| Report for Bertie Cockroft | |
|---|---|
| Approved stories | 4 |
| Pending stories | 13 |
| Rejected stories (hidden) | 2 |
| Deleted stories (hidden) | 1 |
| Summary | Shows promise |
Despite being overweight and a bit educationally subnormal, I had a mild affection for Barton. Unfortunately, this was outweighed by my affection for smacking him around the head and in this I was far from alone. As established and worthy as any Olympic event, Barton Beating usually began with a specific incident: (Barton saying something stupid, annoying or too loud - all of which were fairly frequent). For reasons I can’t remember, someone (usually Weston) would always then put on a fake posh voice and say “Saylence Barton, or I shell sevairly beat yohâ€. Barton would occasionally reply with misplaced confidence “you fockin’ won’t, Weston!†whilst defiantly shaking his head in disdain. This was insolence and grounds alone for a beating. Either way, it was followed by the main part of the event, involving Barton being chased en masse by anything from about 5 kids to half the year, until the inevitable happened, his stamina ran out and he was given a beating in some far corner of the playing fields.
We never really laid into Barton, the violence usually confined to smacks round the head, moderate punching and the occasional pile on. The preferred tactic in catching him and my personal favourite, was to run alongside Barton and when you were level, simply get him in a headlock and just slow down. This usually ended in a tumbling heap on to which the others jumped, with Barton at the bottom (and me too. Pain in the arse that was – what was I thinking?)
Barton took it all with stoicism and sometimes even strange enjoyment. Occasionally, he would unwisely show defiance to his pursuers and threaten to “take you all on†resulting in a larger group being involved in the chase and an unusually vigorous beating. One time, a beating was not enough and we decided to roll Barton in a pile of grass cuttings - his shape meant he rolled quite well. For Barton though, this was too much, because in his mind the beating was part of the contract, with no extras allowed. I still cherish the memory of him trudging back, post beating, absolutely covered in grass, his hair all over the place and him looking annoyed, sullen and strangely betrayed as he ambled to the 5th year block for a consolation kicking. His final words were “you’re not going to hit me for no reason!†We disagreed.
I suppose these days that would be called bullying. Political correctness, eh?
A scramble was basically offering something spontaneously to a crowd – by shouting ‘Scramble!’ and the crowd would then swarm to get it. You could scramble anything: money, your pudding in the canteen (messy if someone scrambled something with custard – hands would dive in from all directions) or someone else’s property. I liked to scramble small change.
The route to and from school was via alleys or ‘jitties’ as they were called. Either side were occasional sloping roofs of garages – an essential part of my scramble. On the walk back from school I would occasionally get in front of two of the thicker kids in school. We’ll call them Kevin and David. Because those were their names. I would get 2p and 5p pieces ready in my pocket and in plain site of the two of them chuck them onto the sloping roof and say the magic word. The result was electric: from dull conversations about Man United, they would immediately break out of the malaise and be energised to chase after the coins now rolling down the roof towards them. I never ceased to be amazed at how two apparently good mates could immediately be transformed into fighting, snarling gits, struggling over small change. Fantastic entertainment.
Some 35 years later when a mate told me about Jew Bundles, I pissed myself and was chuffed to have been the unwitting instigator of one.
Always happened in science lessons, I don’t know why. My favourite was with a girl we’ll call Sarah (because that was her name) who I fancied. Stunning figure: slim with huge boobs. During long monologues from Mr Brown about Iron ions, (pronounced ‘I-Ron Ions’ to distinguish the similar words) she would rest her head and shoulders on the desk enabling me to cop a feel of her fantastic knockers now hanging free below the desk line. She is now a director in a major charity organisation and I suspect she would not let me do it these days. Less desirable and far less bright was Gillian, whose arse I would routinely fondle when we were standing around Mr Kieris whilst he talked about Alpha radiation. Far less subtle than Sarah, instead of just casually moving to where I was standing for a grope, Gillian would announce to the assembled class ‘Oh, I’m just going to stand over there!’ Silly mare. But by far the best though was Elaine who I sat next to whilst a very old bloke was talking about Phosphorous. I didn’t really know her, but fizzing with 12 year old testosterone as I was, I put my hand on her leg. All seemed to go well so I went for it. Not sure how I managed it but over the course of minutes I managed to manoeuvre my hand into her knickers without objection. She drew the line at an internal exploration which quite surprised me. I made the mistake of telling Abbot about it and it was all round the fucking school.
I am now concerned that I may have been a bit of a pervert and actually I’m not. Concerned that is.
Parnell. Where do you start?
Parnell was an odd girl. In those days (1978 ish) we all had nick-names: Barton’s (see Barton Beatings) was the Ox because he was as strong as an ox and almost as clever. I’m not going to tell you my nick name because it will identify me. OK, it was Polaris Cock. Parnell’s was the Horse, or as Barton frequently said in a loud voice, the ‘orse’. This was because she was obsessed with all things horsey. She was also a bit sociopathic, fairly introverted and a total teacher arse licker. She had a strange habit of galloping when she ran: her head would go up and down like a race horse and she would occasionally do the reigns action with her hands which caused us all to piss ourselves. The best day for this was Wednesdays when people would put their bin bags out. On the way home from school Parnell, after a bit of encouragement or goading would gallop off, to cries of “they’re off!†and then, Grand National style, jump over the bin bag ‘fences’. Needless to say she never had a boyfriend other than a fledgling relationship with Osborne who shared her introverted and thick characteristics. We all felt she was barking up the wrong tree there as Osborne was widely held to be, as Weston, pronouncing every syllable would say, ‘a ho-mo- sex- u-al’. Despite having a face like a sullen mule, Parnell did have a great body and I did try to engage her in classroom gropings, but unlike Sarah, Gillian and Elaine (see Science lessons gropings), she was not interested and would stamp on your foot if you tried to fondle her arse in woodwork. Fucking lesbian.
This was usually started by Steve Barron, a thick lad but bright enough to realise that school was not for him and that he therefore might as well treat it as a delinquent holiday camp. Synchronised desk thumping was a great way to antagonise Mr Oakes, the pipe smoking and ineffectual DT teacher. Basically, when Mr Oakes was writing on the blackboard with his back to us, someone would start to rhythmically slap their desk. Slowly at first, after a few slaps, others would join in and the pace and vigour of slapping would slowly increase. Those who hadn’t noticed would now also join in until the pace had picked up and almost the whole class was whacking their desk full speed. At the moment that Mr Oakes would begin to turn round, the cacophony would immediately stop dead. It was brilliant - just like turning a light off. You then had to stop yourself chortling because that would be interpreted that you were responsible. Despite this aberrant behaviour, I still managed a grade 2 CSE in woodwork, so time not wasted after all.
Usually about five of us including Weston, Perkins, and Barton and usually an evening event, the best location was Ruskin Road where there were lots of terraced houses with small, square gardens out the front, separated by bushes. We would enter one of the gardens from the street and it would then be game on as we bounded towards the first hedge. The second best tactic was to try to vault the hedge and go over sideways and let its natural springiness catapult you into the next garden. This was great but absolutely fucking exhausting. The best tactic therefore was to let Barton go in first; he was big and heavy (see Barton Beating) and usually created a big hole in the hedge through which we would all pile. The problem was that due to differing techniques and levels of fitness, the group would become separated and it was scary to be at the back because you were going into a dark garden, the owners of which had already been alerted and offended by the front runners having just trampled their hedge and lawn. Stay up front, that was the trick. Unfortunately for Barton, this wasn’t possible as he withered after about the fourth garden and had a close call when the bloke whose hedge he had just crashed through came out into the front garden, shouting and threatening to beat him. In true Marines style, we all piled back and got ourselves between Barton and the bloke to prevent a kicking. Actually, we didn’t. Fuck him. It was his fault for being a fat sod and in any case he was used to a beating.
The time honoured practice of knocking on someone’s door and running off, the undisputed master of which was Weston. On a dark night we would use a reel of cotton (90 metres on a small reel, very useful) and tie one end to the knocker, unreel the cotton and go across the street and hide. When a car came along, you simply dropped the cotton onto the ground and the car would just go over it. When at a safe distance and hiding, in this case about 35 yards away, Weston would pull on the cotton and make the knocker bang on the door. Inevitably the bloke would come to the door, have a look round and then go in. Wait 10 seconds and repeat. He comes back and opens the door, now visibly pissed off, comes outside and looks for the kids he is convinced are hiding behind his car on the drive. Baffled, he goes back in. Wait 5 seconds and repeat with a very long and hard series of pulls on the cotton. Bang bang goes the knocker. Now he’s out again and really pissed off and because the knocking was only 5 seconds ago, the offenders must be very close by, right? He looks around, says predictable but pointless things like ‘where are you then?’ (like we’re going to say, ‘we’re over here in this bush mate, using cotton to bang your door knocker!’), then after a while he goes back indoors. The second the door closes, Weston bangs again and the door flies open. By now, I am a mess of pissing myself laughing whilst feeling some trepidation at the bloke’s increasing rage. Hidden in the bush, Weston continues to knock the door with the cotton in plain sight of the bloke who looks in disbelief at the slightly surreal and scary sight of a door knocker banging itself. Then finally in the dark he spots the cotton and traces it back to our bush. This isn’t difficult as Weston is still tugging on the cotton, now standing, with no attempt to hide. The bloke gives chase shouting some obscenities and we leg it whilst hearing him continue the pointless requests like ‘come back!’ So we stop, go back to face music and apologise. No, of course we didn’t.
The knowledge to make proper, bomb-grade explosives was the school equivalent of alchemy and we had to keep it pretty secret although, inevitably, plenty knew we did it. My partner in crime is still a good mate some 30 years later and now he’s a director in a council, I better not give his name. If I gave you the recipe, they wouldn’t print it and half of you know it anyway: a certain B&Q substance and a certain kitchen substance in a 60:40 mix. I was later told that it was the stuff the IRA used to use before they got semtex and we soon found out why. You basically put this mix in a suitably strong metal container. There was a kid in my mate’s year who had an endless supply of large Soda Stream CO2 canisters: those things they used to use to pointlessly carbonate water mixed with a fruity syrup. We’d depressurise them, (dodgy in itself as they would immediately freeze whilst depressurising and ice would form on the case and you’d get your hand frozen to it), then hacksaw the valve off and pack them with the mixture. Fuses were either bog roll which had been soaked in a solution of the mixture and dried out (very effective fuse and also as a rocket propellant) or a cigarette, or both. The resulting boom was truly epic and when we let one off in the local park, the bang was the talk of the school next day, with one boy, who’s house backed onto the park saying his kitchen windows had rattled, which is pretty much what my sphincter had done as I lit the fuse. We got the case back later and 5mm thick steel had been reduced to a tangled plate of twisted metal, like a banana skin. When I got home that night about a mile and a half away, my suspecting old man said “we heard a big bump tonight. You didn’t have anything to do with it, did you?†And through my denials I’m thinking “Fucking hell, you heard it from here?!†Happy days.
An 8 year old Steven Barron (See desk thumping) ran up to me in the playground, unable to contain his excitement. All red faced and flustered he said “Quick! Come quick! Susan is showing everyone her vagina!“ That word was relatively new to us and gave a very adult slant to Barron’s claims. Susan for her part was a dull and mildly retarded girl unable to hold anyone’s attention (other than by letting Purvey (real name, I kid you not) ‘examine’, her under his parker or by exposing herself publicly). Even though Barron was a serial bullshitter, it was too amazing an opportunity for a bunch of 8 year old boys to turn down and needless to say, we ran over to the edge of the playground where there was already a small group of boys bustling round Susan for the best view. By the time we got there, I heard Susan say ‘OK, one last time...’ and proceeded to lift her skirt and pull her Knickers to one side so the increasing group of boys huddled round could have a good gawp.
Entranced at never having seen the contents of a girl‘s Knickers before, the group was absolutely electrified at the spectacle and were clearly disappointed when Susan decided enough was enough. To this day I am not sure how things then developed so quickly, I just remember a number of hands darting in from all sides and grabbing Susan’s regulation navy draws in an attempt to drag them down and do a playground de-knickering, whilst Susan tried furiously but quite unsuccessfully to keep them up above the knees.
I remember with terror, the headmistress later coming into the classroom and asking Susan to identify all those involved. Although not one of the knicker grabbers, (Barron of course was in the thick of it) I got pointed out along with about 4 others from my class and several others from other classes and had to line up at the front. God, did I think the shit was about to hit the fan. The head mistress threatened to write to all our parents, though curiously, expulsion and any other form of punishment was never mentioned. It was very fortunate for us all that although she was a hormonally imbalanced dragon, the head mistress was also a lazy serial incompetent and nothing ever happened about it, for which I literally thanked God.
Looked at as an adult, some 40 years later, it’s actually pretty shocking: the way pack mentality can go wrong and individual restraint and responsibility can be lost in an instant by just following the herd, as a bunch of immature and over excited boys forcibly remove a girl’s knickers in a playground. These days, it would be expulsions, counselling, headlines in the daily rag and a slot on regional news. That said, the 8 year old in me still pisses himself at the memory.
Mr Kift was a great teacher and had he known how I managed to improve my maths so markedly, I’ve have really been in the shit. My written work was bad and my maths was worse (“he skips through it with gay abandon†Mr Kift once wrote on my report. Fortunately for me, my mates didn’t know about this appraisal, otherwise my ‘gayness’ would have been official).
At the front of the class behind Mr Kift’s chair, there was a pile of old exercise books that other kids had completed. I discovered that these could be a great source of information. I nicked Sylvia’s old maths book from the pile and discovered pretty quickly that she had completed two whole maths books ahead of me (Alpha and Beta books – remember those?). Anyway, I stashed her book and took it home, hiding in the loo to do my homework and basically copy her answers and workings. At the time it felt like high espionage. Because Sylvia was good at maths, few of her answers were wrong but when they were, there was a helpful red cross by them from the teacher. The problem came when I had to ‘explain your working’ to show how I’d arrived at a particular answer. Not easy when you have basically blagged the lot.
A bit later I discovered the holy grail of cheating tools: the Answer Book. It had a very distinctive look as it was the same height as the exercise books but only half the width. Mr Kift would occasionally give it out so kids could check their work. You can see where this is going. We’d obviously use it to get the answers to the next week’s exercises and any others we had time to copy down. And so it was that I failed O Level maths by quite a margin.
In the interests of balance and fairness, we should probably start by saying that Kaby’s heart was probably in the right place. The bad news was that he was a dopey, delusional, serial fantasist with no mates. Kaby, the poor sod, regularly found out that the main problem with being a genuine fantasist who believes his own bollocks, is the inconvenient irritation called reality and its frightening habit of catching up with you. This usually entailed his fragile fantasy world falling to bits, often in front of his classmates, to his agonising embarrassment. So, when he’d constructed his elaborate fantasy story in which he was naturally the hero, the popular one, the cool one, etc, even the most basic questioning of the facts made it all unravel (“so Kaby, when you jammed on stage with the Damned, (his favourite band) how come no one saw you up there?...How come you’re not on the video of that gig?...your mum said you were at your Granddad’s that nightâ€â€¦.etc)
Kaby’s career in sad self delusion started early. At the age of 8 he went round the class telling everyone that he was having a birthday party on Saturday afternoon and we were invited. This temporarily caused Kaby to have some mates. Reality sadly caught up with him quite quickly. Kids turned up at his house with pressies only to be told at the door by his mum that there was no party, it was not Kaby’s birthday and that he was upstairs in his bedroom crying. On Monday, when a normal person would have dreaded facing the music in the playground, Kaby’s coping mechanism was magnificent: simply to deny any of it had happened. Brilliant, sad and scarily delusional all at once.
Some years and much bullshit passed, and at about 16 Kaby became a punk (late 70’s). Naturally, when the Damned played in our town, Kaby was the one to Jam with them on stage (his guitar playing was really wank, as his bumbling strumming in a certain 5th year assembly had demonstrated). Then, of course, rather than go home after the gig, The Damned (all 5 of them) naturally opted to stay overnight at Kaby’s mum and dad’s house. Fortunately, they decided not to ‘smash it up’ though fuck knows where they all slept. Presumably in Kaby’s room. There was obvious potential to allege that Kaby had had a gay gangbang with all of the Damned in his bedroom, but as no one believed any of the story, the potential for him becoming ‘Gayby’ was limited.
Kaby had one, rather long suffering girlfriend: Helen, who had rather a hard time of it because apart from being a compulsive liar, Kaby was a real penny pinching little git. Twice a year, regular as clockwork, on Helen’s birthday and at Xmas he would finish with her so that he could avoid buying her a present and then a week after he would get back together with her. More amazing was that the dopey mare always had him back.
30 years later, I saw Kaby, now age 46 in the local shopping centre. He is still a punk. The sad, sad, bastard.
Depressive, antisocial, cynical, self-harming and anti-establishment, Holloway hated everything and everyone, almost as much as he hated himself. He was considered extremely cool, and I was sort of in his circle, by virtue of him despising me slightly less than he despised the rest of humanity. His coolness peaked when he didn't make his A Levels because he missed the bus. It began to fizzle out when he failed a suicide attempt, and took a job in the public sector.
A man named after his appearance - that of a muppet Michael Jackson. The most popular Fozzie-related sport was to roll up small bits of paper, dampen them in your mouth and fire them from your Bic biro case like a pea shooter, to get as much paper and other debris into Ferrison's hair without him feeling it. Alternately, you could empty the contents of a hole-punch into his hair like confetti.
The most notable game reached a climax with me losing five to eight. Matches were normally ended like a game of Buck-A-Roo, with Ferrison ruffling his hair and everything dropping out. This time, it ended with a more satisfying finale, when my poor aim led to a wad of damp exercise book entering a non-participant's mouth just as he breathing in.
The most notable game reached a climax with me losing five to eight. Matches were normally ended like a game of Buck-A-Roo, with Ferrison ruffling his hair and everything dropping out. This time, it ended with a more satisfying finale, when my poor aim led to a wad of damp exercise book entering a non-participant's mouth just as he breathing in.
Mr Rose had a problem with his erection. More specifically, his problem was that he couldn’t stop having erections in class. When he turned from writing on the blackboard, you were on a fifty-fifty that there'd be a captivating tumescence nudging at the zip of his baggy flares.
Had it been any other year, with any other pop chart, he might have been nicknamed "Purple Strain" or "The Jefferson Penis Experience". But this was 1983, and Haysi Fantayzee dominated the airwaves with "John Wayne Is Big Leggy".
You're stuck with the tools God gives you. Hence, "Horny Rose is Big Loggy".
Had it been any other year, with any other pop chart, he might have been nicknamed "Purple Strain" or "The Jefferson Penis Experience". But this was 1983, and Haysi Fantayzee dominated the airwaves with "John Wayne Is Big Leggy".
You're stuck with the tools God gives you. Hence, "Horny Rose is Big Loggy".
Forget compasses sellotaped to rulers to make spears: of all the classroom terror weapons, malodorous methane was by far the most effective. Stealthy, deniable, disgusting and funny all at once. When used carefully, the fun you could have was never ending. At 14, I happened to be blessed with the gift of stinky natural methane production and my farts caused anxiety, particularly in maths lessons in a prefab with no windows, (these rooms were generally grim but particularly so when the air was polluted by boys’ bowels). The trick was to wait until the young, pretty and large breasted Miss Donnelly was in another part of the room. My desk was halfway up a row and Scott and Coles were behind me and to the right. They were mates and I would do them the courtesy of letting them know some swamp gas was on the way by leaning over on my chair and getting all my weight on my left buttock so as to enable a large silent but deadly. There is the classroom myth that loud farts don’t smell so much and that silent ones are the ones to fear. It’s a myth. Trust me. Anything that wafted out of my arse, loud or not would have made soldiers on the Somme put on their gas masks. Anyway, I ejected a good old silent blow of methane, knowing that Scott and Coles were watching. In case they had missed it due to misguided attention to means and medians, I accompanied this with an elaborate wafting of my hand below desk level in their direction. Then just wait and pretend to be studying your workbook. It never ceased to amaze me how long it took to take effect, as the invisible vapour travelled through the classroom. Just as I thought I was losing my touch, you’d hear “Urrgghhh no…..ohh Godddd!†from 10 feet behind you, whilst I had to stop my shoulders shaking with mirth.
A way to get someone punished for farting (or anything else) was simply to say their name loud and very indignantly and thereby imply that it was clear to all that they had committed the crime. Osborne did this to me after my farty misdemeanour and I thought I was in the shit. Curiously, Miss Donnelly took more offence at Osbourne's loud outburst than at the invisible smelly cloud now enveloping half the classroom and told him to shut up and put his hand up if he wanted to speak. It wasn’t that she particularly liked me, (with an afterburner arse like mine, that was unlikely), it was just that she disliked Osbourne, (which was fair enough as he was thick and camp). Scott later responded with a particularly nasty silent but deadly and by the end I was quite glad to get out of that classroom.
Abbot was popular, charming, and irretrievably fixated on all things sexual. Most of what he did and pretty much all he said either referenced or simulated sexual function. A few examples that stick in the memory:
-Enthusiastically and noisily licking a protrusion in the classroom’s plasterboard wall on the basis that it was "a clitoris".
-Jumping in front of the deputy head in the 6th Form common room, bending down low and spreading his arse cheeks apart with his hands. Because (in Abbot's opinion) the deputy head was gay, and would appreciate it.
-Drawing a detailed picture of a naked Mrs Tomalin, with meticulous detail and colouring on her vagina. He labelled this the “Triangle Of Delight†and pretended to pleasure it with his mouth like it was some kind of clitoral plasterboard wall.
-Pretending that a glue stain on the common room window was in fact his semen, which had flown out while he was masturbating. He would simulate the sound of this hot ejaculation by going "SSsssss".
-Serenading Dytham with a song outlining his gayness.
Well, Dytham’s a homosexual
He really is so gay
He likes to get boys on the ground
And roll them in the hay
If you should hear old Dytham
Making such a din
He’ll have got some poor boy’s trousers down
And pushed his penis in
Dytham was not gay, but that's OK - it he was, this song would have been homophobic.
-Proposing to the school council that we should have a swimming pool party in the school pool. When asked to elaborate what that actually involved he said “we just get a mixed group of sixth formers in there and encourage intercourseâ€
We never had that swimming party.
-Enthusiastically and noisily licking a protrusion in the classroom’s plasterboard wall on the basis that it was "a clitoris".
-Jumping in front of the deputy head in the 6th Form common room, bending down low and spreading his arse cheeks apart with his hands. Because (in Abbot's opinion) the deputy head was gay, and would appreciate it.
-Drawing a detailed picture of a naked Mrs Tomalin, with meticulous detail and colouring on her vagina. He labelled this the “Triangle Of Delight†and pretended to pleasure it with his mouth like it was some kind of clitoral plasterboard wall.
-Pretending that a glue stain on the common room window was in fact his semen, which had flown out while he was masturbating. He would simulate the sound of this hot ejaculation by going "SSsssss".
-Serenading Dytham with a song outlining his gayness.
Well, Dytham’s a homosexual
He really is so gay
He likes to get boys on the ground
And roll them in the hay
If you should hear old Dytham
Making such a din
He’ll have got some poor boy’s trousers down
And pushed his penis in
Dytham was not gay, but that's OK - it he was, this song would have been homophobic.
-Proposing to the school council that we should have a swimming pool party in the school pool. When asked to elaborate what that actually involved he said “we just get a mixed group of sixth formers in there and encourage intercourseâ€
We never had that swimming party.
Hello mate,
where are my fantastic tales of the dysfucntional horsey obsessed girl called Parnell and the rolly polly punchbag called Barton. There also stuff about hedge jumping and exposives etc. The world deserves to know about these!!
Hope you\'re well. Hopefully see my juvenile tat on here soon.
Jim
(Bertie Cockroft)
where are my fantastic tales of the dysfucntional horsey obsessed girl called Parnell and the rolly polly punchbag called Barton. There also stuff about hedge jumping and exposives etc. The world deserves to know about these!!
Hope you\'re well. Hopefully see my juvenile tat on here soon.
Jim
(Bertie Cockroft)