of the endless construction to the school will have to go unsolved. The mad hair, messy blouse and ripping me off for forty quid aside, she seems a nice sort; Ms Shepherd, divorced or widowed. Either she lost it or she left it. She tells us to call her Joanna, but we all call her Ms Shepherd.

  “Are you sure you don’t want anything for doing this?” This is a hollow gesture from Ms Shepherd. My forty pounds back would be a start.

  “We won’t hear of it, Ms Shepherd, we’re just happy to help,” is the answer Toby gives.

  And the lifting begins: two corridors and three flights of stairs to a van parked by an open fire exit. The first few runs aren’t too bad; make me come alive. Work like this gets the blood going, releases endorphins; the beads of sweat make you feel like a real working man, salt of the earth type. How powerful - yes, I know sod all about football; yes, I’d have more luck giving someone a heart transplant than I would changing a spark plug, but today I’m a man at work. Then I become an aging man at work, griping and grumbling as my bones click and crack. Surprisingly, it is the going back up the stairs empty handed that is the real killer. Going down with your hands full kick-starts your adrenalin rush; in your mind there’s an end game: ‘Just get to the van, job’s done.’ The empty handed returns are the come downs; the realisation that all you are doing is heading back to another big slog. The beads of sweat have become rivers of sticky discomfort; the climbing of the stairs is a fight against gravity.

  The payback favour for this is going to be that kidney I don’t need yet, but I can put it on ice, Mr Barsky.

  On one of my returns to the computer room I notice Doris wiping a doodled cock and ball off the whiteboard. It was not there when we started, so besides the unlikely event of one of the school’s young adults sneaking in here and doing the deed, it had to be one of us. I say unlikely not because a student wouldn’t have the balls, it’s just that I do not think they would sneak in and out. I would expect the little cock to sit proudly by their art work awaiting our reactions. No, the young people are not to blame - it had to be one of us and more to the point it had to be Nails. Toby is trying to score a date with Ms Sidebottom, so unless he is trying subliminal messages that rules him out and I know it wasn’t me. I guess it could have been Doris herself, doing a quick rebellious act and then trying to get rid of the evidence before anyone notices.

  “Ah, I remember the days of chalk penises, before these whiteboards.”

  “You’re supposed to call them dry erase boards.”

  “Yeah, well my vacuum cleaner is an Electrolux but I still call it a Hoover.”

  “But it’s not politically correct to say whiteboard.”

  “Bullshit.” God, does Toby really like this girl? She’s a complete tool. I fear for the nation’s children.

  “I took a sensitivity training and...”

  “And someone told you, because someone told them and because someone else told that person and so on till we get to the original person who made it up.”

  “Well, you might not like it.”

  “Doris, there’s a lot of things that I don’t like, for example the fact that poor people donate money to the Vatican, but it’s a truth so I accept it. This on the other hand is nonsense so I have to correct it. This is a white board; it is a board that is white and its name defines it. To call me white is inaccurate as I am a pinkie, yellowish hue, but to call the board white is to state a fact.” I feel a little bad for sounding off at the young Ms Sidebottom but I hate it when people shout political correctness gone mad over false information. It detracts from real injustices.

  Nails enters the room and sniggers at the half erased cock and balls. Well, the cock has gone so I guess he’s just laughing at the balls. Nails is guilty as sin.

  The final load, my Acorn Archimedes, leaves my thigh muscles in spasm. I gulp a bottle of water dry, but it does nothing to quench my thirst. It speeds through my system and seeps from my pores, leaving my seventy per cent water ratio a little off. Mopping my brow, I see her; Jenny. Jenny Weir is standing by the school fence. Fate? No, fate is romanticised drivel, telling us that all things are destiny without pointing out that if that’s true it steals any notion of free will and instead tells us that our life, no matter how good or bad, is all scripted and that we are mere puppets. I’d like to further add that it makes life a completely pointless act, but of course if true that statement itself would be just part of the plot, so I’ll just shut up and then sigh knowing that, too, would be destiny. No, fuck fate. Luck? No, that’s just as stupid. Praise the non gods of absolute fucking randomness that Jennife
r Weir, for some unknown reason, is hanging round the high school gates within my line of vision, then curse them for choosing a time that I’m drenched in my own fluids - male musk turned up to eleven.

  “Fuck, it’s Jenny Weir.”

  “Who?” asks Nails.

  “Old errr, something or other.”

  “Is that a good something or other?”

  “Yeah, she wants me to call her but I don’t have her number.”

  “Have you and Deb broken up?”

  “No, it’s not like that.” Why is that everyone’s first thought? Including mine?

  “You sure? You look a little flustered.”

  “I’ve just carried a shit load of computers down three flights of stairs.”

  “Me, too, and I’m hot and knackered, not flustered.”

  “I’m going over, not because I like her, but because I don’t want to talk to you anymore.”

  Knowing that in the time it would take me to freshen up in the little boys’ room she’d most likely be gone I head over to her, man’s musk and all. I pray that even though all I can smell is BO, what she’ll smell will be pheromones.

  Two teenagers are talking to her as I walk over. They’re smiling and laughing. She’s so cool;, she’s down with the kids. I’m grandad and she’s the cool ‘with it’ older woman, like the one you remember in your youth; the one you wish would have taught you the ways of becoming a man. The two school boys head off as I get closer. They are not heading back to their place of education; they head off into town - rule breakers. She’s on talking terms with the rule breakers. She lights a cigarette. No, it’s a joint; she’s smoking a joint! I remember thinking how I was sticking it to the man by wearing a trainer on school grounds and here she is smoking a joint like she’s Janice Joplin, but not fat and overrated.

  “Hey, Jen?”

  “Noel?”

  Damn it, it’s awkward. The phone call was a fleeting thought; she’s petals on the wind - no, that’s a V.C Andrews’ novel. What I mean is that she is a free spirit. The call was a passing thought then it was gone. She hasn’t thought of me since.

  “How crazy to see you here!” She hits the word ‘crazy’ hard, giving the sentence a hint of ‘Are you stalking me?’

  “Not that crazy. I’m helping the school out - helping them get rid of some old computers. The crazy thing is you being here.” See how I switch that around.

  “Yeah, I was meeting a friend here.” Male friend? Not that it matters.

  “What time is she meeting you?”

  “Errm… eleven.”

  “You know it’s like half twelve?” Actually, it’s 12:28pm but it’s a bit pedantic to give out time in anything but multiples of five.

  “Yeah, I guess she’s not coming.” Confirmation it’s a her; not that it matters.

  “You need a lift?”

  “No, I only live down the road.”

  “You still live in the house on Abby Street?”

  “I do, shit, I forgot you’d been there.”

  The awkwardness fades and the jokey side of my nature comes out to play. I’m on top form. I speak, she laughs; human interaction at its best. Self-deprecation, so the other person can quash your doubts; confessing untruths to coincide with their anecdotes.

  “The grey has started to invade.”

  “Only in your imagination.”

  “And so I wake up in my own bed with some other girl’s knickers on.”

  “Weird shit happens when you’re drunk. I once woke up with two pairs of socks on and neither of them was mine.” And so on.

  Before parting we talk about another meet up and I get the number. The debt is repaid in full, Toby. You can keep your kidney.

  The job along with the better part of my day is done. Our goodbyes with the staff are informal to the point that any onlookers may have come to the conclusion that the three of us and the school’s staff are family or at least old friends. No, not old friends - with old friends there isn’t the awkwardness that you get with some family members. Some family members are like strangers; you know nothing but their faces and vaguely where in the country they live. You only know them at all because at some point in your existence someone pointed and said: ‘Him, why that’s your cousin, Ron’, or something to that effect. We only know the staff because Toby has pointed and said: “This is Doris Sidebottom.” Yet, we have spent the day with them; at the end still knowing them no better, making the goodbye awkward yet familiar. Is a hug too much? Is a thumbs up too cold? Who are these people that stumble into your life? Are they recurring characters or just cameos? On the outskirts of the scene, the extras look on and see an awkward family goodbye between strangers.

  Our white transit van pulls out of the school car park; in the side mirror I look back in time at my former high school. Back then a place of daily torment, now just a building. Be nice to say the road ahead is clear and bright but I can’t, as a woman, who seems to be breeding like bacteria, is trying to parallel park an SUV so the road ahead is blocked and the weather looks grey. We sit there for twenty minutes: the happy and jokey Noel fades away; I wish death upon the SUV bitch and her petri dish of a family, not because of her consumption of petrol and the polluting of a planet that she clearly has more invested in than I, but because a vehicle like that screams loud and clear that she doesn’t give a fuck about another living person. It says, if I’m coming you need to reverse; it says, I need two parking spaces; and it says, if we crash you die and I don’t.

  Maybe if I hadn’t been so filled with such a need to vent I would have looked back and noticed what no one else had noticed. That when placing my vintage purchase on the ground to go speak to Jenny, neither Toby or Nails had popped it on the van; it lay there on the gravelled car park awaiting the inevitable rain, awaiting the inevitable attack by passing teenagers. A loss of forty pounds is hard, but to know a near mint condition electronic antique will be brutalised is heartbreaking and to think all I needed to do was look back, but I am done with looking back.

  I meant that to sound poignant, in that I am done with looking back to the past but in actuality that’s bullshit. All I do is look to what I’ve done, at where I’ve been, never where I’m heading - too terrified to learn that the answer is nowhere.