Excuse me, but since when has hitting someone with a hammer been referred to as an adjustment? This gentleman’s little speech though well- meaning was doing nothing to allay my anxiety—not that he had finished yet.
‘Now, young man, the anaesthetic should have taken effect but there is still a chance you might feel something.’
Feel something! He wasn’t kidding, I felt every ‘bloody’ thing. It was as if I’d never been near a syringe in my life. Whatever had been in those things, they needed to triple the dose, at least.
After ‘more than one’ concerted attempt to ‘adjust’ my mashed-up digits, during which the attending nurses had grimaced and flinched with every whack, the action finally came to a halt: the surgeon had indeed ceased to hammer me. After wiping his brow and nodding his head decisively in a ‘job well done’ kind of way, he retreated to wherever it is surgeons go after benevolently bashing up the hands of little boys.
The trauma abating, my central nervous system had instructed me that it was now safe to downgrade my screaming to something less harrowing, a little less cowardly. Accordingly I did so—firstly to a respectable sobbing before fading seamlessly to a feeble whimper.
After a few minutes, and several sympathetic smiles from a couple of foxy nurses, which I happily acknowledged with the raising of a conciliatory ‘Don’t-worry-I’ll-be-alright’ Ferris Bueller-type eyebrow, milking the situation for all it was worth, I began to compose myself on the way back to regaining full heroic status. But once again all was not as I thought.
The surgeon returned.
‘I’m sorry but that doesn’t appear to have worked, we’re going to have to go again.’
Ex-squeeze me? Baking powder?
‘What did he just say?’
‘We’re going to have to go again!’
Surely I was hearing things, he couldn’t have just said what I thought he’d said. But yes, alas, it was true.
‘The local anaesthetic was not strong enough,’ he went on. I could have told him that for free!
‘The reason we went with the local at first is because its use does not require us to have prior written permission from a guardian as it is of little risk.’
‘Or effectiveness,’ I wanted to add but thought better of it.
‘We will now have to give you a general anaesthetic, which means putting you under. Of course for this we will need someone to come in and sign the consent forms.’
He smiled a half smile—at least he tried. He then turned to walk away but there was something else. He came back and gestured. I drew closer, he had a secret to share with me.
‘Oh by the way,’ he whispered, ‘I presume we are all sticking to your story on the accident report of how you fell on to your hand in the playground and not the fact that you more likely punched some other boy in a bout of fisticuffs. That’s the usual way a person comes to sustain this type of injury.’
Suddenly I began to warm to this guy. Not only had he just used the phrase ‘fisticuffs’—a phrase I’d never heard in real life before—but he was letting me know the score here, the way the land lay. Alright, he may have already put me through a miniature hell, and was about to ‘go again’ in his words, but I couldn’t help feeling that he was offering to cut me a deal. The less fuss I made over the last failed ‘rebreaking’ attempt when my mum came in, the less she needed to know about the ‘more accurate’ reason for the injury.
‘Er…yes, thank you,’ I replied, happy to comply.
I had been well and truly rumbled by the doc and although he was poised to set about hitting me with that bloody hammer again, I had to admit—he was one of the good guys.
Top 10 Things I Remember from School Lessons
10 Tectonic plates
9 π
8 Iron filings
7 The binary scale
6 British standard lettering
5 Improper fractions
4 Expansion of brackets
3 Ripple tanks
2 French idioms
1 The angle of reflection is equal to the angle of incidence
The last three years of my education at the comprehensive school hold the most lightness for me from my school days. Having said that, I didn’t learn much, not because the teachers at the comp weren’t as good as those at the grammar school; it was just that the comprehensive syllabus was a year or two behind that of the grammar schools and a lot of what they were doing I’d already been taught. The result of which was a further two years of classroom boredom for me and two years of frustration for my teachers.
For ages I would be the first with my hand up to answer any questions they might ask but after a while they realised I’d learnt it all before and began to ignore me! It was hilarious—I would be there with my hand up and they would say things like, ‘Well, if nobody knows, let me explain.’
When it came to final exam time, I did somehow manage to scrabble out eight lame but just about acceptable O-level grades, as well as a couple of GCSEs, whatever they were.
Bizarrely as it turned out and very much against my better judgement (but when has that ever stopped me?), I actually decided to stay on for the sixth form. Here’s a boy who couldn’t wait to get out of the education system and all of a sudden he wants more. What a strange individual, but of course I had my reasons. They were mainly to do with a gap in the market I had spotted and the only way to capitalise on it was from remaining on the inside.
For most of my years at school I had been bemused by many things, none more than the phenomenon of the school tuck shop. Both my senior schools had such a thing and both were equally hopelessly out of touch with their clientele.
The tuck shop at my comprehensive school was run by members of the PTA—good wives and loyal mothers who had a bit of spare time on their hands and wanted to do something to help the school, absolutely nothing wrong with that. The problem, however, was that they stocked what they thought the kids liked, or what they should like, not what the kids actually did like. I remember there was one item of confectionary that I had never seen in a real sweet shop. It was as if they’d had it specially commissioned by the boring biccie factory.
Where there’s a problem there’s an opportunity (in Chinese the word for both is the same, which explains a lot!) and by this time, via my work at Ralph’s, I had good connections with the local wholesalers. I had recently also become the owner of a motorcycle, so I decided to swing into action and set up an alternative sweet emporium for my fellow students.
From day one I had it nailed. I was supplying all the latest favourites. Unlike the parents I did know what the kids wanted—after all I was still a kid myself: Refresher Chews, Wham Bars, Space Dust, the almighty Fizz Bombs, Jaw-Breakers, Sherbert Dabs, you name it, I had it…and if I didn’t I could guarantee to have it the next day. My USP was that I was also discounting my prices to beat the surrounding shops, as well as of course the good old school tuck shop which was quickly seeing business drop off. As a result I soon saw myself hauled up in front of the headmaster.
It had come to Sir’s attention that I was operating a rival outlet to the official school sweet suppliers and that, as a result, their turnover was suffering, and consequently, so was the school fund—the sole beneficiary of any tuck shop profits.
He went on to explain politely to me that this was not an acceptable practice and that he would very much appreciate it if I ceased to trade