Tom Brown’s Schooldays

Dick’s
Toolbox cont.
..whose pecking order was determined before we arrived, and that survived, indifferent
to our presence, after the year or less that we spent there. The law of the
jungle was demonstrated on the monkey bars, and the odorous boys’ toilets,
that had green high water marks from incontinent seven years old trying to urinate
to twice their height onto the playground outside. Everyday we were compelled
to drink third pint bottles of unhomogenised milk that had been kept in the
sun to ferment. We did our bit to support both the New Zealand Diary industry
and projectile vomiting.
At the age of six I have vague recollections of Janet, to whom I gave a Woolworths
broach, an idea of my grandmother’s who knew the way to a woman’s
heart, in return for unspecified and unsatisfied favours. Sadly, I remember
the broach, ruby glass in gold plastic, more than I remember her. From Cashmere
Hills I recollect drawing a rather nice picture of a hedgehog promenading along
the Port hills, and executing a magnificent painting of a Sunderland seaplane
bombing a U-Boat. For each memory in class there are a thousand outside, from
Dinky Toys to Bar-the-Door played by the whole 350 school population. But that
strange Neverland fog of changing schools was heaven in comparison with my secondary
school years
It is difficult to describe Christ’s College, a meandering maze of stone,
custom, cadets and prison rules that replicated an English school drawn from
the pages of ‘Chums’, or ‘The Boys Own Paper” without
seeing it as parody. It was a Bunteresque fantasy of colonial proportions, where
the uniform still maintained, in respect to the Old Boys’ antediluvian
desire that things would stay as they were before Noah , a detachable, starched
paper collar fixed with brass studs onto a collarless shirt that could only
be cleaned at one Chinese laundry in the city. Even in those days it seemed
a bizarre antipodean tradition to be wearing a mock Eton uniform in the age
of the Rock and Roll. It made one the natural object of derision and random
violence from every other right thinking person of the same age. It also got
the school photographed in the National Geographic with other New Zealand curiosities
such as sheep, Rotorua and more sheep.
I am not anxious to recall those four institutionalised years. They were ripe
with acne and adolescent angst, heavy with the smell of unwashed teenage boys,
interspersed with the casual sadism of teachers, the recurrent and calculated
bullying of prefects, and the eternal fear of exams. What was there to like?
A Headmaster who had served in the Indian army, possibly before the mutiny,
and would have willingly strapped me across the barrel of a cannon at the first
opportunity ?
Should I recall with wry amusement being a part of a group of frightened first
years whose introduction to cross country training was to be chased ten kilometres
by a cane wielding Prefect around a Hagley Park? Should I fondly recall the
compulsory boxing and cold showers? I don’t think so.
It wasn’t entirely bleak; I managed to do art by developing migraine headaches
in response to wood glue and the pugnacious carpentry teacher. I played tennis,
strolling with a warped wooden racket to the courts in sufficient time to play
for a few minutes before heading back. I suspect I captained the 13th XI a couple
of times. There was no 14th XI and we did poorly, hampered by my endeavours
to be the slowest slow bowler in history. Usually the ball made it only half
way along the pitch, though I got people out as they laughed so much that tears
obscured their vision sufficiently for the ball to reach the stumps, aided by
gravity and the prevailing wind.
If you were lucky, you had the odd good teacher; mine were occupied with Latin
transitive verbs, the Irish Church Disestablishment Act, and showing endless
war movies. The best one got seemed to be gentle indifference.
My schooldays culminated in a moment of both relief and chagrin, when they asked
me not to return the next year, quite understandable given that I was an obnoxious
prat whose years were a litany of ‘can do better’ and corporal punishment.
The latter was a natural outcome of breaking every rule in the rule book every
term, and a liking for practical jokes. I can confirm that desks do roll when
balanced on marbles. Each and every time was brought to a painful end by an
unnatural truthfulness. I always confessed, taking a certain pride in my aberrant
craft and the creativity involved in some episodes – although the only bow I
got to take was over a bench waiting for the cane. At least they had the honesty
to say that it was going to hurt me more than it would hurt them.
Even though I tried to avoid having my photo taken, determined to leave as little
trace as possible, the Old Boy’s Association still found me. Even in Australia.
They would find Bin Laden if they were seeking funds for a new hall, swimming
pool or sodomy parlour. Every so often a letter arrives inviting me either to
become an Old Boy by return post and convenient payment methods, or to return
to some reunion one being dependent on the other. I file them under waste paper,
but others must go back and presumably compete with their golden memories, wealth,
social position, and waist lines. I suspect they fall back into the same relationship
patterns as they had then, gradually recognising under the fat, baldness and
glasses Scroggins of the Four B. Or is it Whiff, Scales or Toolie ? I shall
never be amongst them for any school should be transition to somewhere and somebody
else.
I transitioned to Art School -“Somewhere to cool down for a year or two
before you get into a profession”. Eventually I grew into myself, although
not then, not completely, and not until much, much later. I suspect about a
week ago.
You can go back, but only if you never left.