New Novel Writer
School Daze
Or... Opportunity's Mist
(Copyright © 2022 John Morey)
THE POET'S EYE VIEW
The best years of my life...? Mmmmm...they were not.
For one thing I should have learned – or should they have taught me - not to begin a poem with a cliché?
Or, heaven forbid, with a joke.
(e.g. As an avid birdwatcher, I have no egrets.)
Sorry.
A short story I wrote when I first started was'Unresolved?'
It finished badly.
That doesn't surprise me now.
How could it be resolved any other way?
Afterwards, for some reason connected with the story
I turned my attention to my school days...
They had ended as unresolved as Summer Girls.
(Click the above link to read it. Something may resonate.
Especially as, unlike 'Unresolved?, nobody was killed!)
'Unresolved?' examines Guilt, Forgiveness, and Closure.
Sorry. That last term is so American, I nearly didn't use it.
Maybe I should make it my title for a USA edition.
As such, the above had nothing to do with how I felt.
No.
For me, Sadness and Disappointment are nearer the mark when describing my school days.
Ahhh, but Secondary School - not Grammar - began so well.
In the top class with overall top grades and top of the class.
Every year, for three years.
Even then I was never smug; never complacent.
It was 'only' High School, after all.
Then came Grammar School, and 'not so good'.
In the third class down – 'e.g. 4c' etc. - every year.
Goodbye 1a1, 2a1, 3a1; Hello 'c' grade.
I was 13th in the class (or thereabouts, I forget exactly).
Shock pounced first; then Sadness; then Disappointment.
Did I leave out Shame?
Thank goodness my parents never complained.
Isn't that why I loved them all the more?
Even they are just a lasting memory now. Their kindness.
Hold on. Here comes Captain Cliché again...
I never found a level playing field at grammar school,
And it all ended in tiers.
Worst of all
I was overlooked for the school soccer team.
Misery!
Perhaps I failed to Russell up enough skill and energy.
Once you took away the prestige (by coming 13th not 1st),
In walked Isolation. Loneliness. I was on my own.
I had to find fortune in other ways. Popularity. Worth.
Thankfully I did find...Something.
But that came later. Much later. Never at school.
School Days left me in a daze.
I never looked - or went - back.
So don't ask me to now.
It's too late. You should have thought of it earlier.
To resolve matters, all I can say is:
'Thank you for the Invitation but...
I won't be coming to the Class Reunion.'
For one thing, my (rented) Maserati hasn't arrived;
For another, I appear to have misplaced my Book of Lies,
Ready to wow everyone at the reception.
In any case, I would have had little to say.
That's all captured and preserved in my short stories
Called 'Dark Eyes' and 'The Violin Case'
Both available as a free downloads for old classmates...
~ *** THE END *** ~
South Wigston Boys High School
Second Team Rugby 1957
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THE REALITY
Who are those guys above?
To tell you the truth I can't remember them all - apart from (Back row) Ginge, Jonesey, Bill Lewin (who went on to the first team), Len Skinner, Me (Morey), Taz Taylor, Johnny Clarke (?), 'Spud' Tate, (Front row) Duncan Jones, Steve Billings, Higson, Garrett, A N Other, Another 'Ginge', A N Other.
Not bad, eh, after 65 years!?
This was the First Year rugby side. By the Second Year I think I was still in the team, but I hated every minute of it - having to turn up on a cold February Saturday morning to play on a frozen pitch.
I had to cycle from Blaby, through the Jitty, past the Premier Drum Factory, to Wigston.
Unlike my cousin before me - Dave Hilsdon, England Youth International - I was rubbish at rugby. So they made me full back - waiting there defenseless until the opposing side got possession and a dozen 'buffaloes' charged towards me, trampling me underfoot on the way to score a try.
'Where were you, Morey!?' was the cry.
Luckily, by The Third Year everybody else had grown taller and fatter, whereas I remained small, skinny, and too puny to be of any use anymore. I was dropped. (Whoopee! Thank you Mr Pell, Mr Reed.)
However, for these three years, academically I excelled. Top of the class in the top class each year.
Sadly, my wake-up call came when, as a Fourth Year and at Guthlaxton Grammar School I was a 'mid-table also-ran' scholar. (Ha! Poor me!) And it was a co-ed whereas the High School had been boys only.
My first real close contact (socially if not physically) with girls didn't help. If I had been rubbish at rugby, then I was certainly rubbish when it came to girls.
They usually ignored me, although Diane Pearson and Jane Thomas at least spoke to me.
Worse still (could it get any worse?) I didn't make the school soccer team.
BUT IT ALL CHANGED....! in every department and at every level when I left school and finally left Leicester to come to the wonderful South West.
I think I read somewhere it's called growing up (!).
FOOTNOTE: Some of the above comes out in the memoir section in my book of short stories and poems in READ MY SHORTS, available on Amazon.
Self-indulgent? a tad; entertaining? hopefully.
