Extract #1 From Simon Donald’s ‘Him Off The Viz’

Him Off The Viz

Extract from ‘Oh Dear. Big School.’

All three Donald boys attended the same secondary school that Mum had been to as a girl. When she was a pupil the school was two separate establishments, a boys’ grammar school and a girls’ high school, sharing a red-brick building opened in 1928 by King George V on the same day he opened the Tyne Bridge.

Shortly before we began our time at Heaton it had been converted to the comprehensive system, a changeover resulting in pupils from both a larger catchment area and a wider range of social backgrounds. Sadly, in Steve’s early years there his eccentric nature and awkward social skills led to him being the focus of attention of a number of bullies, becoming known as ‘Professor Posh’. The seventies was a time when aggro-boy culture was rife and violent gangs were commonplace. Hooliganism was almost a career path for many boys, and indeed some girls – something in which you could make a name for yourself. For a kid like me, with a gentle suburban upbringing, being thrust into the cauldron of Heaton School was traumatic.

There were a number of pupils in each year that were branded ‘remedial’ or ‘non-examinable’ and it was from this ‘stream’ that most of the problem kids came. We knew troublemakers as menties (from mental-cases), later abbreviated to ments. Breaks and dinnertimes were often a cat-and-mouse game of avoiding menties.

Chris, as I’ll go on to explain in greater detail later, would begin his cartoon career depicting menties in cobbled-together comic books he would pass around his class.

Both of my brothers were seen as rather eccentric by the staff, most notably Steve. Chris, though, was not short of his own flamboyant moments and during games lessons wore a football shirt with the number 3 on the back, under which were the words ‘Cowgate Circle’. This is a bus route joke.

For many years I looked back on my time at Heaton with little more than contempt. However, now that I’m older I have developed a more balanced view, and see this time as an important part of my development. I took almost nothing from the education system itself, but the characters that inhabited the school, pupils and teachers alike, were so much larger than life that to this day I still have to pinch myself to verify I wasn’t dreaming.

On my first day I encountered class hatred for the first time. As a kid from one of the posher neighbourhoods, this was only to be expected from those from poorer neighbourhoods. Kids on both sides of the class divide would naturally defend their own kind. However, this particular character assault was from a teacher.

The first half of the first day was spent touring the school and meeting our form teacher, Mrs Hogg, who was a very warm and welcoming younger teacher with a friendly face and long wavy blond hair. After the dinner break we had normal scheduled lessons, the last of the day being metalwork. At this time girls weren’t allowed to study woodwork, metalwork or technical drawing, despite the Sex Discrimination Act already having been passed earlier in that same year, 1975. Likewise, boys couldn’t study cookery or needlework. The failure to implement the new law properly would lead to serious trouble at the school within weeks of my arrival.

When we boys got to the metalwork lab we were asked to sit along a bench, facing the teacher, whose name I’ve changed to Mr Todd. He began by explaining that our uniform list had omitted the metalwork apron we would all need. He said this was nothing for us to worry about: we could buy one before the next lesson. He asked for a show of hands from anyone who could name a shop where we could get one. I eagerly raised my hand – I knew that Isaac Walton & Co was where Mum had bought my shirt and jumper, my trousers and blazer being rather comedic hand-me-downs. I was ready, hand eagerly raised. He chose Phil Robson first.

‘Farnons?’ said Phil.

‘Good one, yes – Farnons.’ Mr Todd approved.

Most of the class had hands raised by now.

‘Fenwicks?’ suggested Richard ‘Lam-bee’ Lambert.

‘Yes, Fenwicks is another,’ Mr Todd replied,

This continued until almost all the department stores in town had been named. By now I was doing that thing that kids do when they’re so eager to get their raised hand noticed that they try to lift themselves off the ground by their own arm. Another kid was selected.

‘Isaac Walton’s?’

Disaster.

Arms were dropping like flies as the list of shops dried up. I didn’t want to miss my chance to be seen as a willing and knowledgeable contributor. I remembered there was a shop that sold only school uniforms, but I didn’t know its name. I looked at the label on the back of my tie. Raymond Barnes School Supplies. Joy. My hand shot back up. Instantly I was selected.

‘Raymond Barnes?’ I announced proudly.

‘Raymond Barnes? Posh shop, that. You don’t want to go there, lads. Posh shop. I think we’ve got a posh lad here.’

He continued as if nothing had happened as I tried, and just about managed, to suppress my tears. I couldn’t work out what I’d done wrong. Never in the supportive environment of my primary school had I received anything but praise for trying. I tried to hide my tears from Mum and Dad too, but eventually burst into tears that night as I showed Dad my new schoolbooks. When I explained what had happened, Dad thought it better not to say anything to anyone at the school about it, thinking it may only cause more trouble.

How is an eleven-year-old kid supposed to deal with cursory humiliation from an adult put in a professional role to help him develop? But this incident did make me realise what it was like to be alienated. It made me determined that in my life I wouldn’t make snap judgements about people or follow the divisive class boundaries that this teacher was trying to use to alienate me from my own friends.

Kojak or Sweeney?

In my early days at Heaton bullying took the almost innocent form of the ‘Kojak or Sweeney?’ assault. A kid, or a gang of kids, would approach you and ask ‘Kojak or Sweeney?’ and your answer would determine your fate.

This system was based on the two most popular telly police shows of the time. If your allegiance was to the wrong programme, without so much as a nod to the Magna Carta you would be pushed down a steep, but thankfully not too high, bank.

I discovered quite early on that some of the kids using this excuse for introductory-level violence were really quite stupid, and I took to asking them which was their favourite before sentence was passed, taking advantage of the forthcoming information when deciding on my answer. Some kids grew wise to this and refused to tell me, so the lottery was reinstated. I was sick of being pushed down the bank, so one day I decided to say Police Woman instead of the choices offered. Confusion abounded when I explained that I had started a new gang, and I followed Angie Dickinson as the sexy-yet-liberated detective. Kojak and The Sweeney were both old hat. It actually worked, but just the once.

Later a ruddy-faced blond-haired kid called Michael Rowntree, who unbeknownst to me had a reputation as a hard lad, came up with a remarkable novel twist. He decided to simply push anyone and everyone down the bank, no questions asked. He caught me completely unawares and, as I picked myself up from the tarmac road at the bottom of the bank, I just snapped, probably for the first time in my life. I chased after him and swung a punch at him, making a decent contact with his right ear. I then caught him with a left before he could retaliate. He caught me with a couple of punches, which for some reason I hadn’t expected. In what seemed like an instant I was in the grips of a wrestling scrap at the centre of a sizable crowd chanting ‘Scrap! Scrap! Scrap!’

It was all a bit surreal. I’d seen this happen a few times before, but I wasn’t the kind of kid that did this sort of thing. I was a nice boy, surely. It was over as quickly as it started. We were separated by a passing lab technician, whose presence dispersed the crowd. There were two great things about his intervention: he stopped the fight before Rowntree could take advantage of his experience, and as he wasn’t a teacher he didn’t dish out any discipline. I’d started a fight and not got into trouble for it. This was quite a result. Such an offence would normally have meant the belt at least, or more likely the cane.

The best thing to come out of the whole incident was the development of my reputation. I was no longer seen as a total softy. I wasn’t a troublemaker, but I wasn’t easy prey for bullies either. I’d stood up to a tough kid and not lost. If you bullied me I might snap and punch you in face. The bullies moved to easier targets and never troubled me again.

Simon Donald’s autobiography ‘Him Off The Viz’ will be released on October 7th and is available from Amazon, Tonto Books and all good book stores. Simon will also be performing this weekend at The Grinning Idiot’s Washington, St Dominic’s, Boardwalk and Corner House venues. Tickets are available here.