8. Churchill School 'wind ups'

Mr. Cousins who ran Greendale Youth Club also happened to be our science master at Churchill School...mentioning his name has brought to mind an extremely amusing incident concerning the aforementioned Mr. Cousins and white mice...least ways I find it extremely amusing, I'm not sure if anyone else will. I know for a fact Mr. Cousins didn't ...not in the least.

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Mr. Cousins kept a dozen or so male white mice in his science classroom at Churchill School. I don’t know why he kept them. It wasn't as if they got cut up and used in experiments which, for want of a better phrase, ‘would give purpose to their lives'. No, these cosseted white mice lived the life of Larry, cherished by Mr. Cousins who was forever offering them little treats of cheese, corn kernels and peanuts. 

At night they were kept in a large wire cage but as soon as Mr. Cousins arrived in the morning he would open the tiny door and let them out. For the remainder of the day these albino rodents had the free run of the classroom and would wander over desk and chairs like they owned the place. 

One morning Mr. Cousins was called away from the classroom. As he left he instructed us to amuse ourselves ‘quietly’ until he returned. Up to this point he had spent the lesson marking our monthly science test papers which he left strewn all over his desk.

I can’t remember if the idea had suddenly come to us or if it was a plan cooked up earlier, but just as soon as Mr. Cousin left the classroom we swung into action. 

Leaving someone to ‘keep chips’ (look out) at the door, we rounded up the mice and dipped their tiny feet into the ceramic ink wells which were incorporated into our school desks. Although the humble biro was readily available, having been invented years earlier by a certain Hungarian Laszlo Biro, it was prohibited at our school. The powers that be considered it detrimental to good handwriting. Lord only knows how that conclusion was reached  but reached it was. So instead of using a biro like the rest of the world, we at Churchill were subjected to the joys, I’m being sarcastic here, of the pre-historic writing instrument called ‘The Dip Pen’. It was was a complete paradox, an instrument for writing which was totally impossible to write with. If you pressed too hard it produced blotches and if you didn’t press hard enough you ended up with a thin spindly scrawl. In all the years I spent using the ‘prick on a stick’ (the name we called the dip pen) I never mastered it.

Anyway, back to the white mice. Once their feet had been liberally coated with ink we carried them to Mr. Cousins’ desk, which as I mentioned, was covered with our monthly exam papers. There we left them to scurry about to their little heart’s desire. I must say it was incredible just how many tiny ink foot prints those dozen or so white mice managed to produce in the ten minutes before Mr. Cousins returned... absolutely incredible.

Now here’s a funny thing, funny peculiar not funny ha-ha, although we, the pupils, thought the spectre of tiny footprints tracking back and forth over our exam papers was totally hilarious ...verging on side-splitting... Mr. Cousins didn't get the joke at all. He couldn't even raise a smile.

Much of our time at Churchill was spent winding-up teachers...it gave a modicum of relief to an otherwise boring day...and before continuing with the Chequers rise from obscurity I’ll leave you with one further wind-up which I believe went to the extreme limits of what most purveyors of the school wind-up would describe as a wind-up...it verged on psychological abuse. 

The teacher in this particular case, our English master, a Mr. Pearson, who for some obscure reason we nicknamed ‘Pedro’, almost fainted...and as school boy wind-ups go that was pretty hard core.

It all started when someone found, purchased or stole a bottle of Tomato Sauce and decided to bring it into class. It doesn't really matter how or why the bottle of tomato sauce came to be in the class, just that it did. 

Back in those days tomato sauce always came in glass bottles  and was called and labelled tomato sauce. I don’t remembering hearing the word ketchup till much, much later.

Anyway, some bright spark got hold of the bottle of tomato sauce, dribbled a trickle down his nose and pretended to have a nose bleed. This was greeted with much laughter ...fourteen year old boys are easily amused. Not to be outdone another joker filled his eye socket with a large glob of sauce held a pencil to it and ran around screaming someone had poked him in the eye with the pencil. Cue more laughter which was immediately followed by a free-for-all as the rest of us, all with ‘blood based' comedy ideas, fought for the bottle of sauce. It was during this mêlée the ‘glass’ bottle of tomato sauce, deliberately or otherwise... or possibly under its own steam, managed to find its way out the second floor window where gravity took hold and it plummeted to earth, smashing on the tarmac walkway twenty feet below. The walkway looked a bloody mess, literally... with pools of tomato sauce splattered all over the place.

If you thought that concluded tomato sauce related entertainment you’d be wrong. In fact it was about to kick off in earnest. 

Studying the bloody mess on the walkway below, the potential of an epic wind-up was immediately recognized. A volunteer was called for and the call was answered by a kid named Graham. He dashed down and positioned himself all twisted up-like on the tarmac with his head in the largest of the pools of tomato sauce. From our second floor vantage point the scene below looked horrifyingly real.

Suddenly a voice rang out, “What the hell are you all doing by the window. Sit down immediately!” It was Pedro. He had managed to enter the classroom unobserved.

“It’s Graham, sir”.

Teachers at senior schools in Rhodesia in the nineteen sixties were always addressed as “Sir” or “Ma’am” depending on their gender.

“What about Graham?” questioned Pedro.

“He’s a goner, sir”, was the reply.

“Where has he gone?” asked Pedro.

“Out the window, sir”.

“What on earth do you mean out the window?”

“Graham has fallen out the window, sir. He’s a goner!”

Pedro stared at us with a look of world weary contempt, “Don’t be so bloody ridiculous, now sit down!”

“But it’s true, sir!” I tried to sound indignant.

“Don’t give me that, Heather”, replied Pedro. 

Teachers always used the students surname. 

“The window too narrow for anyone to get out of...especially Graham”. I was completely stymied. Pedro was right. Graham was indeed a chubby kid and the window opening was indeed narrow, far too narrow for Graham to climb through.

“That’s what we thought, sir”, came the response from a classmate far more quick-witted than me. “We bet Graham he couldn't climb out the window. He bet he could. Graham won, sir”. 

We were back on track.

I took up the baton and ran with it. “He managed to squeeze out onto the ledge...Then he slipped and fell onto the walkway”.

Another class mate added texture to the story. “He twitched around for a bit, sir...then he stopped moving and he hasn't moved since”.

“Ha-ha, very funny...” said Pedro sarcastically, “Now come on sit down. All of you!”

“We’re not joking, sir. See for yourself. Graham’s a goner”.

With a sigh of exasperation and his familiar phrase, “Give me strength”, Pedro, who always looked like he had the weight of the world on his shoulders, ambled over to the window and peered out. In an instant his facial expression reflected every emotion from scornful contempt through various shades of disbelief, fear, dread and ending with a look of complete and utter horror. Turning a whiter shade of pale, our traumatized English teacher staggered momentarily...like he was going to faint then muttered, “Oh, God”, and sat down. 

What a wind-up, we had almost made Pedro faint. 

As there was no such a thing as ‘high fives’ in those day we just stood around grinning inanely on a job well done.

Actually, apart from ‘high fives’ there’s a whole stack of things blokes do now which we’d never have done in the sixties. For starters there is absolutely no way Sixties Bloke would ever hug another bloke in public.  It just wouldn't happen...unless the hug being administered was a ‘bear hug’ with the intention of rendering the recipient unconscious by squeezing the living daylights out of him. That of course would be regarded as perfectly acceptable. Another no-no for ‘Sixties Bloke’ would be crying in public...it seems that today us members of the 'member' club cry at the drop of a hat. It’s almost a prerequisite to winning anything, a race, a talent contest, a quiz competition, whatever. A guy wins something, anything at all and he cries - and not just the odd tear. No, he breaks down in a flood of tears. Nothing but nothing in the sixties would justify a bloke displaying such emotion.