of the pool watching Miss Honeyman get the kids lined up for the start. I tried not to stare at her legs too much but it was distracting. So much so that I missed the start of the senior boys one hundred metre front crawl final. I only pressed the stopwatch around halfway into the race. Stephen Franks won the race and Mr Duncan came running over holding his clipboard.
‘Time?’ he barked.
I knew that Stephen had taken longer than twenty eight seconds to swim one hundred metres. I quickly guessed a time.
‘Fifty six seconds’.
Mr Duncan duly noted it down. He looked impressed. He had every right to be so. It was only six seconds outside the world record. Slightly surprising for a fourth former at a comprehensive in Camden.
In 1978, a few years after I joined JFS, The Jam released ‘David Watts’ on what was then known as a double A-side single with ‘“A” Bomb in Wardour Street’. Aside from being insanely catchy, I also found it funny. I wasn’t what you’d call a star pupil and I was under no illusions that I could’ve been in any way like David Watts. The school team was unlikely to have me as their captain, I wasn’t going to pass all my exams and I had no expectation of being made head boy. I didn’t know any of the girls in the neighbourhood and even if I had done, none of them would’ve been the least bit interested in me.
This was another example of The Jam introducing me to other bands. It wasn’t like today, where sophisticated algorithms on Spotify or iTunes will see you listening to one band and suggest that you might fancy listening to something similar. In the 1970s, unless you had older siblings or parents who might take an interest, you had to find out for yourself.
I remember buying this single. It had the coolest cover I’d ever seen with arrows pointing in two different directions. When I took the single out and had a look, I wondered ‘Who is Ray Davies?’ This led me to The Kinks and ‘Waterloo Sunset’ and ‘Apeman’ and a hundred other tunes. In turn, they led me to Small Faces and hearing that keyboard intro on ‘Tin Soldier’ (Paul’s favourite track on Desert Island Discs). Because of Paul Weller, I’ve been listening to that song for forty years. It’s very much appreciated.
My parents, focused as they were on their own needs and desires, took very little interest in my schooling. My dad left school at fourteen, my mum at fifteen, so they had very few expectations about what education could achieve. My mother got me up and out of the house in the morning, and after that I was on my own. She’d read my school reports, tut at regular intervals and then hand them back to me without a word. As for my dad, I don’t think I had a single conversation with him about school. He went to work before I left and came back after I’d got home so he had absolutely no idea what I was up to all day. I think he knew that I went to school but I could’ve spent my days BASE jumping off tall buildings and he’d have been none the wiser.
If my children were half an hour late in the mornings, we’d get phone calls from the school secretary asking politely about their whereabouts. After an hour, the calls would be less polite. If they missed a whole morning and we hadn’t notified them, the authorities would be involved. Whereas if I didn’t turn up to school on a Monday, the chances of my parents hearing about it in the same week were minuscule. I think I could’ve left school at fifteen and it’s possible no one would’ve noticed. I wish I’d tested the theory.
The only time my mother really got involved in my school life was when I was suspended. It happened twice. The first time, I was involved in a fight with a girl in the fifth form. I was in Year Seven (eleven years old) and I was on the small side. She was fifteen and she was the biggest girl in school. She scared the living daylights out of everyone, including the teachers. I was walking down the corridor one afternoon when I saw her coming towards me carrying a big pile of books. I found this surprising. She didn’t strike me as a reader. She dropped one of the books and tried, without success, to pick it up without letting go of the others. I tried to make myself as inconspicuous as possible but she caught my eye.
‘Oy. Come here. Hold these,’ she said. It wasn’t a request.
I took hold of the books. She bent down to pick up the other book and I was confronted with the biggest arse I’d ever seen on a living human. It was too tempting. For reasons I still don’t entirely understand, I kicked it very hard and she went sprawling across the corridor. There was a boy standing opposite me and I can still remember the look of utter amazement on his face as he watched what I did. I didn’t wait around for her to get up. I just dropped the rest of the books, turned and ran.
She moved remarkably quickly for her size and as I scooted round the school, I could hear her pounding down the corridor behind me.
‘You’re fucking dead.’
I had no reason to doubt that she meant it. I ran across the playground and into the main building. She seemed to be gaining on me; I could hear her breathing. I ran into the boys’ toilets, found a free cubicle and locked the door. I was safe. She wouldn’t dare cross the threshold and even if she did, she’d be halted by the Fort Knox type security of my cubicle door. She didn’t even hesitate. I heard her crash into the boys bogs and two seconds later she broke down the door and beat me up in front of an amazed crowd of boys who, sensibly, did nothing to help me. I put up very little resistance. I just curled up into a ball and waited for it to end. A male teacher appeared shortly afterwards and dragged her off me. We both got suspended for a week for fighting and she got an extra day for breaking the cubicle door. We got on quite well after that. I don’t think she could quite believe what I’d done. She thought it was ballsy.
I was always talkative. I enjoyed getting laughs. As an adult, I’ve built a career on this nonsense but at the time, it got me into serious trouble. I insulted our Hebrew teacher Miss Felberg by loudly proclaiming, when I thought she was out of the room, that learning Hebrew was a complete and utter waste of time. She was in the store cupboard, and came out raging, looking directly at me.
‘Did you say that?’
Even in my first year, I had something of a reputation. I saw no point in denying it. ‘Yeah’.
‘Why do you think it’s a waste of time?’ she asked.
‘Because it is,’ I said, not giving her much to work with.
‘I think you should apologise to me and also to the rest of the class who are all interested,’ she said.
I got up and stood at the front of the class. I looked around. I knew for a fact that no one was any more interested than me.
‘I’m sorry . . .’ I said. A long pause. ‘. . . that you have to learn Hebrew.’
There was a big laugh from the class. It felt good. Miss Felberg, however, was not laughing and threw a blackboard rubber at me. It swooshed past my head and clattered into the wall behind me. I was watching a lot of cricket at the time and I thought that she had a decent throwing arm. I decided that if it ever came to it, I would not risk a quick single if she was fielding.
‘Come with me,’ she said ‘We’re going to see Mrs Abrahams.’
This was not what I was hoping for. Mrs Abrahams had a fearsome reputation. She believed in discipline and God. I had no interest in the first one and I was rapidly losing faith in the second. I was well aware of her temper. I was used to adults shouting, but usually it was at each other. I wasn’t looking forward to having her considerable ire directed at me.
We went to her office. Miss Felberg told me to sit down while she informed the secretary what I’d said. The secretary didn’t laugh, which made me think that Miss Felberg had told the joke wrong. The secretary took Miss Felberg into Mrs Abrahams’ office, and I heard them having a short chat. Miss Felberg emerged and then harrumphed off without giving me a second glance. I waited.
Time passed. I looked around, tried to think about other things. At one point, I started whistling. The secretary stared at me and I stopped. I waited some more. After a time, Mrs Abrahams popped her head out of the door and indicated that I should go in. She was dressed immaculately. She was attractive but in the way that made it perfectly clear