Nerd Do Well (22 page)

Anyhow, I had all this to come as I stood before the daunting audience of second- and third-years about to deliver my children’s TV routine that had had them rolling in the aisles at Welsh Bicknor. The routine was met with a bemused silence from the audience who regarded me as if I was nuts. The biggest laugh I got was when I panicked and activated my new digital watch so that ‘Scotland the Brave’ rang out from behind my back, signalling it was time for me to leave the stage.

Only slightly disheartened, I stepped out before an even more intimidating audience of fourth- and fifth-year students but luckily found them to be far more appreciative. The social gulf between us was such that I appeared small and cute and eligible for the sort of affectionate patronising that children are so quick to level at their juniors. Their appreciation spurred me on and the performance went really well – I even improvised a little and scored extra laughs. As a result I found an ‘in’ with a group of fourth-year boys for whom I became a sort of humorous pet.

I would find them at their hang-out spot during lunch break and make them laugh with various impressions and silly improvisations. One of them in particular seemed to relish our comic sparring sessions and would set me up and encourage me. He became a friend who I later missed; he seemed to get me, where the others just found me a bit weird and annoying.

The faint disdain I had experienced from the second- and third-years stayed with me for a while. I decided to reinvent myself as a cool, stand-offish type who didn’t get involved in school drama productions and pushed younger kids around in corridors, a decision I eventually regretted on both counts. The annual school production rolled around a few months into my first year at Brockworth and, rather than sign up, I decided to contemptuously dismiss it as the stuff of poofters and girls and hang out with other boys for whom disdain was a badge of honour. Lee Beard didn’t. Lee had finally shaken off his Perthes’ and burst from his calipers like Forrest Gump, becoming one of the most enthusiastic and active boys in the school.

Lee and I had been separated by the house system at Brockworth Comp and didn’t hang out as much as we used to. I had retained Sean Jeffries and a few other boys from Castle Hill in the sorting and made new friends who had come from other schools in the area, like Nick May, who eventually became my best friend after we had both left Brockworth behind, and Darius Pocha, a curiously androgynous, highly intelligent boy who professed to being bisexual and was given to rampant fantasism. Darius and I had bonded over a love of cinema at Welsh Bicknor and it wasn’t until a few years later that I realised he hadn’t seen half the films he had claimed to have seen. He did, however, elaborately reinvent the plot lines of films such as
Mad Max
and
Mad Max
2, piecing together details he had read from various magazines and the back of
VHS
boxes. I seem to recall being suspicious of his knowledge and matching him with a made-up film of my own, which featured a werewolf squashing a human eyeball between finger and thumb. I thought it sounded pretty cool.

In our third year, Darius sombrely informed me that he had a month to live, having swallowed some toxic waste which was slowly poisoning him. It sounds outlandish but I’d actually been with him at the time. We were playing near my home on one of those legendary rope swings that inhabit almost every young boy’s childhood. The rope was originally suspended by some brave soul on a thick branch, ten or so feet above a brook, in an area referred to by the local children as ‘the bunker’. The area was so called because of a large brick structure, with sealed iron doors, engaged in some purpose that remained ever a mystery to us. A thick concrete wall extended from its side, tall enough to step on to from one side, a sheer drop to the brook on the other. The rope hung just within reach where the wall crumbled away down the bank, so that a swinger could launch himself off at speed into a fifty-foot arc, with the option of letting go at three points of differing difficulty. The buzz was particularly keen when the waters of the brook rose and churned with great force after a heavy rainfall, and it was on one such occasion that Darius fell off.

It happened in the sort of slo-mo with which one can so often recall misfortune. It is similar to the acute presence of mind that slows time during the actual event; allowing you to comprehend what is about to happen, to brace for impact, to duck, to reach out. Unfortunately, I was unable to help for two good reasons. Firstly, I was on the opposite bank to Darius so there was simply nothing I could do, and secondly, I was laughing my arse off.

Now, I wouldn’t say Darius was dyspraxic at that age, but he was definitely very gangly. He had that teenage physicality of someone not entirely adept at inhabiting his own shape. As if put in charge of a vehicle he wasn’t qualified to drive, Darius was plainly still getting used to his new, taller, fuller form and did not yet have all the controls down pat. He let go of the rope at the most treacherous point, where only seasoned swingers were able to negotiate the awkward drop on to the small bank. Inevitably, he landed badly and, with an expression of extraordinary concern, toppled into the brook, disappearing beneath the swirling currents. I was spastic with laughter on the other bank; doubled up with helplessness.

I wanted to assist in his rescue, I genuinely did, but I was worried that if I uncrossed my legs I would wet myself. He surfaced almost immediately, gasping for air, and scrambled up on to the bank. Meanwhile, I was still rolling around on the floor in fits of hysterical giggles, my throat hoarse, my vision blurred by tears. It was by far the funniest thing I had seen since Mr Miller fartsploded the table in Class 5, and I felt awful. I actually kicked myself, physically drove one foot into the side of the other leg to try and curb my mirth in the face of Darius’s misfortune.

Later that day, having got Darius dried, dressed in some ill-fitting clothing and sent home, I cried, unable to contain my guilt at finding my friend’s misfortune so funny. I felt genuine and heartfelt remorse and in retrospect could not locate the ‘funny’ in his extreme panic and discomfort. A few weeks later Darius summoned myself and Nick May into the boys’ toilets and delivered the news of his impending death. He told us that the water he had ingested as a result of his fall had contained a number of lethal toxic chemicals that were to be his undoing.

A month passed and Darius remained chipper, and for some reason we never asked why he wasn’t dead. He still remains chipper as far as I know. I’m sure he contracted some sort of parasite or stomach upset, the possible conclusion of which may have been terminal, in the same way that flu or asthma are terminal, but I don’t think his life was ever really in any danger. Given to the occasional Walter Mittyesque tales, I’m pretty sure Darius was just exacting revenge on me for the humiliation he felt in the face of my cackling hysteria, and I don’t blame him. We remained close until I left school. He was excellent company, and a shared love of modern music nourished our friendship through hours of sitting in his bedroom reading
Smash Hits
and playing his Casio VL-Tone keyboard.

He possessed an acute natural intelligence, which informed his undeniable wit and inspired me to try and match him. He wrote the word ‘coitus’ in biro on the wall next to his desk as a sly dig at the crass graffiti that adorned the desks, walls and textbooks, and in a moment of uncharacteristic laddishness had once impressed me no end with this exchange with an attractive female teacher, attempting to shoo us out of the cloak bays.

Attractive Teacher: Can I have you outside please?

Darius: You can have me anywhere you like, Miss.

Crude, I know, but he was thirteen and political correctness was barely even fashionable in the early eighties, let alone common practice. It was the speed at which he processed the comeback that impressed me. Also, and importantly, it was Darius who introduced me to the comic
2000 AD
, for which I will always love him.

So it was that I developed new friendships away from those I had cultivated at junior school, and although Lee Beard and I would end up being friends into our forties, I didn’t see him much that first year. I heard about him though. Lee, being the outgoing and confident young boy that he was, had auditioned for the school play in our first year and won the part of a band conductor, which he apparently performed to much appreciation all round. Lee’s glory pricked at the impulses I had attempted to suppress with my reinvented cool and I resolved to give apathy the heave-ho and audition for the next production. This turned out to be in the inter-house drama competition, which was an annual event, pitting house against house in a one-act-play festival, staged over the course of a school day and adjudicated by a local luminary.

Coopers’ effort that year was a reworking of the Greek myth concerning Telemachus and his search for a family. A third-year boy called Wayne (who eventually became known for being able to execute a particularly difficult break-dancing move called the helicopter) played the eponymous hero. The story revolved around a young man on a quest, trying out various possible families along the way. I played one of the parental suitors, a sort of upper-class military type with a comically plummy voice. The role required me to wear a fake moustache, which I ended up having to hold on with my finger when the spirit gum I had borrowed from my mum’s theatrical make-up kit proved ineffective.

The character got a laugh and I had fun with the role, but when the adjudicator made his comments at the end of the competition, he focused on the failure of my moustache to remain on my face rather than on my efforts as an actor, which was hardly constructive, I mean, come on, tell it to Screen Face
¹²
. Nevertheless, it was a heady time for me, and the thrill of the extra-curricular activity was made all the more intense by the presence of my sixth-form crush, Laura Bot, who as luck would have it was playing my wife.

There was something so exhilarating about hanging out with my fellow pupils in the dining halls, getting ready to perform. The buzz was palpable and the usual barriers that separate the year groups, creating the traditional social hierarchies, were non-existent. Theatrical types often wax lyrical about the familial nature of theatre but there’s definitely something in that hackneyed gush. Even the hard kids who had opted for the drama competition as a skive became approachable, almost affectionate, as we pulled together in the name of our designated local hill. Just to be hanging out with Laura again was reason enough to participate for me. She had vanished back into the impenetrable sixth-form block on our return from Welsh Bicknor and I only saw her now and again, between lessons or during breaks, when sometimes she would blow me heart-stopping kisses or administer sweet-smelling hugs. To her I was the little first-year boy/puppy who offered her limitless adoration and loyalty; to me she was a woman, an exotic goddess to be worshipped and desired. That is, until she did something that shattered my opinion of her forever and gave me a sensation I understood to be something like heartbreak.

After the competition was complete, the entrants were given the opportunity to perform their plays in the evening to an audience of parents. This involved the hugely exciting process of returning to school after hours and hanging out in the brightly lit dining halls, waiting to perform in an atmosphere even more exciting than the competition. This felt like proper grown-up theatre and there was something infinitely thrilling about coming to school in the dark, out of uniform. The play went down well, a feeling of achievement made sweeter by the fact that we had come first in the competition despite my rubbish tash, and as we bundled back into the dining hall after our curtain call, the euphoria was total and my good mood indestructible. That is, until I saw Laura produce a packet of Silk Cut cigarettes from her coat and place one in her mouth. I don’t think I would have felt any less betrayed if I had seen her kissing the headmaster. If anything, that would not have been nearly as bad since I had no illusions about actually having some kind of relationship with Laura; it was a crush. Nevertheless, to see her smoking sent her tumbling from the pedestal I had placed her on and I never felt the same way about her again. I had oddly high standards for a twelve-year-old.

The next production I participated in was
Tom Sawyer
, which further cemented my passion for acting and proved an even more thrilling experience than the house drama contest, not least because of my new crush on Libby ‘Aunt Polly’ Cox. This was a lead role in a large-scale production, staged not in the makeshift studio theatre of the dining hall but in the cavernous interior of the sports hall for three whole nights. It proved to be enormous fun and ended with an unforgettable after-show party at which I drank half a cup of cider and thought I was drunk. The imaginary high gave me the audacity to persuade Libby Cox into giving me a reluctant peck on the cheek, which I regarded as a massive victory. This acting business was just becoming more and more fun.

The following year we staged a revue show instead of the usual dramatic production, due to it being less labour-intensive for the staff who had begun their strike. My contribution to the show was to be part of a robotics display, which I performed with Darius and a boy called Glenn. We painted our faces white and our lips black, wore baseball caps, wrap-around shades and wore our shirts backwards in order to look futuristic. Thinking about it, Darius eschewed the backwards shirt trick and wore an ‘envelope’ shirt he’d bought from a fashionable boutique (he was the only boy I ever knew to own a jumpsuit who wasn’t in the air force).

Glenn chose to be double different and painted his face gold as well as pinning a circuit board to his chest for extra roboticness. Glenn was a late addition to our planned display, having finagled his way into our clique by doing a passable moonwalk in the dining hall. It wasn’t as impressive as the one I had seen a New York street kid do on
John Craven’s Newsround
, but he presented it with such confidence and pride, Darius and I couldn’t really say no. I remember looking at my fellow robotics expert after Glenn had tiptoed backwards on his kung-fu slippers and seeing my ‘What the fuck was that?’ reflected back at me in his eyes.