Real life - 1973 - "Starman"

[Toddyboy]

In 1973 Britain, Ireland & Denmark became the 7th, 8th & 9th members of the Common Market, the trial of the Watergate burglars began in Washington D.C; the Vietnam war ended, Skylab – the first space station was launched into orbit, Jackie Stewart won the 24th Formula One, OPEC began their oil embargo on the West, Pioneer 10 reached Jupiter, and Paul McCartney’s band Wings released their hit single Band on The Run.
Me, I went back to endure my last year of secondary school.
If I were a year older I wouldn’t have had to do so but my age group was the first to be affected by the 16 year old rule imposed by Edward Heath’s Government to reduce the number of unemployed school leavers. In essence you now couldn’t leave school until you were sixteen so I had to endure another year of drudgery, as did my mates and we didn’t like the idea, not one bit. Worse still, we also learned that when we did actually reach the magic age of sixteen we would only be allowed to ride a 50cc moped on the roads. Prior to this a sixteen year old could ride a motorcycle of up to 250cc. The Government apparently saw this as a means to reduce the accident rates of teenage motorcyclists which were supposedly on the increase. We saw it differently of course. To us it was nothing more than a double whammy of enforced control and suppression of our free spirits by meddling beaurocrats and to some degree, even to this day, I still think that was the case. Let’s face it, Edward Heath was the idiot who got us into the European Union so I don’t think I’m too far off the mark with that statement.
I’d had enough of school to be honest. The only thing I ever enjoyed doing there was Art, Metalwork and English. I was pretty useful with my hands and I also had a penchant for writing and believe it or not I was actually top of my class in it, but I’d put that on the back burner to be “one of the boys” so there was really nothing for me to stay for anymore. Me and my mates all wanted to leave and get a job when we were fifteen so we could afford to buy a proper motorbike, have cool clothes and do things we wanted to, but we were told that we would have to put up with it; it was the law! Being devious little souls however, we worked out a way to circumvent suffering the last year of the school curriculum. We did this by causing so much trouble in the first few weeks of going back that the powers-that-be didn’t know what to do with us.
Our core crew consisted of Gary Holt (Gooz), Steven Yates (Kipper), David Crouch (Crouch) and me. We unscrewed all the door hinges on the ground floor classroom doors so that when the teachers opened up the classrooms the doors fell off. We set off stink bombs in the chemistry class, we wired up the Maths teachers desk to the mains so when he opened his drawer he got the shock of his life. The final straw was when we went skinny dipping in the new school swimming pool one evening with a gaggle of girls and got caught with our pants down, literally.
For our heinous crimes we had all been scheduled for a visit to the Headmasters office the following morning. The Big man himself was going to teach us a lesson we’d never forget, or so we’d been told by Mrs Allanack the Deputy headmistress. Caning was still an approved method of punishment in ’73. Can you believe that?
Now, Mr Hogbin the Headmaster was a curious and almost mystical figure in the school. He was rarely seen and when he did appear people tended to give him a wide berth. He was short in stature but big in voice and when he shouted he was quite intimidating. The strangest thing about him though was that he was a dead ringer for Adolph Hitler what with his toothbrush mustache and the way he strutted around barking orders at staff and pupils alike.
So, we were going to get a good caning eh? Hmmm. Something would have to be done about that. It was my Mum who gave me the idea actually. That evening I told her that I was in big trouble at school and that I was going to be summarily punished the next day. She wasn’t overly surprised, she knew I was a bit of a troublemaker but she had a soft spot for me and she also knew I didn’t want to be at school anymore. The thing that surprised me most though was that instead of agreeing with it she said it was disgraceful that children should still be caned. It was archaic and amounted to physical abuse as far as she was concerned.
It got me thinking. Physical abuse – she had a valid point there. After all, why should some sadistic adult be allowed to whack the younger generation with a wooden stick just because they didn’t agree with the way they conducted themselves. Hitting someone with a cane was tantamount to physical abuse if you thought about it or it could even be considered unprovoked assault with a deadly weapon if you really wanted to get technical about it.
Me and the boys knew we were for the high jump after what we’d been up to, especially that skinny dipping incident with the girls from form 5C and we knew what was coming. Mr Hogbin’s reputation preceded him. There were only two reasons you’d ever be summoned to his office. The first was to receive a commendation or certificate of merit for being a good swot. The second was to receive six of the best for not towing the line. There were no grey areas. Everyone knew that.
My mum had planted the seed of rebellion in me though, as if I needed it! The four of us met early the next morning in the playground and I quickly outlined my plan. Gooz, Crouch and Kipper all agreed it was worth a go.
At 10am, after school assembly, we were marched down to Hogbin’s office by Mrs Allanack and told to wait outside. By prearrangement we made sure Gooz was the one standing nearest the door. After a couple of minutes she poked her head around the door, saw Gooz standing there and said “You first Gary.”
Gooz went in and the door shut behind him. We all crowded round the keyhole to listen and could hear Hogbin mumbling away and then we clearly heard “Bend over!”
The three of us waited with baited breath for what we knew was about to happen.
Thwack! The first blow was struck. Then we heard what sounded like a chair being kicked over, then raised voices. We heard a scream from Mrs Allanack then Hogbin shouting “How dare you!” Then a snapping sound. Then another scream.
The door came flying open and Mrs Allanack rushed out yelling at the top of her voice “I’m calling the Police. I’m calling the police!”
We peeked inside. Gooz had the headmaster over his desk in a stranglehold. Hogbin’s face was going purple. His eyes were bulging and he was gasping for breath. His cane was lying on the floor in two pieces.
“Ok Gooz, let him go,” I said.
Gooz released his grip and scowled. Hogbin let out a gasp and slid off the desk onto the floor holding his throat.
“You’re in big trouble Hogbin,” said Crouch, standing over the ol’ boy laying there prostrate on the floor.
“You just assaulted a minor in an unprovoked attack. We’re witnesses to the fact,” chimed in Kipper.
Hogbin just lay there staring up at the four of us. He was panting and wide eyed. He just couldn’t come to grips with what just happened.
“Shut the door, Kipper and keep an eye out,” I ordered. Then Crouch and I grabbed Hogbin under his armpits, lifted him up and shoved him into his chair.
“Stay there or Gooz’ll lose his temper again, understand?” said Crouch.
Hogbin just nodded and didn’t move.
The Police duly arrived, and pretty quickly too. Two burly officers escorted by Mrs Allanack entered the room.
She immediately pointed an accusing finger at Gooz. “There he is, officer,” she said. “That boy attacked Mr Hog …….” but Gooz interrupted her midstream.
“Officer, I want this man arrested,” he demanded. “He just assaulted me in an unprovoked attack with a weapon. He hit me so hard it broke in two. It’s right there on the floor.”
“That’s right officer,” I added. “I saw it all. Mr Hogbin attacked my friend for no good reason.
Then Crouch and Kipper both chimed in simultaneously, “We saw it too, officer.”
Both policemen Policeman looked round questioningly at Mrs Allanack who had gone white as a sheet.
“That - that’s simply not true!” she stammered. Then she really put her foot in it. “Mr Hogbin only hit him with his cane,” she added, but we could see she’d twigged what she’d just done by saying that. “Oh my God! This is awful,” she bleated. That just made it look worse, or better, depending on which side of the fence you were on at that particular moment
Gooz was quick to deliver the killer punch. “You see Officer, she even admits it. I’m only fifteen years old. This man assaulted me in an unprovoked attack. That’s abuse of a minor. I have three witnesses. I want him arrested now,” he insisted.
“Is this true, sir?” the Policeman asked the headmaster.
Hogbin was too deep in shock to answer. He just sat there shooting furtive glances at Gooz and the Policeman. He was shaking like a leaf.
The lead Policeman was no fool. He knew what was going on here but he was also an Officer of the law and he knew that Gooz had a valid point. There was no doubt in his mind that Mr Hogbin had actually hit Gooz with a cane which could easily be construed as a weapon and the boy didn’t appear to have done anything to his assailant beforehand either, in which case it could be classified as an unprovoked attack in a Court of law. And there were three witnesses corroborating his statement too. The boy was also a minor even if he did look like a nightclub bouncer, and the deputy headmistress had even admitted the incident had occurred just as he had asserted.
The room went deadly silent. This was the moment of truth. Would our plan work or was it going to backfire on us? I can tell you right now my heart was pounding.
Then the unimaginable happened.
The officer turned his attention to the headmaster, pulled out a set of handcuffs and said the words that were pure unadulterated music to our ears.
“Mr Stephen Hogbin, I have no choice but to arrest you on suspicion of ……………”
Oh – my – God! We could not believe it. It had worked.
As the two Policemen shuffled Hogbin out of his office Mrs Allanack followed behind them with a look of abject terror on her face.
We later learned from the grapevine that Hogbin had received a suspended sentence for his ‘crime’ based on the fact that it was his first offence. He was never seen at the school again. Job well done as far as we were concerned. We never liked him anyway.
No pupil was ever caned again at our school after that.
We were actually hoping they’d expel us but they didn’t. They’d just gotten desperate and thought they could bludgeon us into submission with “approved” physical violence. Well they certainly came a cropper with that one. I think the only reason they kept us there was because they were under pressure to make a go of the first year of extended school attendance and the Governing bodies wanted to keep as many fifteen year olds off the dole as possible so were keen to make it work. There can’t be any other logical explanation for it because we were basically wrecking the place. It became a war of attrition with us running roughshod over the school while the teachers attempted in vain to keep us under control.
Eventually, the deputy headmistress (they hadn’t appointed a new headmaster yet) offered a truce. She appeared to have calmed down a bit since that little incident in Hogbins office and she asked us what we wanted in exchange for keeping quiet and behaving ourselves for the rest of the year until we were eligible to leave?
We weren’t expecting that! After getting over the shock it didn’t take long for us to come up with a plan. Our terms were simple: We wanted the sixth form common room for ourselves. We also wanted sole use of one of the school’s two metalworking workshops and be allowed to create our own motorcycle workshop where we could build and repair our own motorbikes. It wasn’t too much to ask, after all.
The deputy headmistress agreed to all of it. We were absolutely gobsmacked. Our plan had actually worked!
The next day we stormed into the sixth form common room and ordered the swots out. They weren’t too happy about it but after Gooz produced a bike chain and tried it for size around the neck of Gareth Smithe, the head boy of the sixth form, they were quick to oblige. We then commandeered the metalwork classroom and began setting up the place to suit our needs. A few days later our first project was wheeled through the doors. It was an ancient Cotton Cougar scrambler which we’d bought for a few quid from a dodgy pikey
“Coom owt of me Pops barn it did. Yooz can have it for a foiver boys,” he’d said.
We snapped it up. The engine was shot and the bike as a whole had been banged up quite badly but we didn’t care for we now had all the necessary equipment – and time to fix it.
For the next few months we did pretty much as we pleased in accordance with our “agreement”. We didn’t cause any more trouble in the school and we kept ourselves to ourselves. A couple of the sixth formers still weren’t happy about this arrangement though and foolishly tried to muscle in and retrieve their common room from us. Big mistake on their part. They ended up in the fish pond. We somehow got away with that misdemeanour but it was when we attempted to have a beer fuelled party in the common room and invited a bunch of girls from the Catholic school down the road to join us that relations between us and the school hierarchy became strained once more. The girls, some of them a bit worse for wear from the beer and some of them half-dressed were summarily kicked out and we were warned that any more of that kind of goings on and there would be severe consequences.
Me and my posse of mates were out of control, there’s no denying that. We didn’t want to be at school but we had no choice in the matter. The teachers knew it too but were caught between a rock and a hard place. It wasn’t going to last though. We were like a match in a keg of gunpowder. Something had to happen and eventually it all came to a head on the last day before the Easter break.
The Cotton scrambler we’d rebuilt in the metalwork classroom was a real honest to goodness classic piece of British iron and as far as we were concerned a work of art when we’d finished with it (it looked just like the one in the picture. In fact, I reckon that could actually be the same bike) We figured it must have been a mid-sixties machine as it had a weird front suspension arrangement that none of us had ever seen on a bike before. I believe it was called ‘leading-link suspension.’ The engine was a 250cc Villiers Starmaker replete with big wide cylinder fins and a huge Amal Monobloc carburettor. The fuel tank was made of fibreglass and the knobbly tyres were the meanest looking rubber we’d ever clapped eyes on. We nicknamed it “Starman” in honour of David Bowie’s song of the same name. When we finally got it going it was so loud they wouldn’t let us start it up or ride it anywhere near the school premises and we weren’t allowed to take it out during the week either. That was part of our “agreement” though so we were stuck with it. No imagination these teachers. They’d let us fix ‘em but not put ‘em through their paces. It just wasn’t fair. We’d often sneak it out when no one was looking though and we’d ride it over the cowfields evenings and weekends, and boy, was that an incredibly potent piece of kit or what! It literally tore the field to shreds with its awesome torque and knobbly tyres.
Anyway, I figured it was the last day of school so it wouldn’t matter if I gave it a little blip.
Firing that bike up inside the sixth form common room was like setting off fireworks in your lounge. It was one noisy bastard. Mr Dutton the Science teacher immediately came running in. He was shouting at the top of his voice and made a bee-line for me with a face so sour it’d curdle fresh milk. I panicked, slammed it into gear and wheel-spinned it around the room to get away from him. It must have been a sight to behold with me revving the guts out of that barking scrambler pumping out plumes of blue smoke and the poor ol’ Mr Dutton frantically trying to grab hold of me. He was so incensed that I was worried he’d actually do me a mischief if he got hold of me, so to escape his clutches I roared off through the open door and shot down the school corridor that led to the playground in an attempt to get outside. In the heat of the moment though I didn’t think it through. To get to the playground you had to go through the assembly hall. The bike was so loud that I didn’t hear the hymns being sung by the rest of the school pupils. But they heard me! All I can remember is the fluorescent lights of the corridor whizzing past above me and then a squeal of rubber as I braked hard on the slippery vinyl floor of the corridor. Too late! There was a mighty crash as I careered down a set of steps and slid into the dining room tables and chairs. Then it all went black. When I came round the deputy headmistress was standing over me wailing at the top of her voice about expulsion or something of the sort.
That was it. The school had had enough. We’d crossed the line this time and we were outa there. Government rules or not we were all summarily expelled!

[Oddnedod]

Rebellion at its finest, just brilliant, and right up my street, the story just reminds me
of the school I attended between 71-75 and the rebellion that went on there was
just as funny!