You’re not one of the five-eighths, are you Charlie?

Thanks to tvtropes.org

 When I was living in Co. Mayo, my doctor once asked
 “You’re not one of the five-eighths, are you Charlie?”
 
It took a moment for the meaning behind the words to sink in, but as soon as it did I shrugged and smiled back.
 
“Well, seeing as how 90% of your clients are farmers, no, I suppose I’m not.”
“No no no!” he insisted. “You’re a bit of a rebel, aren’t you?”
 
For a second I imagined myself sporting an extravagantly wavy moustache, a wide-brimmed leather hat and an X-shaped brace of bullet belts wrapped around my torso. What a ridiculous notion.  Firmly ensconced in middle age, my life was less Brando’s ‘Whaddya got?’ and more ‘What’s for dinner?’
 
“No, I’m not a rebel, doc. Haven’t the energy.”
“So how did a suburban London boy end up here?” asked the doctor.
 
I smiled and left, sparing him the answer. There was a long queue of coughing spluttering people waiting outside, so it wasn't the moment to settle back in my chair and say
 
“Well, it all started back in the Spring of 1973…”
 
We imagine we’ll notice the seminal moments in our lives, but at the age of 12 I had neither the perspective of hindsight nor the wisdom of experience. However, as soon as the doctor asked me, I instantly remembered the first moment I did something vaguely rebellious.
 
I was in my last year of Prep School, blissfully unaware that I was peaking in both my academic scores and social standing. A few months later, after arrival at Public School, I’d plummet from being a straight-A student to the bottom of the class. From being House Captain, Dormitory Prefect and one of the most popular boys in the whole school, I was about to become a bullied friendless pariah, gaining weight as quickly as I lost confidence.
 
Thankfully I didn’t waste those high-flying years. Each morning at Prep School after assembly in the gym, classical music played as the boys filed out in order of seniority, followed by the staff.
 
Our Headmaster was a tall thin rollie smoker called Jock Lumsden, known as ‘Jockles’ to the boys, which serves well to illustrate how much affection we felt for him.
 
One day Jockles told me I was to become the boy who sat in the wings of the stage each morning, hiding behind the curtain, ready to play the music for filing out. I was thrilled. It was an honour and a privilege.
 
Each morning the album sleeve of the record to be played was placed at the foot of the Headmaster’s lectern, facing the hall, so that everyone might know what to expect and possibly enhance their knowledge of composers along the way.
 
All went well until a band called Focus had a hit with a song called ‘Hocus Pocus’. An upbeat folkish instrumental piece, it shot up the charts, blared constantly from our transistor radios, and one morning I held the single in my sweaty 12 year-old paws.
 
Would I do it?
Could I do it? 
Would I be expelled, and if so, might that be worth it for the glory that I’d enjoy and the respect I’d earn from my peers?
 
A decision had to be made, as in a few minutes the boys and teachers would start arriving, and if there was no record sleeve out on the stage then there'd be questions to answer.
 
So with nascent pubic hairs sprouting from an onrush of youthful testosterone, I put the black paper single’s cover at the foot of the lectern and went off to hide by the turntable behind the curtain.
 
Being on stage and therefore behind the lectern, Jockles and the other teachers suspected nothing, because unlike all the boys, they couldn’t see the single cover.
 
Peering around the edge of the curtain I looked towards the boys, only to find every single student staring back at me with chins dropped, eyebrows raised in excited anticipation.
 
Jockles was making his closing remarks. As he sat down he turned to me, giving the signal that assembly was over. Time to play the music.
 
So I did. With shaking hand I lowered the stylus towards the vinyl, shrinking foetal in my chair as the song filled the gym. 

Boom-botty  boom-botty  boom-botty doom boom boom!
 
The planet didn’t rip apart, so I peeked around the curtain once again to see the boys filing out with huge smiles on their faces, the subtle hiss of exuberant whispers offering trebly background to the chart hit.
 
Finally the gym was empty, save for Jockles and myself. To say I was bricking it would be to say that Donald Trump’s got a few bob.
 
Rising slowly out of his throne-like chair, the Headmaster ambled over to me.
 
“Well, Adley, I might have preferred to have been consulted, but I don’t see why, maybe once a week, something more, erm, contemporary than the world’s classical geniuses might be played. Only something suitable, do you understand? Something suitable!”
 
Bloody hell, I’d got away with it! Better, I’d got a result. Not only had I rebelled, albeit in a minuscule way, but I’d changed things forever.
 
Well, I’d changed that Prep School’s assembly forever,
 
Or had I?
 
Altogether carried away by Jockles’ approval, and ridiculously too young to understand a word such as ‘suitable’, the following week I placed the album cover of Deep Purple’s ‘Machine Head’ at the base of the lectern.
 
As the boys stood to leave, the now-legendary opening chords of ‘Smoke On The Water’ blasted through the rarified gymnasium air.
 
Bam bam baaaaam       bam bam ba-baaaam     bam bam baaam       bam bab-baaam!
 
Truth be told, I can’t remember Jockles’ reaction. Nor do I recall playing any assembly music subsequent to that morning. I’ll leave you to draw your own conclusions, but I think it’s safe to say the words ‘suitable’ and ‘rebel’ don’t sit well together.

It’s no fun being a fat kid. I know because I was one!

Thanks to 98fm.com

Fat kids are a hot potato at the moment. It’s no fun being a fat kid. I know because I was one.

Well, that’s not entirely true. I was never slim, but between the ages of 13 and 16 I put on 5 stone, ending up as a 16 stone 16 year-old. Let me tell you people, that is no fun. The other lads didn’t want to hang out with me and as for girls, well, suffice to say that one low-down dirty day I found out my nickname at the local girls’ school was ‘Piggy’.

 Ouch.

It’s painful enough being a 16 year-old without trying to deal with that kind of stigma. And stigma is what it was, firmly scored into my soul when my parents took me off at the age of 14 to see the Fat Boy Specialist.

To be fair to them they doubtless truly believed they were doing the right thing. Their motives were grounded in love, just as they were when they sent me to Merchant Taylors Public School at the age of 13. In their eyes it was a magnificent school that produced a high percentage of candidates for Oxford and Cambridge universities.

They were almost right. Rather than a school, it was a factory that produced candidates for Oxford and Cambridge universities. As a private company, the school needed to turn a profit, so they pushed the brighter kids forward unnecessarily quickly to boost the figures of Oxbridge graduates produced by their production line. These high figures attracted new customers, or parents as I prefer to call them.

Up until the time I was sent there I was a really popular kid. At my previous school I was top of my class, picked early for footie by my mates, a prefect and a Patrol Leader (yes, private education in England was indeed Hogwarts without the magic. Instead of dementors and death eaters, we had psychopathic sadists and sexual perverts for staff).

The trouble started when I scored straight ‘A’s across the board in my final exams. Merchant Taylors took one look at my stats and entered me into their system a year ahead of my age, straight into a class called ‘Divisions’, because it fell somewhere between the 4th and 5th year.

From being top of the class, loaded with friends and confidence, I found myself languishing like a dullard at the bottom of Divs. I knew nobody and appeared completely thick to all the other lads, because they were all pretty much a year ahead of me. I started to eat and that made me fat, which in turn made the brutal sports regime so beloved of English Public Schools an absolute nightmare for me.

To make friends you had to be either good in class, good at sport or good looking, but I felt none of the above. So I ate, because I was miserable and that made me fat, so my parents sent me to the Fat Boy Specialist.

Then I knew I was fat. It was official, so I didn’t care. Food became my rebellion and for a couple of years I stuffed my gob with ridiculous amounts of all the special foods the Fat Boy Specialist had told my parents I should eat.

It wasn’t until I was 17 and crashed my motor bike, breaking my femur, that I turned from that obese kid into the man I am today. I’m still carrying several stone too much body weight, but at least a good proportion of it is muscle these days, and more to the point, I no longer suffer from an adolescent mentality, although the Snapper might question that!

Happily middle-aged I now understand why I became that miserable fat boy. Much of it was the fault of the machiavellian English Public School system that turns teenagers into products that create profit, and a lot of it was down to being taken to the Fat Boy Specialist.

After my own experience of being stigmatised as fat, I can safely say that this proposed scheme to weigh every Irish child on their first day at Primary School is flawed from the outset. If your child weighs too much, their ‘cases’ will be referred to GPs and Fat Kid Specialists. That'll make them feel wonderfully bad about themselves.

Children can be remarkably cruel to each other, and I can think of no more scary and less necessary queue than the “Let’s See Who’s A Fatty” line awaiting your child on their first day at school.

Far from helping childhood obesity, it will stigmatise an entire generation of children, and churn out a bunch of teenagers with all manner of eating disorders.

Anyone who lives near a school sees kids out every day in their lunch hour, quickly stuffing their gobs with burgers, chips and subs. The food is cheap, fast and gives them a rush of fat, sugar and carbs for an hour or two, but by 3 o’clock they’ll be fast asleep in the classroom, unable to concentrate, their small bodies getting bigger and more blubbery by the minute.

It’s not often that I prefer the English way to the Irish, but back in my native country awareness of how to deal with this issue seems decades ahead.

Over there, Professor Terence Stephenson, vice-president of the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges and President of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health has hit out at the government for their failure to stop what he calls “irresponsible marketing” tactics employed by the major fast food chains and soft drinks producers.

Last week the 200,000 member-strong Academy demanded a ban on companies like McDonalds and Coca Cola sponsoring major sporting events; exclusion zones around schools where it will be impossible to buy fast food; a ban on celebrities and cartoon characters advertising unhealthy children’s food and drink.

Now that makes sense. Stop selling of the playing fields. Get kids out and about, playing team sports in a healthy environment and they’ll seek out healthier foods. Stop them pigging out on junk and woh, hang on … hang on a minute … all of a sudden I’m sounding like Jamie bloody Oliver.

This colyoom isn’t single-handedly trying to stop childhood obesity, but rather highlight the insanity of implementing an arcane scheme that will make the situation much worse.

Now, I’m off to dunk a hobnob into a mug of tea. 

Well, I can, ‘cos I’m a grown-up.

Team sports made me a fascist, and I absolutely loved it!

Many thanks to John of Renmore, who suggests that as I feel so strongly about Irish sporting attitudes, why don’t I drag my lethargic and critical arse off the sofa and onto the field of play?
He points out that I spend a great deal of time writing about sport, but zero minutes on a pitch.
Fair point John, and how are you to know that, quite apart from the fact that my 47 year-old body is just a tad past its perfect physical peak (I think I hit that in the 4th month in my mother’s womb), there is a personal and substantial reason why, whilst I love watching team sports, participating in them might catapult me back to painful times.
As a boy I was sent to an English Public School, that being the Private and Tom Brown variety, ancient, and to me, horrific.
Inasmuch as the S.A.S., Delta Force and other élite army forces undergo training so severe that recruits are crushed and pulped to smithereens and then rebuilt in the mould of indestructible killing machines, so too the boys who enter unto English Public Schools are blasted and bombarded by physical and psychological warfare, ripped apart in body mind and spirit, until deemed ready to be reborn as candidates suitable for Oxford and Cambridge universities.
Trouble was, the teenage Adley was not built for speed. Indeed, although I mocked myself before, my body is now in way better shape than it was back then.
Streamed into a year of exceptionally gifted lads, I found myself, for the first time in my life, at the bottom of the class. When this new nadir was swamped by a 13 year-old hormonal tsunami that wiped out every nano-nodule of self-confidence I possessed, my body reacted by getting bigger, and I ended up being a 16 stone 16 year-old.
My classmates were not only highly intelligent but also fit and strong. At Public School no greater glory could be gained than to play for the school in the ‘Rugger’ First XV or the Cricket First XI.
The Second XV or XI might still be considered worthy, but beyond that, you were absolutely worthless.
And thus was born the Adley fightback.
While my close friends trained hard and dreamed of team glory, your colyoomist spent vital classroom hours working out how to avoid sport altogether.
My school had a straight driveway that cut through the playing fields for about three-quarters of a mile. Being Public Schoolboys, we had to attend classes every Saturday morning and play ‘games’ all Saturday afternoon.
Six days a week I travelled to school in a grey uniform. Weekdays, pupils from rival Comprehensive schools boarded the bus in their masses, clad in either purple uniforms or green uniforms.
“Look lads, he’s different to all of us! Quick! Beat up the little shit!”
Even if I managed to escape a beating all week, I’d be guaranteed a hammering on a Saturday, because, clad still in grey uniform, I looked like an Amish child way before anybody in London knew what an Amish child looked like.
So each Saturday lunchtime I dashed as fast as I could for the school gates at the far end of the long drive, in an effort to make my escape before the Prompters and Monitors arrived to guard it.
Entrenched in arcane manifold layers of school hierarchy, somewhere above mere Prefects, yet below Masters, Prompters and Monitors appeared to a junior oik such as myself like demi-Gods, boys yet men.
It is no coincidence that Dementers fly around J.K. Rowling’s reconstructed English Public School.
I knew my Dementers by name.
Delightfully complicit in this arrangement was my beloved Dad, who set off for Finchley Road Tube Station, just as I made my frantic (and yes, most athletic!) dash down the drive. A half hour on the Metropolitan Line later, I met him, waiting in his car, and then scrambled about in the car to change out of my school clothes and into my Chelsea clobber, arriving at Stamford Bridge just in time for kick-off.
Brilliant! After all, hadn't my House Master told me to act on my own initiative, and take and active interest in team sports? Hadn’t I passed on both accounts?
Each year, come the Summer, I would persuade my Mother to persuade the family doctor to write a letter, explaining that my chronic hay fever must allow me to be excused from all outside sports, whenever I was suffering.
This dream ticket from sciving heaven worked well for two or three years, until some wiseacre noticed that I had never actually played cricket in any capacity for, or in, or around the school at all.
With my metaphorical tail between my legs, I was sent to play in the Meadow League, a dreadful collection of losers and misfits who were generally unable to tie their own shoelaces or breathe and blink at the same time.
Needs must when the Devil drives, and rising to my new challenge, I became temporarily exactly what the Powers-That-Were had wanted me to be all along.
Teams in the Meadow League were divided along House lines, and so I appointed myself White House Captain, and put a notice upon the prestigious ‘Today’ board in the main cloister, requiring all those eligible to play for White House in the Meadow League to attend a vital meeting in room 33.
From that moment my job was easy. I acted like a little Napoleon, dishing out positions of play, batting orders and tactical schemes, making sure I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of my newly-won and completely illegitimate power.
I can still see my teams’ forlorn faces when, with only two overs (12 balls) to be played, and a chance of a rare victory over Mulcaster House very much in the offing, having allowed myself to bowl whenever I wanted and put myself to bat at No. 3 (everybody’s favourite), I decided to pull stumps, throw in the cricketing towel, because I needed to catch a train to meet up with my normal mates from normal schools who were going to a disco.
So there you are John. I love watching team sports, but I will always adore avoiding the playing of them, having metamorphosed into a nasty little fascist for a while, whilst in their thrall!