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A lesson in horticulture.
I wasn’t a particularly naughty child. No worse than my contemporaries anyway. It’s
just that I always seemed to possess ‘the face that fitted the crime’. It wasn’t me
for example that substituted the teachers' lunch time chocolate sauce jug with one filled
with sauce made from laxative chocolate. Only because I couldn’t recover from hysterical
laughter all afternoon after the school had to be virtually closed did suspicion fall upon
me.
It wasn’t me either that dressed our School Chapel’s figurine of the Virgin Mary in bra and panties. I got the blame though. I got my revenge years later when inspired by this, I pulled a similar stunt on the bronze statue of the school's patron in the public forecourt. Admittedly at the same Parent’s Day as the Virgin Mary incident visit I did repeatedly pretend not to hear the instruction to stop operating the treadle that pumped air into the Chapel’s organ. I wasn’t the one though that had hammered a clothes peg into the organ stop so as to jam it open to blast out a continuous and uninterrupted low ‘doh’ all through the Lord’s Prayer. I was only a mere bit player and anyway an unwitting conscript in that particular prank. I was the one to receive ‘six of the best’ for it though. Probably because four of the visiting parents attending the service also happened to be School Governors and ‘The Beak’, our headmaster, needed an instant and readily available scapegoat.
The following crime I was responsible for though and I was particularly proud of it too. All the more so because I got away with it.
Our school had been re-built, in late Tudor style, over its original medieval site in the early 20th century. The whole seventeen acre site had been levelled and graded and the collection of large buildings had been built on a two metre high mound at one end. The rest of the site was occupied by playing fields. The graded perimeter around the mound upon which all of these schools buildings had been constructed was known as ‘The Slopes’. The Slopes were out of bounds to the boys. Mainly because otherwise boys would slide down them on their backsides and destroy the turf. Particularly after rain and when they turned muddy. A practice not too popular with old ‘Cotterchops’, the gardener and head groundsman and even less so amongst the school laundry staff.
The Slopes extended all around the perimeter of the couple of acres upon which the school
stood, including The Beak’s study. The Beak thus had a fine view over the
whole of the school’s soccer and rugby playing fields. These of course became cricket
pitches during summer term.
It was during Spring of 1964 and I was now 15 years old and a ‘Senior’. It was the year after the incidents in the Chapel with the ladies underwear and the organ stop but I could still see the scars. Well I could if I used a mirror!
The Beak’s view from his ground floor study overlooked the forbidden zone of the
Slopes at a very acute angle because of course they were graded downwards and away from him.
For a whole week during Spring old Cotterchops along with his team of around half a dozen ground
staff were all busy beavering away at setting out the cricket pitches. Strange how none of
them said anything as they had a perfect view of the Beak peering back at them from his rooms.
The Beak’s view was much foreshortened due, as I said, to his angle of observation. Therefore
all the Beak could see and admire immediately outside of his window was a magnificent display of
Spring daffodils. What every one else could see and admire, including as many as 700 boys that
walked around the grounds after lunch each day, were two words spelled out in letters four foot high.
The second of which was ‘OFF’.
I’ve finished gardening now.
For the day anyway.
