High School - or Grammar School Really

Good news – my foot has fully recovered and I am now able to resume my walks. All it needed was a little rest and a bit of ice.

It’s Sunday so let’s answer some more silly questions from Sunday Stealing.

Let’s dive in.

Your high school graduation class of: 1981

1. Did you marry your high school sweetheart?

I went to a Grammar School for boys so, sadly, I didn’t have a “high school” sweetheart. I did have a girlfriend about that time but, no, I didn’t marry her.

2. Type of car?

I didn’t learn to drive until I was 23 so I didn’t have a car at school. Besides, they cost money to run and I had better things to spend my cash on.

3. What kind of job?

I worked in a newsagent at the time, doing odd jobs for the owner of the shop like serving customers, stock taking, sorting out newspapers for delivery, delivering the newspapers, collecting payments for the delivered newspapers and other menial tasks. The owner actually tried to persuade me to give up school and work for him full time. As you can guess, I didn’t take him up on his generous offer.

4. Where did you live?

I lived in Walsall, a town about ten miles north of Birmingham.

5. Were you popular in school?

Not really. Most of my mates were from outside school because I wasn’t really keen on the overall feel of the school. I had friends at school but I didn’t hang around with the so-called “popular” kids – they were arses.

6. Were you in choir/band?

I was in the school orchestra and brass band. I played a trombone.

7. Ever get suspended? 

No – but I had a lot of detentions for being an arrogant little git.

8. If you could would you go back? 

Absolutely not. I would probably return to the school to have a wander around the buildings but going back would be a bloody nightmare.

9. Still talk to the person that you went to prom with?

We didn’t have proms, although this American tradition has started happening in the UK now.

10. Did you skip School ?

Actually, I don’t think I did. Although I hated school I recognised its importance and I embraced the academic requirements with reluctant enthusiasm.

11. Go to all the football games?

I didn’t go to any of them. My school was seen as a place for academic excellence and we had to pass an exam to be admitted to it. Consequently, the sports that we played were different from other local schools, so for example, instead of playing football (that’s soccer for Americans), we played Rugby Union and cricket.

12. Favourite subjects?

I enjoyed a lot of subjects actually because, although I was a bit of a rebel, I was actually quite good at most of them. I loved Maths, Physics and Chemistry and I quite enjoyed French and German too.

13. Do you still have your yearbook?

We didn’t have a yearbook. What I did have was something we called “The Green Book” which appeared once a year and contained lots of information about the school, including a list of names of the teachers and their subjects, the kids and what classes they were in and various other bits of totally useless information. I kept the very last one I had.

14. Did you follow the "original" career path?

I think I did – sort of. I had no idea what I wanted to do when I was in sixth form and preparing for university and decided that really I should do something that involved my best subject – maths. So I opted to be a computer programmer because I thought there was a future in it. I was correct and I am still working in the industry today. If I could go back, I would have chosen something else though.

15. Do you still have your class ring?

We never had a class ring. I don’t know what such a thing is.

16. Favourite teacher? 

My favourite teacher was a maths teacher who taught me throughout my school life. He even used to call me by my nickname (which was Snowy). A very pleasant man.

17. What was your style?

We all had to wear the same uniform. It was quite strict and if you failed to adhere to it, you were in big trouble.

We wore a dark grey blazer with the school badge on the pocket, with a white shirt and a horrific red, white and green tie. A grey jumper was optional (depending on the weather). We also had grey trousers and black shoes. First and second year students had to wear a terrible green, red and yellow cap when walking to and from school. Why? I have no idea and it used to get me in a lot of trouble because I refused to wear the bloody thing.

In the sixth form the dress code was relaxed ever so slightly. Instead of the horrific tie of the first five years, we wore a green tie with the school badge at the bottom. I still have my sixth form tie. We could also wear different coloured shirts as long as they were light in colour.

So basically I looked terrible and had no style whatsoever.

18. Favourite Shoes?

We just had black shoes as I said earlier. Boring black shoes.

19. Favourite thing to eat for lunch?

We had the option of eating the pig swill they served for lunch but we were also allowed to bring sandwiches too. I chose the latter because my mum always made brilliant ones.

20. Favourite band?

I listened to a lot of music during my time at school. I would say it was probably Rainbow, Nazareth, Rush, UFO, Black Sabbath or Whitesnake.

21. High School Hair?

My chemistry teacher called me “the boy with the chrysanthemum head” in front of the whole class when I was 16. Can you imagine the uproar and the humiliation I had to endure after that?

Regular readers will know that I hate my hair and between the ages of 16 and 18 it was probably the worst it has ever been. My hair is very thick and it was long. Here is a photo of me when I was about 12 – and it grew and grew after that into a bushy mess – a bit like a chrysanthemum.

The Boy with the Chrysanthemum Head

Spot the difference

22. How old when you graduated?

I was one of the oldest kids in the year so I was 18 years old, which meant that I could celebrate in the pub.

Skool Daze

I was having a chat with a couple of work colleagues the other week about the subjects we all did at school and I started to think more about school days. The picture above is me aged twelve. Just look at that bloody hair!!!

I’ve already mentioned a couple of my exploits as a child at school but I’ve never really written anything about the school itself.

At junior school, I was regarded as quite a clever kid. I was one of the stars of my year and I excelled in everything I did. Ultimately I took an exam called the 11-plus, along with all of my fellow pupils, and I passed easily. At the time I didn’t think anything of it. I certainly didn’t consider the reward for this achievement.

My father had been told that I was good enough to apply to the local grammar school in Walsall. It was a boy’s only school (there was an equivalent girl’s only school) and it was considered a privilege to go there. Most parents wanted their kids to enrol but in order to qualify, they had to pass the 11-plus. Since I had sailed through that exam I was accepted without question. Some of my mates didn’t quite do well enough and one or two had to take a further entrance exam.

Unfortunately, amongst the kids of Walsall, my school was considered a school for toffs or rich kids; we were mocked mercilessly by them. To be fair, most of the kids in my year did come from more privileged backgrounds.

Sadly I didn’t. My father worked in a factory and my mother didn’t work at all. We didn’t even own a car.

And this is where I had a huge problem.

I lived within spitting distance of the local comprehensive school which meant that when I walked to school I had to pass kids from the two comprehensive schools every single day. But it was worse than that, dear reader, because on the way to school I had to pass yet another comprehensive school. The journey to and from school took about half an hour and it wasn’t pleasant.

First of all, I was forced to wear a school cap in my first two years. It was a bizarre school rule to say the least and obviously something that was traditional. Such customs were irrelevant for my eleven year old self; all I thought about was a safe and trouble free journey – I rarely got one.

No other school in the borough of Walsall had a similar stupid rule about caps, meaning that I stood out like sore thumb. It was even worse than that, dear reader, because as far as I know, I was the only kid in the entire first year who lived in my area and consequently I was alone in my journey home. You can imagine what happened.

“Look – it’s a TOFF!” a voice would cry and then before I knew it I would be surrounded by kids from one of the other two schools. My cap was their target.

I had to try to fight them off or run away from them. I wasn’t always successful. That bloody cap was run over by a buses and cars, stuffed into dustbins and hurled around all the time.

I actually stopped wearing it for a while until I was caught by a teacher who just happened to be passing. This cretin stopped his car and screamed my name.

“Where’s your cap?” he said.

“I forgot it,” I replied thinking of the worst excuse possible.

“Detention, lad!” he said before driving off.

I was bloody annoyed I can tell you. The school’s idea was that wearing a cap would show that you were from a great school and that “you should be proud to wear it”. I wasn’t – I hated it.

I’m convinced that this episode was the beginning of the anarchic streak within me. I actually had an argument with the teacher who had stopped.

“You don’t have to walk back through a bunch of kids whose idea of a joke is to steal my cap,” I argued. “That’s why I don’t wear the fracking thing.”

“Don’t argue with me boy and how dare you use language like that!” he snarled. “Every time I see you on your way to or from the school without your cap you will get a detention.”

“That’s not bloody fair,” I cried. “My parents don’t own a car so I can’t get a lift. Everybody else leaves school, gets into a car and I’m willing to bet the cap comes straight off. It’s not fair.”

My arguments fell on deaf ears and the idea of rebelling against these stupid and idiotic rules was born. I became a rebel because of that bloody cap.

I managed to get away with not wearing it most of the time and only got caught a handful of times – each time I got a detention and sometimes I argued myself into yet another one.

Thankfully, when I reached the third year, the cap became optional. I ceremoniously burnt the bloody thing at the bottom of the garden by hurling it onto my dad’s bonfire.

It wasn’t just the cap the got me into trouble on the journey to and from school. One day a week I had trombone lessons and I had to carry the bloody thing for half an hour each way, sometimes with my sports bag and briefcase (yes that’s right – I had a bloody briefcase while other kids had Adidas sports bags or no bags at all).

Sometimes I looked like a pack mule.

The kids from other schools absolutely loved trying to steal my stuff. Thankfully, I used the trombone case and whatever else I was carrying as a weapon and swung them around hoping to make contact. It was sometimes like running the gauntlet, I can tell you.

The other problem I had was my background. My father was fiercely proud that his son had managed to get a place in the best school in Walsall because, at the time, it was considered quite an achievement. He worked in a factory in Darlaston and I was one of the only kids in my year whose dad wasn’t a businessman or some similar profession.

Consequently I ended up on the receiving end of a lot of abuse from certain arseholes in my year. Some of the posh kids considered me to be a pauper and called me names like “El Cheapo”. I gave it back, I can tell you, but it hurt my feelings, especially because my parents were so proud of me.

In the end I developed a thick skin and tolerated it, occasionally lashing out when the abuse got too much (as I did here). And because I regarded some of the school rules as totally stupid, I also gained a reputation for being an impudent child, arguing with teachers, taking the piss out of teachers and even calling them names to their faces while questioning their intelligence.

In summary, dear reader, I don’t really look back at my schooldays with too much affection at all.

I liked some of the teachers (they weren’t all arses) and I liked a lot of the kids; my problem was that those I didn’t like made it quite difficult sometimes and turned me into the rebellious arsehole I am today.

I simply do not believe that stupid rules have to be obeyed just because they are there.

Nevertheless, ultimately, I have to be grateful because the school made sure that the kids were driven and pushed academically. Without that grammar school I would never have gone to university and I wouldn’t be where I am today.

And I thank the school and the teachers for that – even though the buggers made me wear a bloody cap.