Mr Fish’s fine kettle

 

* * *

 

Their headmaster sailed, chin up,

and most alone: unflinching.

Prudent pupils picked dullness,

as anarchy was starting.

 

* * *

 

Blind to his indifference,

Mr Fish told everyone:

teachers, auxiliaries, kids,

don’t complain and fight your own.

 

* * *

 

Irony forced ‘Kes’ on us

circa nineteen-eighty-two.

We read it atop coal seams

that Thatcher wanted to trash.

 

* * *

 

 

 

* * *

 

Strong experiential days

could polish a neurosis,

through unfair rites of passage,

and fated random chances.

 

* * *

 

Male reputations could start

via first-impression pranks.

Barney’s cigs and PLANO specs,

uttered, “what’s the path? I’m lost.”

 

* * *

 

Algorithmic assertions

branded boys with their nicknames.

Pete or David was too close,

but girls always skipped that blame.

 

* * *

 

 

 

* * *

 

Lugsy was named for his ears,

Goat for a random moment.

Golborne “Comprehensive” School,

meant everybody mingled.

 

* * *

Spread and standing in classrooms,

like some scenes from x-Factor,

but awaiting Del Monte,

they worked out how first days felt.

 

* * *

 

Do they project rivalry

upon other fledgling minds,

as a “band” might level some,

but for others friendship dies?

 

* * *

 

 

 

* * *

 

Fish’s Cambridge hood and robe

echoed an identity,

and that precious Queens’ College,

continued functionally.

 

* * *

 

Making silk purses from ears

is a flawed societal plan.

False pride in Houses, will fail

to breed capitalist kin.

 

* * *

 

By avoiding forward thoughts

and to not speak of their pasts,

after cigs, mushrooms, and glue,

they wagered “last”, meant the last.

 

* * *

 

 

 

* * *

 

Struggling Dennis and I,

had hoped to live in a car:

a Lamborghini Countach:

quickest Top Trump speed by far.

 

* * *

 

Lowton sandwiched a section

of the East Lancashire Road,

with double domestic strips,

that suggested mindless rotes.

 

* * *

 

Golborne: a seamless neighbour,

had the ill-fated coal mine,

its bonk, “bonk beast”, character;

and Kansas vanished behind.

 

* * *

 

 

 

* * *

 

Children’s earliest fears grow,

with each wrong their teachers shun;

like Faz’s stamped and broke leg,

and that kicked face in the scrum.

 

* * *

 

“No-one said life was easy”.

How unfair that children fear,

of juvenile psychopaths

who taint their future careers?

 

* * *

 

Ofsted’s school regulations

were still years-ahead concepts,

making teaching seem cushy

for mavericks in college.

 

* * *

 

 

 

* * *

 

 These were “Latch key”, Gen X kids

with no structured reporting.

Parents were made outsiders,

by no democratising.

 

* * *

 

I’d never heard of acute

alcoholic poisoning.

The teachers offered freedom,

en route to Rotterdam’s port.

 

* * *

 

I almost died in Belgium,

after my morning whiskies,

but I breathed to hospital,

because God wasn’t done with me.

 

* * *

 

 

 

* * *

A teacher’s ego could snag,

on an unsuspecting kid,

at unreasonable cost,

and some fucking years of it.

 

* * *

Pupils were an unkempt hedge:

random personalities,

and no personality:

damaged and feeling perplexed.

 

* * *

 

Some musical types emerged:

punk, mod, and robot dancer:

only one of the latter,

who became a hairdresser.

 

* * *

 

 

 

* * *

 

In time, false-confident lads

started dating early on,

then grew into football fans,

as everything has a cost.

 

* * *

 

“You get to choose which poison

you’re going to take. That’s it.”

Then there was Lugsy’s bad luck:

crazy but somehow fitting.

 

* * *

 

Golborne Comprehensive School

could spawn mythical stories.

like Lugsy in Leigh canal,

(R.I.P.), dodging coppers.

 

* * *

 

 

“It’s a fine kettle of fish.”