A Coventry Kid's Tale

Chapter 7: Aged 11, Senior School days

It was because of the traumatic camping holiday, the child was one week late in starting senior school. Dressed in his new school uniform he arrived at Frederick Bird Secondary Modern in Swan Lane. Because he was late in starting school he was placed in the class of 1R (remedial). Here he remained for one week to prove his skills in learning. It was also here that he stuck a garden fork through his foot. 1R kept the gardens for the school because they were being trained to be council gardeners. The rest of the school were being trained to be coal miners!!!

Now one boy in this class, whose name was Smith (the first name escapes me) always brought an alarm clock with him. He would set the alarm for lunch break and place it in his desk. At the due time the alarm would ring like thunder in the confined space, thus waking everybody up, including the teacher Mr. Wilson. The boy would open his desk, take out the alarm clock, reset it for dinner time and start to eat his snack. Mr. Wilson the teacher would then explain to Smith that it was not lunch break time because he had set his alarm wrong. Smith said "My alarm is never wrong, so it's lunch break time". So Smith ate his snack while Mr. Wilson had a nervous breakdown. Mr. Wilson had many breakdowns, mainly at the start of each new school year.

Luckily for the child and Robbie MacDonald, they were replaced into 1A. The child was elated until he met a child loving Mr. Shannon, Boris one eye, the rest of his names unprintable. Now Boris had a glass eye, which he used to good effect. When you thought he was looking at the blackboard he was really looking at the pupils. He was also a good shot with the blackboard rubber and many children had the bruises to prove it. He was a first class bully. The first lesson was maths and the child had to draw margins on the side of each page. The poor child drew the margins on the wrong side of the page so Boris hurled the book at him and sent him to 1B because he was that thick. Now 1B was easy for maths, no margins drawn everywhere. The teacher's name I'm afraid escapes me, but that teacher taught the child higher maths than the rest of the class. He also told the child he would not allow him to go back to Boris, and kept him until he was ready to go into class 2A for maths. Thank goodness for nice teachers. The child was totally unprepared for the likes of Boris.