Moving People

When I left school, it was pretty much agreed that I wouldn’t amount to anything. I say ‘agreed’ because that was a view held jointly by myself and most of my teachers. There was nothing particularly wrong with the school I attended (St. George’s CofE Foundation in Broadstairs), but there’s only so much pushing you can do when the pupil in question doesn’t want to learn...and I didn’t.

I had three interests at school: reading, playing games and fancying every girl in a short skirt (which was just about all of them). I also held a record that, thanks to my distorted sense of values, I had actually become very proud of: 105 sessions absent out of a possible 111. I believe that record still holds, and the school was practically ancient, even then.

The headmaster was a Justice of the Peace, a local judge who was so active in court that his office was often empty. We had quite a few teachers at St. George’s who had other jobs: my maths teacher was a Wimbledon umpire during the school holidays, something that seemed hilarious to us all during her lessons.

‘What are you planning to do with yourself, Stone?’ The Head asked me on my last day.