I Used to Say My Mother Was Shirley Bassey (11 page)

So at the age of thirteen I was thrown into a new secondary school without my trusty partner in crime and it was awful. I wasn't particularly academic and I wasn't sporty either, much to my teachers' confusion. When you're a black kid at an all-white school and you're not sporty, people start to think you must be adopted. I hated all the different games we had to play and I still can't swim properly. When we had swimming classes I used to just walk along the bottom. What can I say? The afro and water are like a jockey's left and right testicle. They're never going to meet.

Without Stella, I was literally the only black kid in class. And so yes, I started to act out, a lot. I think it was the culture shock of coming from a country where you could get beaten with a two by four for looking at the teacher wrong. When you're used to seeing that sort of thing, being threatened with detention or writing lines just doesn't carry so much weight. Suddenly, I could get away with anything and I used to really push my luck. I would always be caught talking in class. I remember one time my English teacher Miss Matthews said, ‘Stephen! Please put your hand up if you want to talk!' and I said, ‘I didn't know we had that kind of relationship, miss.' Yes, a precocious bastard was I. And I used to come up with nicknames for all the kids in the class and the teachers too. Although a joker, I still wasn't popular at all. In fact there were only three people in class less popular than me: Cindy (who I christened ‘Four-eyes'), Aled (‘Potato Head') and Gary (‘Smelly Git'). I wonder why no one liked me?

And then there was Dustin. He was small for his age and he had bad asthma so he was off sick a lot. I didn't tease him because he was one of those people that just managed to fade into the background. Like me, he was unpopular, but, whereas I tried to be the centre of attention, he just wanted to be left alone and, using some kind of instinctive camouflage technique, for the most part, he was. He sat at the back of the class like me and he laughed at all my jokes although we weren't exactly friends.

There was one teacher that really, really hated me. Mr Hackett was his name and he taught maths. He would scream at us until he was literally blue in the face. Plus he had a huge head, way too big for his body, and the reason he really hated me is because I'd given him a nickname that had stuck. With his huge head that regularly turned blue with rage I'd taken to calling him ‘Moon Face'. Dustin particularly liked this nickname I gave him because Mr Hackett was always making fun of Dustin and used to call him ‘Shorty' and ‘Chicken Legs'. That teacher was a bully, pure and simple.

As is always the case, one day I was right in the middle of the classroom making fun of him when he walked into the room. The whole class was looking at me and laughing their heads off as I chanted, ‘Moon Face! Moon Face!' There was a big pillar in the middle of the classroom and I was poking my head from one side to the other ‘Now you see him . . . Whoops! You still do!' I was having a great time when a deathly hush came over the whole room. I should have clocked something was wrong but I kept on going ‘Now you see him . . .' And there he was, right on cue. His big blue moon face screaming at me to sit down. He really let me have it and I was in detention for a week.

From then on, he was a total sadist to me. He'd read out my homework when it was wrong and if he noticed I wasn't paying attention to him (which was often) he'd make me come up to the blackboard to do a sum that was totally beyond me just to humiliate me. And then there was one day he really pulled a number that I'll never forget. When I was a kid I was a sweet addict. I'd load up on Coca-Cola and pop Wham! bars like they were crack cocaine. In break I'd be at the vending machines getting my usual fix and one day I'd drank too much pop and was busting for a pee right in the middle of his lesson. I raised my hand and asked him if I could go to the toilet, but he said no. I was getting really desperate and so I asked him again, but he told me I'd have to wait with an evil little gleam in his eye.

There I was, squirming in my seat, absolutely desperate for the loo and, you guessed it, I couldn't hold it any more. I bolted out of the classroom with ‘Amos! Amos! Get back in your seat!' ringing in my ears.

I didn't quite make it. Five minutes later, I returned to class, panic stricken and rather sheepishly holding a poster for the debating society over my trousers.

‘How dare you! Where have you been? You need permission to leave my classroom. Come to the front of the class!' He pointed at me. ‘I'm going to make things really difficult for you, Amos! You're a troublemaker. I think that's another detention for you. And what's that you've got there?'

‘Nothing, sir.' By this time, I was really sweating, hoping he'd let me just sit down. But he didn't. Right there at the front of the class, he ripped away the poster and there, exposed for all to see, was a wet patch in the front of my trousers.

‘Sir! Sir! Stephen's wet himself,' screamed four-eyed Cindy, and all the kids turned to me and laughed. Today, although I can't really remember their faces and I can't really remember their names, I can sure remember their pointing fingers and their horrible laughter. It was the most humiliating day of my life and I ran straight home.

When my mum saw me she was horrified. Less because of what had happened and more because I'd ruined my uniform. The next day she went marching to the headmaster to complain and Mr Hackett and I became firm enemies. A line had been drawn in the sand and I swore I'd get him back one day.

At the back of our classroom on the side nearest the window was a big supply closet that contained the chalk, the board rubbers, the dictionaries and all the usual stuff that a school needs. It had a lock but the key wasn't very well guarded since no one was going to steal dog-eared old dictionaries. In fact the classroom monitor, who was just another kid, was normally asked to go and fetch stuff for the different classes, so we all knew that the key was kept in the top drawer of the teacher's desk. So, one day, a few weeks later, once the whole pant-wetting incident had blown over, Dustin and I decided to teach Mr Hackett a lesson.

Every morning once the roll was called, the attendance sheet sat on the front desk for the rest of the day so that the teachers could check that all the pupils that had come to school were in all the classes. No teacher wanted a kid to play truant, especially not a monster like Mr Hackett who knew that every student in class would have given anything to get out of an hour of his company. So we made up our minds to have a little bit of fun with him and see if we could get the upper hand for once. Mr Hackett already hated Dustin and me the most in class, so what was the worst that could happen if it all went wrong? In Nigeria that's the kind of question you wouldn't want to think about but this was a different world.

During break time, I sneaked the key to the supply closet from the teacher's desk, unlocked the door and pocketed the key. When the bell rang for maths class, Dustin, who was about a foot shorter than everyone else in class, hid under some coats behind my chair at the back of the classroom. Sure enough, Mr Hackett checked the roll and immediately noticed that Dustin was missing.

‘Where is that Dustin? Who's seen Dustin?'

‘Maybe he's still out in the playground, sir,' said suck-up four-eyed Cindy.

‘That sickly weasel?' Mr Hackett liked to pick on Dustin because he thought that he was weak and easy game. ‘Dustin! You don't want to play games with me!' he shouted at no one in particular and everyone at the same time. His face was already getting that bluish tint.

‘He's hiding in the cupboard, sir!' I shouted out.

‘I bet you think this is very funny, Amos! Well, you'll be laughing out of the other side of your face!' Mr Hackett was already striding as fast as his little legs could carry him to the back of the room, his head wobbling and his mouth revving up for the abuse he was about to dish out.

‘What did I do, sir?' I stood up and held up my hands innocently as he pounded past me.

‘Sit down!' He threw open the door. ‘DUSTIN!'

I ran behind Mr Hackett and pushed as hard as I could on the small of his back and he sprawled into the closet. I slammed the door shut and, although my hands were shaking a bit, I managed to lock it from the outside before he could get up and turn around. I couldn't believe what I'd done.

I turned to the whole class who were staring at me with open mouths and for a split second they could have turned against me. Then Dustin launched out of the coats at the back of the room and hollered. ‘Whoooop whoooop! Yeeeaahhh!' he screamed out and suddenly everyone else joined in. It was like all hell had been let loose in that classroom with the kids dancing around the aisles in between their desks and chucking their pens and papers everywhere.

Mr Hackett was banging on the door and shouting at the top of his lungs from inside the closet and so we just whooped louder and banged our desk lids up and down and all the while Dustin was clutching his stomach with laughter. The louder Mr Hackett banged the louder we shouted and I was strutting around at the front of the class shouting, ‘Moon Face! Moon Face!' at the top of my lungs. It seemed like ages but probably only lasted about five minutes, and I was doing my ‘Now you see him . . . Whoops you still do,' when the head teacher walked in through the classroom door.

‘What's going on in here?' demanded the head to a roomful of ashen-faced and deathly quiet pupils. Suddenly, all we could hear was the banging from the supply closet and the cries of Mr Hackett.

‘Let me out, you little shits! You're going to be in so much trouble now.' The head teacher ran to the back of the room, found the key in the lock where I'd left it, opened the door and Mr Hackett's giant blue face came out of the closet door hyper-ventilating with rage.

All the pupils were in shock, except for Dustin who was still clutching himself with laughter. Mr Hackett couldn't contain himself and, quick as a flash, ran over to Dustin who was now in a heap on the floor. ‘What's so funny? What's so funny, you little shit?' he screeched.

Dustin still didn't get up and he was really clutching himself hard now and going a bit blue himself with the strain of it all. I thought he had better get his giggles under control. Mr Hackett grabbed him from up off the floor by his shoulders and pushed him up against the wall, but Dustin still couldn't catch his breath.

‘I'll show you!' screamed Mr Hackett, but by now we could see something was wrong and Dustin's eyes were popping bloodshot out of his head and he was grabbing at his own throat.

Mr Hackett was still pushing Dustin up against the wall and shouting into his face when the head teacher barged him out of the way. ‘Mr Hackett! Put him down!' Dustin collapsed to the floor still clutching at his chest and throat.

‘He's having an asthma attack!' screamed out Cindy hysterically. Mr Hackett's jaw dropped open.

‘Don't just stand there! Get the nurse!' shouted the head teacher to Cindy, who ran out of the room as quickly as possible.

They had to call an ambulance to the school, and if there's one thing teachers hate more than kids who play truant, it's kids who are dying on their watch. That day the maths class was dismissed early.

I thought I was going to get expelled, shopped to the police straight away or worse, for starting the whole thing. I was terrified of what my parents were going to say and I was really worried about Dustin too. Instead, something weird happened. It turns out that when the life of a pupil is hanging in the balance suddenly that pupil is elevated from being just a sickly kid and becomes an actual human being. I hardly got into any trouble at all once it was clear that Dustin was going to be OK and came back to school. The rest of the kids, who'd been given a little taste of freedom from the tyranny of teachers, were vague about the details of the whole incident in the way that kids can be.

And Mr Hackett, rather than blaming me for the whole thing, focused his time on claiming to be seriously claustrophobic. Pathetically, he tried to explain that he'd suffered a psychotic moment of madness and that's why he'd been manhandling and screaming at a little boy who was about an inch from suffocating.

Mr Hackett got fired from the school within a week. The kids in class were so grateful to Dustin and me for getting rid of the hated maths teacher that they actually started being nice to us and, most importantly, Dustin and I became best friends. We said to each other seriously a few weeks later that if only we'd known beforehand that Mr Hackett was badly claustrophobic, well, we would have played the prank a whole lot sooner.

Weirdly, I saw Mr Hackett again about a decade later in a gay club, waggling his head from side to side and making eyes at anyone who'd look his way. I avoided eye contact. So it looks like that particular incident wasn't the first time that he'd been stuck in a closet after all. Maybe it goes some way towards explaining why he'd been so bad-tempered as a teacher. Hey! The life of a closeted gay maths teacher with claustrophobia can't be easy, but he didn't have to take it out on us.

After coming back to London, my family settled down around Tooting in South London. We still moved houses a lot but basically stayed in the same area, moving a few stops either up or down Zone 3 of the Underground's nefarious Northern Line. Tooting is full of weird and wonderful characters and soon people-watching became my number one pastime. You can't help absorbing things from your surroundings and I may have been born with funny bones, but around where I grew up there were a lot of funny people. Now when I say funny, I don't mean Noël Coward funny or even Jimmy Tarbuck funny – I mean funny like a Grace Jones in her ‘I'm Andy Warhol's muse and like to eat live babies' phase.

There was the mad old lady who lived in a bush, shouting to herself and to passers-by who got too close. Maybe she lived in a bush because she wanted privacy, but it was hard to avoid her because dressed in formless rags and complete with unkempt sticking-out hair she blended into the bush perfectly. You could be wandering happily down the street whistling to yourself without a care in the world when suddenly you'd catch a glimpse of rustling leaves in the corner of your eye and the next thing you knew the bush would start screaming gibberish at you. I could have given Usain Bolt a run for his money on more than one occasion after running into her.