Iron Abacus Oiled By Spit

School was never about learning for me. It was about cruelty and survival, both on its part and mine, and the blackboards were mirrors. Pitch.
Some days were fine but most days I had to speak so the bad outshone the good. I hated speaking.
'He's the one they call Dr.Feelgood! He's the one that makes you feel aaalriiight!' (Spray deoderant) 'He's the one they call Dr.Feelgood, he's gonna be your Frankenstein!' (Razor sound) 'Dum de dum Dr.Feelgood, he's the one that makes you feel aaalriiight!' (Razor stops)'Mam! Whats for breakfast? Im just getting my books ready for school!'
Mornings were never like that. My mornings were more like: (Toilet flushes) Mam! I don't feel well! Can't go to school today, ive got a tumour on my lip the size of Carmarthen! Mam, are you listening?'
And all the time im burying my half eaten homework under the floorboards, and setting fire to my gym kit.
'Mam! A note!'
There would be no sympathy mind, not for me or my brother. Id hear footsteps coming from the kitchen.
(Mothers shriek) 'Get to school! You wait til your father gets home!' And I would sink my head deep into the pillow, trying for more sleep, fishing for dreams, or death, a place to hide. I didn't know what to do; maybe just maybe if I vomitted and wretched my guts up and flushed them down the toilet I might escape this horror. Every word my mother yelled was laced with razors.
On school days I tried so hard to die.
'Get to school!' Really she only wanted to get drunk, so I left. (Door shut)
Everyone walked in groups toward the bus stop. Not me. I was alone, a new sports bag dragged at my side. It was forever raining too, I bet that was a omen.
And the bus ride! That damned trip took hours, when in reality it was fifteen minutes. Wheels thundering over hell beneath.
(Brats voice) 'Urghh! Don't sit next to him! He smells!'
(Second brat) 'Hey freak! Snogged a girl yet?'
All the time id pray for silence on the radio because if songs played: (Pishew! Pishew! Pishew!) Arrows would come, sticking into my ribs, jabbing my kidneys and I would not have had the heart to continue past the school gates.
But I always arrived in one piece. Only once was a song ever played, and only once I died.
I had friends at school, twins (Maisy & Jen)and a red ferret called Tank. However looking back it was no more friendship than it was sypathy. The worst part of school was the first quarter hour before assembly.
'A-Ba Boo! A-Ba Boo! Hey boys have you thought of wwhat you're gggoing to do after leaving school?' Maisy and Jen shake their culry heads.
'Im gggoing to pick bblackberries and sleep in a cccoal sack!'
Maisy gives Jen an awkward look. Suddenly without warning its here:(School bell rings)
'F**k!' I think to myself. Another day ruined.
We all filed into the assembly hall as if about to recieve a death sentence, and there he stood: the headmaster, center stage, four foot above everyone else. A big clown. A big, fat, greasy, black clown doing an impression of a shaved orang utang. He spoke as if in permenant rage, but I didn't listen. I never listened to anyone, that path leads to madness.
I was always looking out for the feller who fainted. Someone always fainted, perhaps two or three did if I was lucky. Face first onto the oak floor. It dissrupted the orang utang onstage but only for a minute.
(Angry voice) 'I have reason to believe that somebody is selling cigarettes at this school! Furthermore intimate relationships have begun in the woods behind the building! Teachers cannot put up with this squalid behaviour!'
And all the while I'd stand grinning under my bowl haircut.
'Ten hail Marys!' And prayer would begin. Dull mantras, cobweb covered hymns. Occasionaly pleasant but always sour.
After this circus my attention ebbed away in fists of frustration.
I would look around.
'Hey Maisy, nnno ones fainted yet!' 'So what? Have you got bets on?' 'No just an interest in fainting.'
I'd watch the antics on stage. 'Nayyrhmumble!' The ape clown headmaster would still be at it, and his deputy (nicknamed Mouse), scanned the rows of pupils with false teeth in his pockets and bible at his side. Cruel chap, full of religion.
My thoughts were far from saintly. 'Where's the incredible collapsing boy?' I wondererd. 'Come on! Fall down! Dust the floor you pale ogre!'
Suddenly (Loud Thud)
A try for the sickly child! Well fainted boy! We would all cringe and shrink into our shoes, and assembly would be over, fractured by hilarity.
First lesson of the day on Wednesday would be English. (Sound of handcuff ratchets tightened) Cuffed up would walk sheepishly into the classroom, handing in homework. For a silent ten minutes, the teacher, bug eyed Mr Samuel, would read our efforts while we sat numb at desks, chewing fingers to bone.
'Shit!' Id say to nobody. 'Did I do it properly? Was there enough pretty words?' Then my name echoed through the room and I would be forced to stand in front of class, wearing a newly aquired gold star, polished like a teachers pet, and ordered to read aloud my work.
'Krrrrsssccchhhhwweeeetsssttt!' Covering my punk audience in saliva, which they'd return by mocked laughter. Stoned by chunks of embarrassment.
'Well done boy!' My only reward. I'd sit back down and try drowning in shame. Or try at least to take some solice in whispering poetry to myself:
'No useless coffin enclosed his breast,
not in sheet nor in shroud we wound him;
but he lay like a warrior taking his rest
with his martial cloak around him.'

Next would come a yawn and the first break of the day (School Bell Rings)
Everyone waddled off to find their own cliques, smoking and fingering each other behind the sheds. Stereotype in dolby surround.
Id try and find Maisy. I knew Jen would be spilling sweet troubles into the ear of the school pin up, he was never that fussy. He looked a great lover alright but when it came down to the job Id bet he always f**ked it up.
Searching the playground, Maisy had disappeared. Into the canteen Id go, children stuffing their gills with dry hot dogs..
Im sure I saw Mr Rees the chemistry teacher, in the kitchen trying to show one of the dinner ladies how to use a bunsen burner. At least thats what I think he was doing.
Out I would walk, almost pining for Maisy. Then as I was staring through the school fence like a prisoner of war there was something behind me. (Sound of a lighter flicking) It was Mrs Pip, the pain in the arse, the smokers cough. He was in my class; suntanned with freckles and always carrying a cigarette. So Id smoke with him a while, he would chat, and chat and jib jabber his copper frosted head off. God only knew about what. I was too busy counting his impressive freckle collection.
(School Bell Screams) It was geography next, taught by John Poof, who was forever getting teased by Huw the Gyp and Mojo. He could nnever control a class, he was like a naked lion tamer with a dusting brush. He had no defence from the insults class 3 Gwellian hurled at him every day. To us he was just another pupil who happened to have a camp moustache. He quit not long after being bullied by us. Nervous breakdown. I quite liked him.
However I could never concentrate in geography because the classroom was right next to Mr Rosser's class. He taught physics and would lecture pupils on the dangers of smoking while always nipping to the teachers mess to smoke until his eyes were yellow. He'd emerge sucking a polo mint in a vain attempt to mask the odour but whenever he stood next to you it was (Cough) like having a lung full of cancer.
'Shouldn't smoke chaps, should never smoke!' (Violent spluttering)
I don't think he smokes any longer.
(School bell rings longer)
The lesson before dinner was Biology. It was silent. Always was. I'm certain the teacher was an elf. Dr Owen, with tiny pixie ears pointed like a cocktail stick, she used to scurry around the grey sinks like a shrew looking for shelter.
She would lecture on the rights of trees and plants, on the right of animals (while elbow deep in frogs innards) and all the time I would be being offered sex, the only time I ever was, by Jeremy Jemima Jones at the back of class. A fine big boned girl with a moon round face like myself. What she saw in me I'll never know but she saw something. Perhaps she liked ghouls.
I kept hold of my virginity. I stuffed it in my sports bag and ran away to dinner. Off to the canteen, rushing past sixth formers trying out new drugs in a corner. Straight in, first in the queue. 'Hhhha...' Whoosh! I was skipped, I fumbled the words and the grumpy bag pissed on me.
So I starved. Oliver Pissed, the boy who couldn't ask for more. But what an hour dinner was! Maisy and Jen had sloped off somewhere so I was left to my own deviant devices.
(Sound of rugby ball being kicked follwed by breaking glass)
'Boy! Get in here NOW!'
'Yes sir.'
I hated standing outside the headmasters office/orang utangs lair, waiting for the cane. It was like awaiting death by lethal injection, and just before the cane fell the caped clown would ask your religious denomination.
'Catholic?'
'No sir.'
Presbyterian?'
'No sir.'
'Methodist then?'
'I really couldn't say sir. Whenever I think of religion I bring bile...'
'Six of the BEST!' (Six lashes land on my palm)
And off I'd go to sting and simmer the rest of the break, and sit under a tree to immerse myself in more poetry.
(Whispers)

When I went into my room at mid morning,
say ten o'clock...
My room, a crash box over that great stone rattle
the Via de Bardi...

I heard the shouts.
'Look at him! He's a weird boy!'

When I went into my room at mid morning
why? A bird!
A bird
flying round the room in insane circles!
In insanes circles!
A bat!

'Hey strange boy, look at me!'

A disgusting bat.
Out! Go out!
Round and round and round
with a twitchy, nervous, intolerable flight.
And a neurasthenic lunge,
and an impure frenzy.
A bat, big as a swallow.
Out, out of my room!

And I'd shout at all the boys and girls, the vagabonds and princes, the drunk and sober: 'Just leave me alone! Be hushed to me! My tree and me! Be silent!'
Mr Jones would walk over. 'Hmm I think you need seeing to child. Write out a hundred times...' And since he could never be bothered to finish what he was saying I simply wrote, 'Mrs Priestland is shagging Mr Williams' a hundred times and get deeper in trouble.
That was lunch time for me. Starved, picked on and punished. Then came the big (Bell Rings) fat (Bell Rings) knotted (Bell Rings) bitch of an afternoon.
It was only three lessons, one dose of Religious Scripture and a double helping of Welsh and sweet hell we were going to have fun.
Miss Morgans taught the religion in Welsh. She was fresh out of university with curves to die on and giant pinapple tits. Everytime she turned around and I glimpsed her tight skirt from behind I did a magic trick inbetween my legs. (Sound of spraying water)
Of course it wasn't intentional. I could already hear mother sreaming 'gettobed! Gettobed you filthy sod!' But I couldn't help it, miss Morgasm was pure thrills to my rancid imagination. I did my best to impress her.
(Psalm 4)
I'd whisper the text on and on, never tripping on my tongue. My fellow pupils were aghast! He can speak! He's been cured! Oh Lord be praised! Religious Studies has cured the boy with a broken mouth! I would beam at miss Morgans, inhaling her perfume like it was cocaine.
'Lets get drunk together miss! Let me rip your stocking with my teeth, to hell with morals!' (Slap) Back to normal now: 'Abu, wedi i'r Iesu orffen y gggeiriau hhyn oll, efe a ddddywedodd wrth eei dddissgyblion..' all the class would spit, giggle and point.
'A Mab y dyn a draddodir i'w groeshoelio.'
A shambles of a verse in Welsh. Mathew 26 cut with my scissors.
Occasionaly I did poetry readings at the back of the class whrn the teacher wasn't listening. 'Go on Steven, read us some of your poetry!' Maisy would nag, trying to encourage as best he could. 'Okay' I'd nod one eye on my poetry, the other on the teacher who was writing something painful sounding on the blackboard. '2 Kittensanacat' A mutter went through my tiny audience. 'Bloody strange title.'
(Recite poem)
'Oooh thats good!' and 'what are you on?' would be my applause. and I would hide but the teacher would swirl around quickly, PHITT! An ink pellet to the eye, there ending my poetry for the day.
The rust broke. (Bell Rings)
It was time for the double dose of Welsh. I forget the name of the teacher, her name was so special that death took it with him, but her face looked like it had been caved in by a JCB and her hair was black as tar. Her voice a cheesegrater in heavy bass, she loved Dylan Thomas and delighted in making me blush on his every word.
(In Welsh)
'Steven, would you read a liitle please?' She had a dragging drug addict tone. 'Read as much as you can theres a good boy.' As if craving another fix.
'Yes miss, The Outing.' Rubber bands filled my mouth.
'If yyyou cccan call it a ssstory. There's nnno rrreal bbeginning or end and ttthere's very little in the mmmiddle....'
'Thats enough Steven!' And off she'd go for a hit in the toilet.
I remember one day our Welsh lesson was taken over by Dr Johns, a red beast of a man. A prick with a temper. No doubt the usual teacher had taken the day off to score more dope.
On this particular day he asked me to read another story aloud. I started reading and sure enough the machine guns kicked in. He stopped me suddenly mid sentence. 'Steven have you ever thought about seeking help for that speech? As a matter of interest, how did you acquire this impediment?'
Noone had ever asked me that before and I was taken aback. I told the truth.
'Well sir, I went on a family trip to Bristol zoo when I was eight years old and got too close to a monkeys cage. The creature pulled me against the bars and....'
'Are you taking the rise boy?'
It was the truth which took me to the headmasters/orang utangs office that day for the usual religious interrogation and the swift stings on my hand. On my way back to the lesson I met with a teacher. 'What have you been in the headmasters office for now Steven?'
'The truth.' I replied.
I sat mute through the rest of the red beasts lesson.
'No more of your nonsense now Francis! Take another pill if you get lonely.'
It was the last I ever saw of Dr Johns. The Welsh junkie returned from then on. She used to end the lesson by saying a word, the first person to spell this word correctly was allowed to leave five minutes early. 'Cigarette' she offered one day and my hand shot into the air.
'Go ahead Steven,' she dribbled.
'C.I.G.A.R.E.T.T.E' And I mimed the action of smoking one. It must have reminded her of taking whatever she was high on because with that she unshackled me and threw out the rest of the class as well.
(Bell Rings) And she would go to score.
It was like being released from prison. Maisy and I would hold hands as we made our way to the school bus, with me singing 'These Boots Are Made For Walking!'
School was finished for the day, and straight off the bus I would run home where mother was already drunk and talking foreign. I always ignored father, he was never any good.
'Mam, you're insane and i'm sorry for this morning. Can I go out now?' And off I'd go to play by myself in trees, in rivers, in graveyards and chapels, in haunted houses. One hand down the front of my trousers to feel if I was still alive.
'Did I do well in school today God? Did I behave?'
No answer. And so it remained for five terrible school years, until I finally bid farewell to Maisy and Jen, and leprous drug addicted teachers, went back to my room, folded my arms and went quietly insane.