My first day at Prescot
Boys Grammar was a memorable one but for all the
wrong reasons.
First I need to set the scene, I went to Our
Ladys & St Josephs Junior School just
opposite the old Boys Grammar School site. Only a
handful of kids from our school passed the 11 +
exam. I now live down south in an
area which still retains its grammar schools and
were 1-2-1 private coaching to pass the grammar
test is the norm. In Prescot in 1974 in my
primary school we did not even sit any practice
tests let alone get coached (the school plan was
simple Eddie Arrowsmith for most and West Park or
Notre Dame for the handful who managed to fluke
the 11+ exam). Anyway what I am trying to get
across was that passing the 11+ was a big deal
not only in our junior school but also in my
family, although a second cousin of mine had
already got into the PGS 2 years before. So I
fully expected to receive a suitably extravagant
present for passing the exam either: a Magna
Doodle, a years subscription to the
Commando comics, a Mastermind board game or a
pristine copy of Playboy magazine (we can all
dream). Therefore you can imagine my bitter
disappointment when I opened the packaging and
discovered to my horror I had been given a
humongous Joe 90 style shiny black plastic
briefcase with a metallic trim. Apart from the
total inappropriateness of this present for any
11 year old (or indeed anyone under the age of
43) it was also inordinately heavy, even an adult
who regularly pumped weights would have found it
a struggle, let alone for a kid, who put the weak
into weakling.
Furthermore my mum insisted that this would now
be my new school bag. I knew from this moment I
was stuffed. I was quite shy, on my own at a new
school (only one other person from my old school
was going to PGS and he hated me) and the sheer
terror felt by most kids when starting a new
school was multiplied by a factor of ten by the
thought of how the other kids would react to my
briefcase. During the summer I fretted more and
more about this issue, and this came to a
crescendo after I had stayed up late one night
and caught a furtive glimpse of the film
The Wicker Man, to be fair I
originally watched the film not for its gruesome
portrayal of satanic rituals in a remote island
community nor to see Edward Woodwards
understated but compelling performance as the
tortured innocent but rather to have a quick peek
at Britt Eklands boobs. In my febrile
imagination l imagined turning up at PGS on the
first day with the briefcase in hand, and this
would inevitably lead to a re-enactment of the
climatic final scene from the The Wicker
Man, with me being ritually sacrificed in
front of the whole school tied down by prefects
ably supported by the teaching staff (hopefully
with the possibility of a quick fondle with Britt
before getting my comeuppance).
I spent the next 2 months
trying to persuade my mum that this
decision to send me into school with this
briefcase amounted to a form of child
abuse all to no avail. The more I
complained the more she dug her heels in.
In the end I complained so much with so
little result that I knew that whatever I
did it had to result in the bag
disappearing for good (and most
importantly for it not to be replaced)
and I also knew that any action I took
must not incriminate me. I began to think
about what I could do and over the course
of time I discounted various options: a)
staging a fake burglary (as I would have
cracked the moment a copper asked me any
questions the bag would also still
be replaced by household insurance); b)
dropping something on the briefcase (as
all my pocket money would be stopped for
12 years and the bag would still be
replaced); c) starting a fire to destroy
the bag (knowing my luck the fire would
spread to the flat, all my worldly
possessions would be destroyed, my kid
sister killed in the conflagration, I
would do life in a secure unit at
Rainhill Hospital and the bag would still
be replaced by household insurance).
After watching the Colditz TV series I
realised that what I needed was a plan
(but I further discounted the option of
tunnelling to Cronton or building a
glider out of paper mache in our loft)
and that this plan mustnt involve
either my death or my incarceration
indefinitely at Her Majesty pleasure. |
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It took time but I finally
I hatched such a plan? The first stage would be
me dumping the bag on the way to school, the
second stage would be for me to say I was jumped
on by a bunch of kids (not wearing blazers or
ties) who had taken the bag and run off with it
that way the bag would be totally gone, my
mum and the school would feel sorry for me (maybe
I would get some extra time off to recuperate)
and she would not insist on a like-for-like
replacement which placed her only son in mortal
danger. It was a high risk strategy as the whole
plan was predicated on a number of implicit
assumptions: a) that I walked to school that day;
b) that if I disposed on the bag my mum would not
go out and buy a replacement bag immediately
therefore automatically putting me back in mortal
danger. This was by no means certain, as she had
once barred me from our caravan at Rhyl until I
had played cricket with a West Indian family in
the caravan next door, the dad of the family
turned out to be a professional fast bowler in
the Birmingham League and the eldest lad was a
junior fast bowler on Warwickshire CC books,
furthermore they were all very competitive and
insisted on playing with a real cricket ball on
an uneven cow field quite frankly it I
would have been safer shining cats eyes with my
forehead during the rush hour on the M56 whilst
blindfolded; c) because the briefcase was so
large and would not fit into any standard
corporation dustbin (I did a dry run) I would
have to find a suitable place to dispose of it;
d) clearly I would not be actually jumped on by
ruffians and I had no witnesses to this effect so
I had to make it look like I had been jumped (so
I basically needed to duff myself up a bit
like Jim Carrey in the film Liar,
Liar) and not be seen undertaking this
bizarre act; e) that I develop a compelling but
vague enough cover story so that I did not
inadvertently implicate any lads who would then
be blamed for something they did not do and then
take out their anger on my sorry ass.
However, this plan did have some legs: 1) my mum
could not drive and my dad was working in
Manchester as a contracts manager so he was long
gone by the time I went to school, plus he
regarded providing lifts to school as tantamount
to encouraging some type of deviant behaviour; 2)
I had found a nearby industrial bin where I could
sling the briefcase in (thank god for the BICC);
3) I had also found an alleyway near the school
which would serve as the site for my fictional
ambush, not overlooked by neighbours, with a
patch in the alley where I could roll around to
fake the aftermath of the attack and which was
almost free of dog faeces and broken glass! The
sheer preposterousness of this plan
(for me a card carrying little goody two-
shoes with no previous, faking a crime and then
lying through my teeth to all and sundry) never
occurred to me at the time all that
mattered was the total and utter destruction of
that briefcase.
Alas on the morning of my first day at PGS I
awoke to find my dad unexpectantly waiting for me
in the living room so he could give me a lift to
school, while at the same time muttering under
his breath that he did not see why he was giving
me a lift, because when he was my age he had
walked 5 miles to school everyday with his
younger brother on his back, after carrying out a
milk round, a paper round and cleaning out the
pigs on the local farm blah blah (we have all
been there - a sort of Prescotian equivalent of
the Monty Python Four Yorkshiremen
sketch). I was stuffed. I needed to think and
think quickly, I knew what my dad thought about
the briefcase i.e. that it was a pile of
pretentious pseudo-middle class tosh (I am not
sure he uttered these exact words, but he at
least shared some of the sentiments?) and also
knew he wanted to toughen me up by giving me
access to some serious football boots (he had
played at a decent amateur level but I never made
it out of the Lambda 2nd XI in fact I would not
have been picked for the Lambda 1st XI even if
the whole of the 1st XI had contracted the Black
Death). I felt that if I had a word with my dad
man-to-man, there may be a way out, perhaps he
would take pity on me, dispose of the briefcase
on my behalf, even help me to fake the attack and
witness it so adding to its authenticity I
was home and hosed - it could still work (notice
that none of these increasingly outlandish
options involved me or my dad simply standing up
to my mum). After I cleaned my teeth I realised
with utter horror that my mum was also tagging
along in the van something that she never
ever done before now I knew that I was
totally and completely mega stuffed.
I remember every second of that fateful journey
even now after 40 years I have never
before or since entered a motor vehicle wishing
that I would become the victim of a serious road
traffic accident but we made it on-time
and unharmed - there was no mad man on the road
that day apart from me! I was dropped outside
school and as I reached the main school gates I
turned round and gave my parents the kind of half
hearted resigned wave I now give to the
secretaries when I enter my bosses office. On
turning round I entered the playground and I was
immediately aware of everyones eyes
focusing on me and their sniggers. I saw my
cousin in the distance look towards me (he was
under instructions from his mum to greet me), he
took one look at the briefcase stifled a laugh
himself and then it suddenly dawned on him that
if anyone realised he was related to me he was
just as stuffed as I was so he caught
sight of an imaginary friend and walked in their
direction away from me.
On the positive side, there was no ritual burning
that day but on the negative side there was no
quick fondle with Britt either and unfortunately
I had also acquired a sub-zero street credibility
rating of minus 1,258 (from which never quite
recovered, although blaming entirely the
briefcase incident for this state of affairs
would be a gross over simplification).
Thankfully, there was no return on the second day
for the dreaded school briefcase as I manned up -
I cried all night, burst a few blood vessels in
my eyes, hyperventilated, vomited all over the
bathroom floor and finally psychologically broke
my mum through sleep deprivation and into
the bargain confirmed my dads long held
view I was a complete pussy!
Many years later when I was clearing out my
dads things after he had passed away
I found the aforementioned briefcase stuffed
under his bed full of insurance papers and the
like. The passage of time had been a great healer
and as my childhood memories came flooding back I
gently dusted the briefcase and I solemnly
carried it down the stairs - before I promptly
setting about knocking seven bells out the case
with a sledgehammer!!!
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