My adventures with institutions – Primary School & Cubs

Posted on by Opher

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All sorts of anecdotes appear in this novel.

My adventures with institutions – Primary School & Cubs

I’m not good with institutions.

It wasn’t too bad at Primary School although I did get more than my fair share of raps across the hands with a ruler. That was graded according to your degree of naughtiness or the mood of the headmistress. The teacher would put you outside the door. Sometimes you were lucky and were called in again. Sometimes you weren’t. The worst torment was not knowing. Your imagination worked and you could hardly breathe in case you attracted the power of evil to you. The Head Mistress took it on herself to patrol like a mad Dementor. If she found a miscreant she’d home in on them. She’d silently glide towards you. You knew you were for it. She carried a standard twelve inch wooden ruler. If she was in a good mood it was a few raps on the palm. But it could be the back of the hand or the killer edge of the ruler on the backs of the fingers. That hurt like hell.

I joined the Cubs with my friend Jeff. I don’t think I was cut out for it really. There was all this sitting around in circles and a lot of God, Queen and Country and we will do our best – dib dib dib dob dob dob – Arkala. Everyone had jumpers with sleeves full of badges. I never achieved one single badge despite the fact that I was the only one of the entire troupe who managed to light a camp-fire. I did like the games though. I thought I excelled at Murder Ball and British Bulldogs. Despite the fact that I was one of the smallest I always came up with the ball or fought my way through the melee. After a while they threw me out for being too unruly and boisterous.

I was once shown a photo of me and Jeff taken by Jeff’s mother. She must have taken one look at me and realized there was a photo opportunity. I had set off from my house in my clean Cub’s gear. I had to call in on Jeff on the way. He lived 400 yards down the road. I must have been up every tree on the way.

The two of us are standing to attention giving the two fingered Cub salute. I’m covered in algae from tree bark. Everything is crumpled and askew. My cap is to one side, scarf to the other, one sock round my ankles, jumper and shorts a mass of creases, face and hands grimy. In contrast Jeff is immaculate. It is so stark that it looks contrived but I know it wasn’t.

I wish I had that photo.

9 thoughts on “My adventures with institutions – Primary School & Cubs”

  1. As I’ve always told my friends – school arrived at the wrong time in my life. It should have happened much later when I would have been better prepared for it.
    Clubs – nah, not never a joiner, except Cubs/Scouts which I think were indeed good for me.
    I do host a classic album record listening club in the basement of my local hostelry. No tie required.

    1. I think that’s true for a large number of people, with probably a higher proportion of boys. Hormones and braion rewires make it hard for many.
      A classic album club sounds good! My history of Rock club was fun.

      1. But I do receive sniggers of derision with that comment. It’s not meant to be taken too seriously, more a lame excuse for my own zero effort approach to the task in hand back in the day. I never passed that bloody French O level, but subsequently learned quite good conversational French. All that “Jean Paul dans le jardin” school piffle bored me stiff. Why couldn’t they teach the stuff you need rather than the pro noun for the past tense first person indicative or whatever they called it. Did I really need to have 100% spelling ability?

      2. No. My years in ed clearly showed that many boys were simply not ready for school at that age. A lot of them would have done better leaving at fourteen and then coming back in for four years later on when they had their heads together. It’s not so daft.
        I tell people I got grade 54 in French. I was told I needed French for uni. I took it six times. It was graded 1-9 with 9 being the bottom grade. I ended up with six nines.
        I learnt more French at fourteen, hitch-hiking around France. I was like you, I couldn’t see the point of all that grammar and tenses. Babies don’t learn languages that way.

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