Although my family didn’t really hold any religious ideals and I was christened as a baby in a Church of England church, I was weirdly sent to a Catholic Primary School from the age of four.
St. Catherine's Primary School, in my beautiful Cotswold home town of Chipping Campden.
So, if not being catholic was a strange enough decision to be sent here, what was equally as baffling is that St. Catherine’s wasn’t the only primary school in our small Gloucestershire town. The other primary school was called St James’ and not only was it a Church of England school, it was actually physically closer to where we lived!?
Funnily enough I can recall my first day at St. Catherine’s… Well, the morning before I had even stepped foot in the building anyway.
It was a stunningly beautiful, warm and sunny September day. An untainted, blue sky above me and the unrivalled excitement of wearing my new uniform and most importantly; my black and shiny, brand new shoes from Clark’s.
*I’m not 100% if these were the exact shoes but I definitely remember the badge that came with them and fucking hell… How terrifying is the advert?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KMLyUTCuEY
With the combination of this exhilarating anticipation and the sugar and e-numbers cocktail from my mid-1980’s breakfast cereal, I remember running around the house and garden in complete ecstasy. My adrenaline and artificial chemical-addled 4-year old brain was completely off its tits and I did what any kid would do in this situation... I scaled the massive trellis fence attached to the wall by our front door.
Bending the trellis’s fragile wooden structure and snapping the stalk of the impressive sunflower growing up it, I was stopped in my tracks by an incredible bellow.
“GET DOWN FROM THERE YOU LITTLE BUGGER!!!”
And of course, in a scene straight out of a looney tunes cartoon; at around the height of the aforementioned front door, the trellis broke away from the wall with my frozen little body still attached to it. In slow motion, perfect comedy timing, I fell with my makeshift climbing frame into a fairly large sized conifer shrub.
I was then swiftly plucked from the now squashed and once magnificent foliage to be bundled straight into my Nan’s car to be taken to school.
I started my first day at St. Catherine’s looking as though I had been dragged through a hedge backwards... Because I literally had!
Following this less than ideal entrance to my schooling life and probably setting the tone for what was to come, there are several memories and incidents that happened in that first reception year at primary school that have remained in my thoughts and nightmares to this very day.
Being a catholic school, my first teacher was indeed a Catholic Sister (I have only just found out via googling, that there is a difference between Nuns and Sisters. The difference being that Nuns live a contemplative life in a monastery and Sisters are doing it for themselves… Sorry, I couldn’t help that one. Sisters live, teach, minister and worship within the world.)
My reception teacher was called Sister Margaret, she always wore her navy blue and white uniform. Navy and white head-dress, white clerical collar, sometimes a navy habit, mostly navy dresses with white blouses and navy cardigans, navy tights and smart black shoes with small, frilly leather tassels.
God bless her, she was a very dark haired lady and as I spent most of my time sitting on the carpet in front of her, my most enduring memory of her is the sight of those very hairy legs underneath those navy tights.
I’m not trying to be horrible and definitely not wanting to be a sexist shave-shamer. And I most definitely do not want to go to hell for dissing a woman of the Lord, but once again, God bless her… In my memories, with her very dark hair, she was really, really noticeably hairy (and even had a proper moustache too!)
It’s quite well documented that Catholic dogma does involve a lot of fear to keep that belief structure in line. I’m not at all religious nowadays, but as I’ve already stated in my last paragraph that I don’t want to go to hell for Nun bashing, (Sister Bashing!?) it’s obvious that their early indoctrination is very hard to shake!
Fear did creep into the equation rather quickly if truth be told and indeed, fear does take up a massive chunk of my story!
Our reception classroom did look very church-like with its dominatingly massive arched window, extremely high ceiling and aged stone walls. Being a traditional Catholic school, above the carpeted seating area where we spent most of our time being read stories, in pride of place of course was the big man himself. In all his gory, crucified glory.
Now, this wasn’t just a small version of the traditional Jesus Christ crucifix model you normally see… No, no, no, oh no…
This ornate wall mounted statue was at least a metre tall and in all fairness, a stunning piece of art in its intricacy, intimacy and full-on, lifelike detail.
You could pretty much see into the disgusting wounds those torturous nails had made. Sitting half way across the room, you could make out the torn muscle and shattered bones in those cavernous, bloody holes.
That poor, porcelain, emaciated body.
Writhing in pure agony, he looked as though he was genuinely soaked with sweat. If you could even dare to imagine touching this icky, injured icon, you’d believe your fingers would come away salty and saturated.
The contorted look of absolute horror and betrayal on that beautiful, blood soaked face and the disgusting matted mess of hair and thorns.
Those helpless, hopeless dying eyes.
That fucking awful, graphic, gaping spear hole in his side!
Just to bring this back into context… This was the everyday focal point of a 4 year old’s classroom.
Not content with terrifying the bejesus out of us with Jesus… We were also subjected to the story of the school’s namesake very early on. The school’s logo was the spiked wheel of St Catherine and of course we were told the full story explaining why we wore this image of brutality on our chests.
Now, if you’re not up to speed with your Christian saints (of whom there are literally thousands) let me bring you up to speed with the story of dear Saint Catherine:
(Copied and adapted from Catholic Online - catholic.org and Wikipedia – probably needs summarising?)
Saint Catherine of Alexandria is a canonised saint in the Catholic Church who, per Christian tradition, was martyred around 305 in Alexandria, Egypt.
The young saint was born around 287 in Alexandria, Egypt. At that time, Alexandria was one of the finest cities in the world, and a centre of learning and culture as well as faith.
Christian tradition states she was of noble birth, possibly a princess. As a member of the nobility, she was also educated and was an avid scholar. Around the age of fourteen, she experienced a moving vision of Mary and the infant Jesus, and she decided to become a Christian.
Although she was a teenager, she was very intelligent and gifted. When the emperor Maxentius began persecuting Christians, Catherine visited him to denounce his cruelty.
Rather than order her execution, Maxentius summoned fifty orators and philosophers to debate her. However, Catherine was moved by the power of the Holy Spirit and spoke eloquently in defence of her faith. Her words were so moving that several of the pagans converted to Christianity and were immediately executed.
Unable to defeat her rhetorically or to intimidate her into giving up her belief, the emperor ordered her to be tortured and imprisoned.
Catherine was arrested and scourged. Despite the torture, she did not abandon her faith. Word of her arrest and the power of her faith quickly spread and over 200 people visited her. According to some legends, the emperor's own wife, Valeria Maximilla was converted by Catherine. The emperor eventually executed his own wife over her conversion!
Following her imprisonment, Maxentius made a final attempt to persuade the beautiful Catherine to abandon her faith by proposing marriage to her. This would have made her a powerful empress. Catherine refused, saying she was married to Jesus Christ and that her virginity was dedicated to him.
The emperor angrily ordered her to be executed on a breaking wheel. The breaking wheel is an ancient form of torture where a person's limbs are threaded among the spokes and their bones are shattered by an executioner with a heavy rod. It is a brutal punishment that results in a slow and painful death, normally reserved for the worst criminals.
When Catherine was presented before the wheel, she touched it and a miracle occurred that caused the wheel to shatter.
Unable to torture her to death, the emperor simply ordered her beheaded. On decapitation a milk-like substance rather than blood flowed from her neck.
Once more, please let me just bring this back into the context of my own tale… This was the story of our school’s namesake which was told to us as 4 / 5 year olds, while we sat in front of almost life-sized, horrifyingly accurate portrayal of a poor bloke also being hideously tortured to death.
Thanks Sister Margaret!
Toilet trouble – part one
It must have been very early on into life at primary school that the next events took place, as they both involved trips to the toilet. I’m sure you’re aware that 4-year olds tend to need the toilet an awful lot. Although I recall at this age, kids didn’t always seem to make it to the toilet on time and there were many a warm puddle to prove it. Rather proudly I don’t remember making any of these warm, ammonia smelling pools myself…
But it might have been better for me if I did.
Possibly Day one? (Week one at least!)
Happily playing with Sticklebricks.
I suddenly needed a wee. Desperately.
I politely but urgently asked Sister M if I could go.
I was given permission. Hallelujah!
I left the classroom quickly.
It turned out I didn’t actually know where the toilet was!
Instead of going back into class to ask where I was going, I decided that I was going to be a big boy and find it by myself. After all, time was of the essence!
Directly to the left coming out of our class room was a terrifying, old fashioned door which never seemed to open – fuelling the imagination of what despicable monster could live inside. (It later became known that there was a tiny room behind the nightmare door, which later became a small library.)
Moving from the left, there were also some large glass doors which were the main entrance to the school. Visible beyond the glass doors was a courtyard. In the courtyard’s centre was an ancient, stone well, which had been secured on top with a locked, rusting metal cover.
The round, primeval watering hole had contained the many dead bodies and of course the ghosts of the many pupils who had previously fallen down the well before the heavy cover was added. I knew this for certain as the bigger boys had told us at playtime.
Straight ahead were the coat hooks and benches for our class’s coats and bags. (More on coat hooks later!)
To the right was a corridor with a small set of stairs leading up to another level. Right was indeed the right way to go.
Passing a window which overlooked the colossal gothic church next door and yet another massive, creepy door, I arrived at the small set of stairs and climbed to the top where on my right was an entrance to a dark room covered in ceramic tiles. This was obviously the correct place.
I entered the shiny, bleach smelling room and my assumptions were spot on. Sinks, taps, mirrors and most importantly – the toilet cubicles. Hooray! Well done Little Mark, enjoy your wee.
Enter the cubicle. Shut the door. Do my business. Flush the toilet. Job done.
Open door. Exit the cubicle…
“AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!
THERE’S A BOY IN THE GIRLS’ LOOS!!!”
Two older girls in front of me scream at the top of their lungs and stand there pointing at me.
I stood motionless, stunned. I couldn’t move or run away as the ear-piercing banshees had blocked my path.
Almost immediately a very cross looking lady teacher comes storming into the room and instantly barks at me.
“WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU ARE DOING IN HERE YOU DIRTY LITTLE BOY?!”
Before I can reply, the unknown, red-faced and very angry lady teacher grabs me roughly by my tiny bicep and wrenches me back out into the corridor.
“HOW DARE YOU GO INTO THE GIRLS TOILETS?! WHAT ON EARTH WERE YOU DOING?”
Mrs Shouty Armhurt squeals at me, her nails properly digging into my chubby little arm.
At this point the two older girls are peeking around the corner giggling at me and I am reduced to a snivelling, weeping mess.
“DO YOU KNOW WHAT THEY CALL A BOY WHO GOES INTO A GIRLS TOILET?”
The sonic assault continued.
“A PERVERT… ARE YOU A PERVERT?”
I haven’t got a clue what the hell is happening.
I have absolutely no idea what this word “pervert” means either, but it really doesn’t sound very nice at all.
Unable to respond to the question of whether I am sexually depraved; due to the barrage of shock, confusion, pain, snot and tears, and the fact I simply have no awareness what it means. I am told to get out of Shouty Armhurt’s sight immediately.
I shamefully turn to quickly head back to my classroom.
Speedily walking away to the safety of my new friends, Sister M and Gory Jesus. I turn around to see Shouty and the screaming gigglers make their way in the opposite direction, turning around a corner, heading to their end of the school.
In that moment whilst looking behind me, completely forgetting where I am and the path I had taken to get there.
I fall down the fucking stairs!
All alone and luckily not broken, I led there in a bruised, crumpled heap at the bottom of the stairs and gathered my thoughts for a moment.
At 4-years old, I had come to the conclusion that life is extremely unfair.
One minute you’re on top of the world; conquering the scary expedition to the unknown land of the loos.
The next minute, you’re a filthy peeping Tom who painfully gets what they deserves.
Toilet trouble – part two
The next toilet escapade must have occurred very shortly after my first traumatic adventure as it involves me attempting to use the boy’s toilets!
As you can probably already tell, at this early age I was a very easily influenced and very imaginative little chap. I must have been easy prey for the older kids who wanted so much to share their horror stories to a younger audience. In all fairness to them, I must have appeared to be lapping it up as I was always following them around, vying for their attention. I just wanted to hang with the cooler, older kids really, I wasn’t intent on finding out the next instalments of the spooky and twisted tales they eagerly busted out at break times.
As I had mentioned earlier on, from listening to the older children’s tales, I was privy to the knowledge of the monster behind the mysterious door next to our classroom. I had been regaled with the legend of a disturbing Minotaur-like creature, guarding the entrance to a sprawling labyrinth of other unworldly creatures under the village.
There was also the haunted well in the courtyard welcoming you to the school every morning. I had witnessed in person the tiny red spiders that lived on the stone of the well. I was told these red spiders represented the souls of the damned children stuck inside. If you squished the spiders with your fingers you could see their blood splatter everywhere! (In recent research, these tiny red spiders were actually called Clover mites, also known as concrete mites and are extremely common in brickwork, feeding on the moss/lichen in the late summer and early autumn. I swear you saw them a lot back in the day, but not so much now – maybe I shouldn’t have squished so many!)
The next horrific episode I was soon to learn was the tale of the Caretaker Ghost.
The Caretaker Ghost was (as you can undoubtedly guess from his very original title) the ghost of an old school caretaker. (Old skool?!)
* Graphic content alert! *
Let me tell you the very grizzly story of the Caretaker Ghost:
(On current reflection, very obviously conjured up from the hive-minds of some imaginative young school children from the eighties. However it was the absolute gospel truth to a 4-year old me!)
Once upon a time, there was a grumpy caretaker in the school who had brutally murdered a pupil who had dared to have been cheeky to him! The pupil had apparently been caught writing offensive graffiti about the caretaker who then took revenge by drowning him! The caretaker in an act of remorse then hung himself in the same room. To top it off, the corpses were later found by another pupil - who then died on the spot from shock!
And where did this horrific event happen?
In the boy’s toilets of course!
Thinking back, I even remember that the name of the murderous caretaker was “Shamus Bogges”
(Yes! Bogges! Bogs = toilets! Very clever guys!)
According to the story, following the tragic incident, there were many regular strange occurrences and sightings of the caretaker’s ghost (and the other pupils’ ghosts) in the boy’s toilets:
The overhead strip lights would flicker in the presence of the unsettled spectres.
As the murdered pupil had been drowned in a toilet, the latrines could often be heard flushing by themselves!
As the boy who had died from shock had “wet himself to death” - sometimes the floors would be unexpectedly soaked!
As the caretaker had hung himself from the pipes, the plumbing would constantly rattle and make a noise!
The taps could often be found running on their own!
You could smell the dead and feel their cold presence!
Shadows could often be seen out of the corner of your eye.
Looking back on this – those little story-telling bastards were really clever and properly devious! (Or if truth be told, they were just properly scared themselves.)
To an educated grown up, all of the phenomena in their tales obviously have logical and scientific explanations:
Old fluorescent lights do flicker with age and dodgy motors.
The urinal trough had a terribly noisy, timed-flush mechanism.
The old toilet cisterns made a noise for ages refilling after a flush.
Taps are often left on by other kids.
School toilet floors are often wet, either from being mopped or just covered in piss!
Old heating pipes do gurgle and shake with the pressure running through them.
Boy’s toilets literally do smell like death and the cold was probably from the windows constantly being open to waft the rancid smell away.
Shadows are bloody everywhere! You make your own shadows all the time!!!
To an impressionable 4-year old with a substantial imagination and next to no scientific reasoning… I’m sure you can foresee the problem I was about to have!
Possibly Day two!? (Still guessing it was week one at least!)
DEJA-VU!
Happily playing with Sticklebricks.
I suddenly needed a wee. Desperately.
I politely but urgently asked Sister M if I could go.
I was given permission. Hallelujah!
I left the classroom quickly.
It turned out I still didn’t actually know where the toilet was!
Instead of going back into class to ask where I was going, I decided that I was going to be a big boy and find it by myself. After all, time was of the essence!
Had I not learnt anything from the last toilet incident?!
If I had mentioned to Sister M that I didn’t know where I was going, perhaps I might have been shown where to go?
Maybe if I had asked, I may have been granted a companion to escort me?
Oh well… Hindsight is a wonderful thing.
And so another solo adventure begins!
So, I knew that from my classroom I had to head right, past the window overlooking the church and the other spooky door. Up the small set of stairs that I had previously fallen down, and this time past what I now know to be the girl’s toilets.
From here the rest of the path is unknown… I carry on and the only direction is around to the right again and through into a large, dimly lit cloakroom. This cloakroom is absolutely massive to 4-year me, and as it turns out is home to the coats and bags of all the other year groups from year 2 to year 6.
The excitement of my latest adventure starts to turn sour at this moment as my mind starts to replay the horror stories I had recently been subjected to.
The coats seem to eerily rustle as I walk past and I feel a cool draught blow through the room, immediately conjuring up the goosebumps on my arms.
At the other side of the room are two possible directions to take. On the left there are a few more steps leading up to a brighter corridor and next to this is a dark opening on the right. As I edge closer to this side of the room, I make out that the stairs to the left lead to the other classrooms of the school. I can hear the hub-bub of other children mid-lesson; chairs being scraped across the floor, questions being asked by teachers and the general murmur of chit-chat.
Figuring that up the stairs to this lively sounding corridor isn’t the correct way to go, I approach the dark opening and realise instantly I’ve found where the boys’ toilets are.
Peering through the dark opening and down to the right, I am met with yet another set of stairs heading down. Straight at the bottom of the stairs, directly in front is a closed emergency exit door. To the left of this door is yet another gloomy looking brown door with an aged looking sign attached to it.
At this point of my life, I could only read a small amount of words. I could read and spell my name pretty well and I think I was probably a few books into the gripping “Run, Dick, Run” and “See Jane hide” series.
But I could read the small sign on this manky door with absolutely no problem.
The sign read:
CARETAKER
Dead opposite the Caretaker’s door was the entrance to the boy’s toilets. My wee-wee destination.
You couldn’t see into the toilets from the top of the stairs but you could clearly hear the loud, reverberating sound of water running, the sloshing noise bouncing around the cold, tiled room.
Stood frozen at the top of these stairs, perfectly on cue, the strip light above flickers and makes that buzzy, crackling electrical sound to accompany it.
I don’t think I had watched any horror movies at this point (yet) but quite frankly, I was already living in one!
My bladder was ready to open its floodgates and I knew wetting myself was not an option, so I took a deep breath and with all the courage I could muster, slowly inched down the 4 or 5 stairs.
With my heart in my mouth and every nerve in my body tingling with dread, I could now see a little further into the toilet block. The floor was covered in shiny, wet looking red tiles. As I hit the final step, I popped my head further around the opening of the toilets to view two cubicles on the far right of the room with their doors mostly closed, but swung open just enough to conceal any ghouls or apparitions hiding within.
On the opposite left-hand wall there was a long, foul smelling porcelain trough underneath some dirty, cobwebbed and frosted windows. Autumnal sunlight beamed through the cracks in the open windows, creating a lightshow of dust specks devilishly dancing in the gloom.
On the right-hand wall just before the cubicles were a bank of grubby white sinks, from which I witnessed the furthest tap to be left slowly running by itself. The constant stream of the cold water flowing down the plughole filled this terror chamber with an unbroken, hungry gurgling.
Whilst trying to take all this in and feeling as though I would piss myself at any moment, I still could not bring myself to fully enter that death hole.
My eyes darted backwards and forwards; from the haunted cubicles containing the lavatory where the cheeky child had been drowned – to the door right next to me, bearing the name of the rage-filled murderer.
Was the evil Caretaker still behind that door waiting for his chance to kill again?
Without daring to take my eyes off the Caretaker’s door and not wanting to step any further into the stinky room of death, I glanced upon a ceramic white bowl mounted on the wall immediately to my right. It looked like a urinal that I’d seen in the public toilets in town.
My little brain thought that if I could just be brave enough to wee in here, I wouldn’t have to turn my back on the caretaker’s door in the event he came out to get me.
“Let’s do this Mark – quickly!” I bravely thought to myself and hastily unbuttoned and unzipped my trousers.
Weird question, but have you ever seen a 4-year old boy go for a wee by themselves? In most cases the poor little chaps haven’t quite mastered the idea of poking out their willies over their pants and pulling the thing through the fly-hole to aim. The easiest thing to do at this stage of toilet training is to just pull their trousers and pants halfway down their legs and have a wee with their bottom sticking out!
So there I am… Everything is completely out on display. Standing on fully stretched tippy toes to reach the smooth and rounded washroom receptacle.
Literally pissing myself in absolute fear!
Every single nerve is on edge. I can feel the ghost of the drowned pupil watching me from the cubicles behind.
My eyes are relentlessly focussed on the caretaker’s door to my right, knowing if I look away for one second he will instantly appear to savagely murder me as well.
The tap is running, the drain is gurgling, the light is flickering and the cold September breeze is wafting around my little willy and bum-bum which are fully exposed to the world.
To top it off, I realise that I’m probably stood exactly where the second pupil had collapsed from shock and died.
I pray to gory Jesus that this seemingly endless stream of wee will come to a conclusion so I can pull up my pants and trousers and get the hell out of this living nightmare.
Then…
Still only mid-piss…
To my utter dismay…
The horror of horrors… I can hear…
Heavy…
Adult…
Footsteps…
Coming…
Down…
The…
Fucking…
Stairs…
Goodbye cruel world!
“WHAT IN GOD’S HOLY NAME DO YOU THINK YOU ARE DOING URINATING IN THE WATER FOUNTAIN???”
It wasn’t a urinal.
It wasn’t the Caretaker ghost.
It was my first meeting with Mr Doran – the headmaster!
At this point I’m not sure if I screamed, passed out or whether I simply died of shock right there and then like the second kid in the story. (Maybe I’m typing this out from some weird, long, limbo-esque afterlife?)
I don’t exactly remember what was said next either but I do remember Mr Doran grabbing me by my ear and pulling me out of the haunted toilets. I’m guessing I had finished my wee by now but I do know I didn’t have a chance to pull up my pants or trousers as I waddled up the stairs being dragged by my ear. Heaved back up the stairs into the now populated cloakroom.
So there I stood, ear throbbing from being pulled and shouted at. Now in front of a small audience of the older kids getting their coats on for playtime…
Being bollocked by the headmaster with my bollocks out.
To add insult to injury, as I’m crying and putting my junk away, old Mrs Shouty Armhurt saunters past. She doesn’t say anything but gives me a disgusted look. I get a shake of her head that proves her initial judgement of me as a pervert to be completely spot on!
Honestly… This was my first week at primary school.
Continuing the first year of Primary School
You might think that these early toilet based events alone would be enough to mess anyone up and you wouldn’t be wrong! But there are another few traumatic experiences from that first year of primary school that still haunt me to this day…
Dirty Word!
If you can cast your mind back to the age of reception class and year one, you can probably remember similar things all children are taught during this time.
We all began learning to count and using basic addition and subtraction. I recall using loads of wooden cubes to help with this.
I recall one boy in our class who liked to eat these cubes for fun – for a change it wasn’t me! Well saying that, like the easily influenced chap that I am, after seeing him do it a few times and being intrigued, I did copy him and gave one a go… I promptly got caught by Sister Margaret mid chomp and got properly told off for doing so!
We all began learning to read and spell. The scheme that our school used to teach us was called “Letterland''. Each letter, both lowercase and capital was represented with a character whose name starts with an alliterate sound to the letter it represented. For example there was “Annie Apple '', “Bouncing Ben”, “Clever Cat”, etc.
When googling “Letterland” to check the names of the characters, I was happy to see it’s still an actual thing!!!
*Hilariously, I also found that someone had written a “Where are they now” segment on their website regarding some of the memorable characters.
https://www.her.ie/life/letterland-characters-where-are-they-now-291452
“Things turned sour for Annie shortly after her Letterland appearance. She followed her dreams of heading to New York, but was ultimately swallowed up by a hungry pedestrian near the Empire State Building. Her family were truly shocked to their core upon receiving the news. RIP Annie, you are okay now.”
Not to blow my own trumpet but I was pretty good at reading. I remember whizzing through the previously mentioned “Run Dick, Run” and “See Jane hide” beginners’ collection and getting on to the more extravagant ladybird fairy tale books and a collection of books called “Puddle Lane”.
My favourite Puddle Lane book was called “Old Mr Gotobed” which I used to read to my friends, hysterically changing the poor bloke’s name to “Old Mr Poohisbed”. It’s exactly this type of early foul-mouthed, class-clownery that leads me to my next tale of woe.
One day we were quietly on task, doing the very stereotypically reception-based job of colouring-in!
In fact I think we may have been colouring-in some “Letterland” based worksheets.
It’s a sure fact that I wasn’t the best colourer-in-er in the world, but I always gave it my best go.
I may have gone out of the lines a lot, been a bit of a scribbler or used the wrong shades in the wrong places. But I was happy with my work, kept my head down and got on with it.
The pencil crayons were randomly spread across the desk in order to be shared between the four of us sitting there.
I went to grab a different crayon to add a fresh, new dimension to my latest masterpiece, when the kid next to me grabbed the same crayon at the same time.
At a bit of a stand-off, both of us stubbornly held on to the pencil, trying to assert either of our statures as the situation’s alpha-male.
After a tense bit of eyeballing and jostling, the kid tightens his grip and I respond with the same action.
The savage then violently twists his grasping fist, snapping the pencil in two between us.
The brute then swiftly stabs me in the arm with the broken, splintered end of the pencil half.
“OWWWWWW….
YOU BLOODY SHIT!!!!”
I painfully scream as the brutal attack draws blood.
Like the stealth swoop of a hungry owl snatching a mouse… From behind, Sister Margaret seizes me by the ear, wrenching me up out of my seat and drags me across the room.
(Having happened to me twice now, I assumed that grabbing and pulling children by the ear must have been in the school’s behaviour policy perhaps?! Using my old mate google again, I can see that corporate punishment was only prohibited in the UK in 1986 meaning that this act may still have been accepted.)
“HOW VERY DARE YOU USE THAT FILTHY LANGUAGE IN MY CLASSROOM?!”
Sister Margaret furiously shouts at me whilst firmly tugging my lug.
She pulls me with her towards the sink in the corner of the classroom and forces my head over the cold, wet edge when we arrive.
Holding my head firmly in place, with her other hand she grabs a disgusting looking, well-used, yellowy yucky bar of soap from the side and presses it against my tightly closed lips.
“IF I EVER HEAR YOU USE SUCH A DIRTY WORD AGAIN I WILL WASH YOUR MOUTH OUT!!!
DO YOU UNDERSTAND???”
The truth is, I don’t think I did understand.
My Grandad and Uncle Geoff used these words all the time when speaking to me. They were always calling me a “Bloody little shit” or a “Little bugger” or a “little Git”… Sometimes even a “little bastard!”
At this age as they were used so often at home, I’m not sure I was aware of the difference between swear words and normal words.
Then again… Maybe I did know… Maybe I was fed up for being in trouble again for something I felt was not really my fault.
Maybe I was just a glutton for punishment because of what I said next…
“I’M SORRY SISTER MARGARET…
WHICH WORD WAS DIRTY?
BLOODY OR SHIT?”
…Soap tastes disgusting!
Kim?!
This next incident really messed me up and has stuck with me so vividly. In all honesty I’m not 100% sure if it actually happened in real life or whether it was an extremely bad dream which has magnified as it replayed night after night.
I assume that because this memory is as crystal clear as the one’s I have previously written, that this was indeed an actual event.
Hopefully an old school friend may be able to confirm or deny?!
During this first year of primary school I have a recollection of a girl in our class called “Kim”. Kim was an angelic, cherubesque, blonde haired girl who floated around happily like the rest of us at that age. She spoke with an accent. Not the weird Cotswold accent most of us had (like a softer version of the Bristolian/West Country style accent I guess) but maybe almost American, Canadian or Australian?
One day, I remember standing by the classroom door. I think it was first thing in the morning and we were piling into class after removing our coats and bags.
I’ve got a feeling I was the second to last in coming into the room and Kim was behind me preparing to pop her things up and out of the way.
As a warning, if you are squeamish please just do yourself a favour and just skip the rest of this chapter now. As I mentioned just moments ago, what happened next had truly disturbed and haunted me ever since.
Underneath our coat hooks was a small benched area, I’m guessing for children to sit down to put their shoes on. As we were so small it wasn’t uncommon for us to step onto the bench to place our coats and bags onto the pegs.
For some reason I was watching Kim taking her coat off and getting ready to hang it up. It’s possible we were chatting, maybe planning our busy schedule of building wooden block cities with each other that morning.
Kim stood up on the bench with her bag and coat in her hand. Then possibly catching her foot on her coat sleeve or bag strap, or simply mis-stepping with her tiny feet… Kim slipped straight forward and fell face-first onto the upward poking metal coat hook.
From just a few steps away, I viewed that poor darling impale herself through the eye.
Nothing will ever erase those few horrendous seconds from my mind.
Her excruciating scream that followed just added to the awfulness that would play on repeat in my sleep. I can only imagine the emotional repercussions she must have had!
Bless her… Although I recall her instantly pushing back up with her legs to move herself off and away from the ghastly scene, gladly I don’t recall the certain visceral aftermath of this incident.
I’m fairly certain adults would have taken over at this point and Kim would have been whisked away to A & E.
Kim was unsurprisingly absent for some time following this accident. Then I seem to recall her returning for a very short time wearing an eye patch before leaving our school completely.
It’s a weird one… I don’t believe anyone I’ve known to ever have mentioned this incident or mentioned a girl called Kim at our primary school.
I’m fairly certain it must have happened though as the memories (and nightmares) were so clear.
My other thought is that the whole incident could possibly be the product of a very damaged and disturbed childhood imagination?
And then again, maybe Kim was simply one of the ghosts of the children who were locked just metres away in the well out in the courtyard and like the kid in “The Sixth Sense” it was only me who saw her!