Zero Per Cent
Mark Swallow

Copyright

Published by HarperCollins Children’s Books,

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

Text copyright © Mark Swallow 2002

The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of the work.

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Source ISBN: 9780007126491

Ebook Edition © FEBRUARY 2016 ISBN: 9780007393220

Version: 2016-01-05

Dedication

for Sarah

Contents

Cover Page

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Zero Per Cent

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Acknowledgements

About the Author

About the Publisher

Zero Per Cent

THIS IS THE LAST GCSE EXAM FOR MOST OF YOU – FOR MANY, YOUR LAST EXAM EVER. SO LET’S MAKE IT A SMOOTH ONE, EH? AND LET’S GET THE HATS OFF, SHALL WE? BRAINS NEED CIRCULATING AIR…

Laila says she is going to be waiting for me afterwards. I like thinking of her waiting outside. For me.

So why did I try to put her off? Only made her more interested.

Why?

Because I know our school gates. This is where the hard ones wait, just beyond the civilisation of school – No Sir Land – beyond the dinksy policies on bullying, lunch queue rules and keep-left-in-the-corridors. They are the mothers who will welcome us today, many of them excluded from our year, excluded from our exams. They are so chuffed with their exchange of the acned playground tarmac for the hard lines of the pavement. And they will have brought their friends, kids of much more experience, almost certainly kids of some substance.

As a junior I used to creep past with my mates, thrilling at their palm-held electronics, their leisure wear and their trainers. Their occasional cars higgled and piggled against the kerb, bucking with the bassiest tunes. Their tangle of getaway bikes, small enough to ride through a copper’s legs. I admit to being impressed once but I’d sooner hop over the back fence these days.

At the end of this last GCSE I will leave this school, these peers. I’ll say goodbye to a few, see you later to even fewer, and nothing to most. I won’t bother to diss a peer – just disappear out the back and loop round past the garage to see if Laila really has come for me.

I SAID HATS OFF! AND THERE SHOULD BE NO MOBILES IN THE HALL.

The kids who have tried to keep their caps on are now being told to remove them before we can start. The only progress that’s been made in a generation’s fight against school uniform – and just when they let us off wearing them, we want caps after all.

RIGHT, ARE YOU ALL READY?

Now, are we all ready? The invigilator invites us to start, so let us begin.

The best place to start is on the stairs at home where we used to spend a lot of time sitting. Always the same formation, my little sister on the top one and Tommy on the second, with me down a couple and leaning against the wall. Our legs had habits too. Rosie bunched hers under her chin, Tommy’s were all over the place, never still, while mine pointed down the stairs with the right foot on top of the left trying to line itself up with the bottom of the hand rail. This is how we used to sit – for the clicking of the Christmas photograph, for the looking at ourselves in the mirror above the stairs and for the listening in on the grown-ups.

The photographs are still an easy present for Mum to give lucky friends and relations each year. We used to spend hours finessing our poses in the mirror but our ears were always on the kitchen where we might just be being talked about by Mum and Dad.

Five years ago I was the hot topic. I have been discussed a lot since but it was five years ago, when I was about to leave primary school, that I first picked up some interesting stuff.

My ‘educational destination’ was still undecided. Dad was finally losing what had been a long and cold war to send me to a private school rather than the local comprehensive. Still he refused to believe Mum would not change her mind at some point. She was furious he would not just roll over and accept her passionate belief in the importance of supporting state schools “with our own flesh and blood”. But even she was not as cross as Rosie and Tommy, who had nothing else to listen in on for weeks.

Dad worked very hard in a bank. He still does, in the City of London. Apparently that is the main reason we were able to afford this house, the biggest on Rockenden Road and just in either Hounslow or Isleworth depending on how you look at it. He travels all over the world so doesn’t mind being close to Heathrow. Mum has lived in the area all her life and works as a secretary at the health centre.

And how did I feel? I didn’t like the idea of leaving my mates, who were going to Chevy Oak Comprehensive. But I didn’t like the idea of disappointing Dad either when he had put me up or down or by for a school somewhere else. He kept on about the facilities and class sizes and the paintballing club they ran on Saturday afternoons. Mum seemed to have heard enough of it.

“This is where we live,” I heard from my stair. “It may not be particularly peaceful or lovely, Martin, but we are here in a neighbourhood – yes, neighbourhood – we know and in which we are known. And Jack, as one of our children, lives here too.”

“I am well aware—”

“The hell you are! This is not some computer package or bloody car we’re talking about here. It’s Jack’s education. You can get excited about your heated wing mirrors waggling for you at the push of a button, about your gleaming veneer and your plush velour, but Jack does not need extras. He needs the local school, solid, sane and free.”

“It’s got nothing to do with cars, Polly.”

“What are these posh schools of yours if not shiny cars with tinted windows which purr shut on the smog? You can go paintballing whenever you like but leave Jack here with us.”

“Very funny. A few months from now you’ll be sorry for this, Polly.”

“You want him schooled, Martin, and I want him educated. It’s as simple as that. Heir-conditioning with an aitch! That’s what you’re after.”

Our teacher at Primary was our friend. The floor of our form room was thick with rugs and cushions. The walls were beautifully decorated by all of us. I used to think that’s why they were called primary colours. There were amazing displays by our teacher with her perfect handwriting which I longed to copy completely perfectly. How could anyone (except Razza who has always had Special Needs) hate reading in our Cosy Corner? There was so much friendship in that room we even had loads to spare for the slimy lizards in their tank. There wasn’t even a bell. Instead, at the end of break, a toddler would proudly brandish that sign, ‘Please walk in now showing care and respect to everyone in are school’.

But Dad’s descriptions of secondary classrooms, delivered in chilling detail when he tucked me in at the end of the day, reminded me of Mexican Indian arenas we’d done in comparative civilisation where they played football with prisoners’ heads and volleyball with freshly ripped-out hearts.

On his way back to the office from Moscow, he invited me out to lunch in my last primary school half-term. I went along a little nervously. We sat in the window of a posh place in Richmond and Dad, in a grand mood, ordered caviar.

“I’d like to introduce you to an expensive habit of mine,” he said when it arrived. “Mum doesn’t like it, of course…”

“Caviar – or you eating it?”

“Either, Jack.” He spooned the shiny black stuff on to some fancy toast. “Would you like to try it?” For each go he pouted his lips like a gibbon to make sure he didn’t drop any.

“Eeeerrr! No, thanks, Dad.” I gobbled at my melon.

“Go on!”

The caviar did look quite beautiful, like a load of full stops.

“Naaah, Dad!”

“I won’t offer often, Jack!”

So I craned forward and took a nibble from the toast he held. It tasted sensational. All my buds were up and quivering and demanding more.

“Steady,” said Dad, snaffling the last of it himself. “But, I tell you what – last a couple of years at this comp, establish yourself as a survivor – and then I’ll stop banging on about different sorts of schools.”

“I’ll try, Dad.”

“And if you hate it after two years, we’ll try somewhere else. Either way we’ll celebrate with some more of this black stuff!”

When his phone rang all this rare enjoyment drained from his face. He said he had been “summoned”. I said I’d take the bus, expecting him to tell me I was too young and that he would give me a lift. But he didn’t seem to know I was too young, so I did it. No bother.

My mates Michael, Razza and a few others who had come up to Chevy Oak together were sitting on some steps in the playground, fresh young bums on worn-out bricks, discussing the planes which were even louder and lower here than at Primary. One of Heathrow’s smaller runways was actually visible, its huge grass safety zone separated from our playground by a high wire fence.

Razza started cussing another kid, just having a little laugh, casting around to see who couldn’t take it, eventually suggesting that this boy’s mum had “shagged a camel”. I was wondering why dads never got cussed when Michael stole Razza’s line.

“And the camel died of shame.”

The kid was blasted away by our laughter straight into Mr Ronaldson, our form tutor. He looked at us each in turn and then pointed to some letters engraved on the vertical of the step beside me.

“See what that says, lads?”

I could make out the name ‘Dennis’ and, also, ‘wanks’.

“The longest piece of writing Denny did during his five years here,” Ronaldson went on. “Do you know what he used to do in lessons?”

“No, sir.”

“He used to giggle, Jack. At first the kids laughed with him, but soon they got bored of Denny and began to ignore him. He began giggling louder, every term louder and louder. But do you know what? He left without a single GCSE.” He looked at each of us again. “Remember Denny, won’t you?”

“Yes, sir,” we said and I shifted uncomfortably to cover the name and the verb.

“He’s only me uncle,” said Michael, suddenly.

Ronaldson wasn’t thrown. “Well, you ask him about his time here, Michael. See if he hasn’t got any tips for you.”

“He had a laugh, though,” said Michael. A plane was overhead. “Denny had a good time, he did.”

Ronaldson had moved away but he turned and looked steadily at Michael, who tried to keep chuckling. “Isn’t laughing now, is he, Michael?”

Although I had no plans to giggle my way through the curriculum, I was not so interested in the classroom. I needed to show Dad I could hack the other parts: the corridors, the landings and the playground. I had no fear of being a loser on the Denny scale. But in what way was I going to be a winner? Certainly not by sitting on these steps waiting to be kicked. My parents’ voices were still loud in my head despite the planes.

“He’s a sensitive kid.”

“It’s a sensitive school.”

“We should be exercising our right – our ability – to choose the best school for him.”

“We are. This is the best school, Martin.”

There were groups of older boys before me now, too cool to move. They didn’t even bother trying to impress the girls in their cropped uniforms, skirts rolled up to the hilt, who coped just as coolly with the disappointment. Softer-looking kids hunkered down in corners and took it out on small insects and old birds while groups of little girls promenaded the perimeter, shouting, pouting, spouting.

But this playground was really about boys chasing footballs, knees punching the air violently, feet slapping on the tarmac. There was so much shouting of the one word “Fuck!” in so many different forms and tones that it was almost a one-word language. Most of all, there was so much fucking football.

As another plane came over we saw a massive shot beat a goalkeeper and then whack a tiny Year Seven, the camel-shagger’s son, on the rebound. We could see his soundless shriek but none of us moved. There were so many other games going on that people were being taken out all the time, so many bursts of speed and screeching halts. A boy pulled up his shirt after scoring and did a flip in front of jeering girls. We still had seven minutes to survive and my cherry drink was backing up on me. This was no place to relax but still there seemed no way off the step.

Two more huge people chasing a ball clashed heads right by us.

“Fucking tosser.”

“Fuck, man!”

They squared up to each other but decided they had each kept enough respect so they shoulder-barged each other and parted with a friendly “Fuck you!”

“Fuck that must of hurt,” whispered Razza with admiration, smacking his own head.

“Like fuck.” Michael was lapping it up, and indicated with his head that a fellow new kid was hiding a football under his jacket. With three minutes of break to go he grabbed it off him and they all stood up to try and play in a little space near the steps.

“Come on, Jack, mate!”

Hating fucking football, I stood reluctantly. It was a way off the steps but I felt like a shaky lamb out for the first gambol. When the ball came to me it passed right through my legs and into one of the huddles of seniors. It was lazily scooped up. The last moments of break were bounced away by our ball in huge hands. Then as the buzzer sounded this kid, a stubby ponytail drongo, booted it to the far end of the playground where another brute bicycle-kicked it on the volley way up over the fence into airport territory.

“Cheers, Jack,” said Michael. As if it was his ball anyway. Stacey Timms and her little posse, who’d come up from our Primary at the same time, called me a “prat” in passing. The ball’s owner looked at me miserably. I looked back as the playground emptied. Gulls wheeled down to feast on our litter and I realised I hadn’t eaten the cheesy strings Mum had packed for me. Tears queued in my ducts but somehow I blocked them out.

From here we went into whole school assembly – my first visit to this hall in which I am sitting now – to be addressed by Bumcheeks, the headteacher.

“As you know,” he began after many minutes of staff shushing, “Chevy Oak is one of the most popular schools in the borough and I would like to start this morning – this academic year – by simply congratulating you on being here.”

Older kids back-slapped each other facetiously.

“Our greatly improved set of results last year is still more evidence of a school on the move, a school aiming high, a school marching forward with confidence.”

At which point everyone began stamping in time, which caused Bumcheeks to turn bright red and pause a while.

“There are, it must be said, more of you than ever before. We are jam-packed in here, jam-packed in our very narrow corridors and in the playground even more jam-packed since the marvellous new block has gone up. We cannot reduce your size because, boys and girls, you have a habit of growing like aubergines. From now on, as you will have noticed from the new signs, you will keep left in the corridors and observe the new queuing system at lunch. But the main measure I wish to introduce – from tomorrow – has just been further justified by yet another nasty incident in the playground, a Year Seven boy hit in the face by a—”

The chortling briefly drowned him.

“Listen! Hit in the face by a football. Therefore I have decided on a measure we have long been considering – a ban on full-size footballs in the playground. From tomorrow you will only be allowed to use…”

“Wot?” The need to listen was suddenly urgent.

“I will tell you what just as soon as I get silence…”

“Oh WOT!”

“… only be allowed to use tennis balls.”

The baying began in earnest.

“Nah, nah, nah!”

“You can’t do that, Bumcheeks.”

Chairs bucked noisily.

“Tight, man. That’s dark.”

Aiming high, I looked up to check no sunbeam from an upper window was singling me out for warm favour. Three hours in school and the dreaded football outlawed!

The atmosphere was dangerous for the rest of the day as kids made especially violent use of their footballs before the ban. In a similar spirit of urgent frustration two older boys slammed me up against some lockers so a padlock dug into my back. Then they jabbed something else up into my heart. So much for sunbeams. Was this the “recreational bullying” Dad had told me to watch out for?

“Take this one for example,” said one to the other as if continuing a debate. “There’s a bunch of nasty little stiffs coming into this school. Why’s there not room for footballs? Let me tellya. Because of this.”

“You are in fact a stiff,” said the other who’d nicked our football.

“So neat in his new school uniform.”

“Neat as mumsy fuck.” His pony-tail quivered with anger.

“You want to loosen up a little, mate.” He yanked my tie and then, on second thoughts, tightened it totally. The other stabbed me again – this time right up into the armpit – and then scored me across the forehead with the same weapon.

“Record-keeping’s important. We got so many to get through we don’t want to be repeating ourselfs, innit.”

Michael saw us from the far end of the corridor and shouted to me that he was going to get his Uncle Denny to handle it after school.

“Nah, actually I’ll get him. He’ll come straight up school!” They turned towards Michael on his mobile and must have clocked the genetic link because they swore and dropped me over a fire extinguisher to hurry off in the opposite direction. Michael pulled me out of the corridor and into a classroom where he loosened my tie.

“Is it blood?” I asked, raising my head from my hands, gasping.

“Could be, man. Just in time, eh?” He was triumphant, breathing hard and fast, rabbit-punching the whiteboard and then plunging his face into a bag of crisps he’d ripped apart.

“Thanks for your help, mate.” I was still shaking and dabbing at my wound, which was in fact pink highlighter pen.

“It was nothing. Do you want me to take you somewhere? To Ronaldson? I’d like to tell him what made them run. Teach him to diss our Denny!”

“Nah, I’m fine…” But nor did I want to be left to face these corridors alone.

Dad came in late from Zürich, but there was enough time for him to get furious on my behalf. Tommy and Rosie didn’t even bother to take up their stair positions but I settled with some nervousness.

“Do you see now, Polly?”

“See what?” But she had caught a glimpse.

“Jack can’t cope. They are beasts in that school. They may be part of your blessed community but that hardly makes it better. They will beat up our son because of the way he looks. He is powerless. What can he do?”

“What did you do at your precious public school, Martin? How did you survive?”

“This didn’t happen, if that’s what you mean.”

“I don’t believe you weren’t bullied.”

“Don’t say it like that. I wasn’t terrorised. This Chevy Oak is an aggressive place. His primary school cardboard castles and peppermint creams, they won’t help him now. Football might have done but he seems to play that less and less.”

I shot downstairs and burst in. “I gave it up today!” They barely looked at me.

“So what, Martin? Games aren’t everything.” Mum was plunging her needle in and out of my blazer.

“Football isn’t a game. It’s a vital early form of communication. Before they can really talk, boys kick a ball. And if boy doesn’t kick ball, boy gets himself kicked. It’s body language at its simplest.”

Mum turned on me.

“Why don’t you play?”

Stay strong, Mum, I remember thinking. You don’t have to ask his questions for him. They both looked at me.

“It goes through my legs, especially at this new school. We have to play with tennis balls.”

“Tennis ball football?” cried Dad. “Now I’ve heard it all.”

My first break at Chevy Oak School had broken painfully. The second had to be much, much better. These twenty minutes, I could see, were the day’s key jostle time – preen-time, be-seen-time – even more important than the end of school at the front gate.

It poured with rain lesson three. Bumcheeks came on the loudspeaker to say we could spend break in our classrooms. I was relieved. But the sun mocked me, coming out brilliantly just before the buzzer, and I was soon being urged towards the sopping tarmac by hundreds of kids.

The airport was as busy as usual, executive jets from the side runway taking off directly across the playground. Would Dad actually be able to look down on my antics? The sudden sun warmed me a bit through the reinforced seams of my blazer. Lots of juniors were enjoying the new football rule, and even Michael and Razza were mincing about with tennis balls. Nothing there for me of course. I remained on the step, alone with the voices.

“This is where we live,” I could hear Mum say. “It may not be particularly peaceful or lovely, Martin, but…” I traced her sing-song tone with my finger on the pitted brickwork.

Two of our classmates were taking the opportunity to play mini-tennis with a couple of old racquets. I saw my pony-tailed attacker from yesterday casually interrupt the mini-tennis (“Can I be ball boy, children?”) and walk off with their ball to laugh coldly with his mates.

“He’ll be dragged down…” Dad’s insistence was loud inside my head.

“It’s a perfectly good school with a nice mix of all sorts. There aren’t that many difficult kids. Besides, what do you think he is going to be dragged down into? This is where he lives – he’s in it already. Difficult kids are part of the experience. They lead difficult, realistic lives.”

“And they tend to become very difficult adolescents. Difficult men.”

“All schools produce difficult men – all schools. Jack will learn to cope. He’s got so much going on here. He doesn’t need to go whizzing off. He can learn to whiz here.”

“He’s sensitive. He’ll be bullied.”

“And he won’t be bullied somewhere else?”

“Bullied in the wrong way.”

Suddenly I was standing, with what Razza was to describe later as “summat shining in your eye”. My legs were no longer lamb-like. It was coiled-spring time.

I grabbed a racquet and fired myself towards the older boys. Half a mile away a Lear jet was accelerating at us, forcing its noise towards the playground.

“Where you going?” Michael barked.

Ducking into the group of older boys, I snatched back the tennis ball from the bully and barged out through the other side. The roar of the plane did little to drown out “You little fuck!” and “Shit, back here now!” but I was running, running towards the fence and everyone in the playground was looking at me. I had just seconds before the plane took off and before I would be brought down, pulled off the chicken wire like a convict.

When I fancied I could see the olive in Dad’s Martini, I slid to a stop, swung the racquet and, with champagne timing, crashed the balding sphere into space. As we all watched it go I caught the look of amazement, crinkling into fury, on the pilot’s speeding face. The whites of his eyes lit up for an astonished moment as the ball hit his shiny jet.

“Right between the wheels,” yelled Michael, skidding to my side with a bunch of new admirers. “Wot a shot!”

They grabbed their groins and danced in mock agony, pretending to be nutted jets.

“Aim high!” I shouted. “Forget your fucking football and aim high!”

The sphere returned to planet Earth to be caught by a laughing senior. More and more kids were doing the groin dance now and pecking their heads up into the air. I began to laugh. If I had really, really caught the Lear between the legs, Dad might have felt the tremor too. Had I made him sit up and take note of me already?

Anything seemed possible during this Lucky Break when the kids of Chevy Oak first looked up from their dribbling. Everyone was congratulating me and cussing pony-tail.

“You was shown!”

“Little kid told you, man,” said another. “That was bad!”

He staggered off and I was swamped.

As they hammered my back I smiled. I couldn’t help hearing Dad’s warning.

“In two years’ time Jack will be a basket case, bullied to a jelly.”

“Shut up, Martin.”

Shut up the pair of you! Just let me enjoy it!

“I will shut up – in a minute. Because if my prediction is true – when it becomes true – I as his father demand the right to send Jack, our by now gelatinous and quivering son, to a fee-paying school.”

“After two years he will be even more a part of this area than he is already. He will be two years stronger, Martin. He will have confidence which cannot be bought and no ‘rights’ of yours are going to mess that up…”

No-one was in at home but Ronaldson rang to confirm that I would have an enormous detention on Friday. I accepted.

“It’s not an invitation, Jack.”

“Then you can expect me, sir.”

Next day I felt I should go back into the playground. But what more could I add to my mantra of yesterday, “Aim high”? Of course every cupboard under every stair had been done over, everyone was brandishing a racquet, squash, badminton, anything – and everyone was scouring the airways. Eventually a jet approached. I was going to give the order – the least I could do – but they all fired far too early. Birds were winded but the plane escaped and hundreds of tennis balls landed in airport territory. Security’s Alsatians were soon happily collecting them from the lush grass. More teachers appeared from the school building and they shouted out punishments. I was about the only kid without a racquet.

My jet strike has passed into legend. The day they looked up from their football at the big, wide sky and saw me hit something huge. I was established at Chevy Oak before most of my year group knew the way to the toilets. Jumbo Curling before I had a single pube.

Razza also earned himself a seat at that fashionable first detention. Keen on calling up the emergency services at Primary, he had rung the airport to ask if we could have our balls back – and given his name.

“Detention in your first week, Jack,” said Dad, back from Hong Kong.

“Yup.”

“What did you get it for?”

I explained. He said he did sometimes take a Martini but was never likely to fly in a Lear jet.

“You seem to be making your mark, eh, Jack?”

“Oh Martin, please! Stay out of his education if you’re going to be like that. Imagine what it was like for me dealing with the tutor – and a phone call from the Head.”

“At least you aren’t having to sew him up again, Polly.”

They both ruffled different sides of my head, which was quite big enough for them not to have to mingle fingers. What a good moment, I thought, to put Grandad’s clicker to use. This was the only material object he had handed down after a career on the trains and Dad had passed it straight on to me. I saw a chance to use this device, with which Grandad had counted many thousands of rail travellers during his ticket-collecting days, to provide my banker of a Dad with some statistics, some hard evidence (to back up my permanent grin) of what a good time I was having.

Kids I didn’t even know greeted me at the end of Rockenden Road. I notched up seven clicks on my way into school. Others competed for my attention in the corridors and on the stairs. Everywhere it was “Safe, Jack, safe.”

“Sweet as a nut, Jumbo.”

“You’re a chief!”

“Jack’s lush an’ all!”

Click, click, click.

But how safe did I feel, how sweet was my nut, how lush my chiefiness? The day would show me. The day would show Dad. Statistics.

By break I was up to 157. What with corridor greetings, friendly cussings and happy exchanges during afternoon Maths when a cover teacher tried to control us with her skirt still tucked into her pants, I was pushing 500 clicks by the end of the day. Click, click, click. Safe, Jumbo Jack, safe mate, lush and wicked.

Dad was with us for supper as I explained the study.

“He’s enjoying himself, isn’t he, Martin?”

“Four hundred and ninety two clicks today, Dad.”

“Don’t spread yourself too thinly.” But I could tell he was pretty pleased. “Establish yourself soundly, remember?” he added. “Build up your defences.”

“Listen to the warlord,” Mum laughed.

“Dad’s a chief, Mum.”

“He’s listening to me all right, Polly…” said Dad.

But when I went back in to tell them I’d also found 42 text messages on my mobile, they were getting at each other again.

I now needed a woman. Rather than pick a peer I chose Miss Price, our young French teacher. With a word to one or two key players, I ensured that our first few lessons went well. Even Michael shut up for me.

“Jack Curling,” she said after a fortnight of progress in our mixed ability set, “you are a good man to go into the jungle with.”

“And you are a superb teacher, miss,” I groundlessly confided. “It is such a romantic tongue, la langue Français.”

I fell in love with her, ignored all other subjects and called her “maman” twice by mistake. And, Mum, I’m afraid her perfume was the first I ever noticed.

Meanwhile I decided to investigate other areas of the school, now that I had conquered the playground. Past the chilly pong and wild noises of the toilets I went, past the bins where gulls fought pigeons for the canteen’s old buns, and up past the crazy, clanging music rooms. I was wondering whether there might be opportunities for further self-establishment – in the school library.

It turned out to be a large room full of stiffs and girls clustered at tables or pecking at high walls of shelves with dog-eared signs on: ‘Kwikreads!’, ‘Lotsa Laughs!!’ and ‘Horror!!!’ The main window looked out over the playground and up Jumbo Jack’s Runway beyond. I pressed my nose against the glass. I swung my bag up to the sky. I fucking loved this school.

A throat cleared. I turned to see a small dark-haired man behind the desk.

“In the bag drop, please,” he said from out of a small head with a nose tipped like Concorde.

“Sorry, sir.”

He followed me and my bag to the drop to inform me that he was not a ‘sir’.

“I’m not paid as much as a sir so I don’t see why I should be sirred. I am Mr Schuman, the Librarian.” He stuck out his hand. “And you are?”

Watching your snout, Mister.

“Jack Curling.” We shook. (Don’t touch teachers but Support Staff’s all right.)

“I thought so.”

“You know me?”

A plane went overhead.

“I happened to be looking out of the window that day. A remarkable shot. I’ve been wanting to outlaw aeroplanes for years.”

“Really?”

“Approximately every three minutes I yearn for a ban on the beastly birds.”

“Well, I was lucky.”

“I imagine you suffered.”

“What?”

“They went for you, I suppose.”

“Yes, but only after I had made my point, Mr Schuman.”

He looked at me and smiled.

“Welcome to the library anyway. Do you, by any extraordinary chance, like reading?”

“Not much.”

“Something?”

“Adventure?” I hazarded.

He looked disappointed but showed me to the relevant shelf. Much more to my interest was the number of teachers who entered the library, nodded at Schuman and then disappeared into a side room. This struck me as intriguing. I sidled over and Schuman followed.

“They’ve put me in charge of reprographics as well.”

“What’s that?”

He threw open the door to reveal a teacher about to kick the side of a large photocopier.

“Of course they don’t pay me any extra. I don’t complain because I haven’t a clue how it works – any more than he has!”

I wasn’t sure yet how I would make use of the library but I liked what I’d seen already. The buzzer sounded. Another jumbo wheeled off left as I headed to the next lesson.

Others flourished in different spheres. Michael scored an early success when the Music teacher gave him an hour, for gobbing into Razza’s cornet during ‘orchestra’.

“A hour? A hour? You can’t do that!”

“I can,” he said, uneasy with the challenge.

“Not without twenty-four hours’ notice you can’t. What if I’m not home when I’m expected? Eh?”

Michael has always been good on his rights and others’ wrongs.

“Your mother will be relieved.”

This teacher couldn’t even do sarcasm.

“Nah, nah, nah, that ain’t funny. You can’t do it, mister. Twenty minutes, innit, twenty minutes max or Denny’ll come and explain matters t’ya.”

There were other coups. Stacey Timms claimed to have done it in the toilets with a Year Nine protected by a salt and vinegar crisp bag. Razza, the son of the caretaker, told a teacher to kiss his arse. Clearly I was needed to raise the tone.

The following week the school secretary came to pull me out of a lively Music lesson.

“Sorry to, er, interrupt – but could I borrow Jack for a moment? There’s a visitor for him.”

I didn’t know what model I had demanded: anything so long as she was drop-head gorgeous and red. I wasn’t disappointed and, if my man was, he didn’t show it.

“Don’t worry, sir. You did write a remarkably good letter. Fooled us fair and square. This is the least we can do – and perhaps in a few years’ time our indulgence will pay off in terms of brand loyalty. The horn is in the usual place. One blast should do the trick.”

I climbed inside to hit the horn, which made such a very horny sound that the music-room windows filled with kids – and other windows too. After smearing the mahogany veneer with my sticky fingers, I got slowly back out, pacing around her and leaning into gales of envy. I shot a few questions at the man, cocking my head in interest at his replies. I took the odd note in my homework diary before languidly checking my phone for messages: too many to cope with now. Might have to get a school secretary myself.

I eased back inside and, to grateful cheers, sent the roof up and back, retracting sexily into its slot. I nodded to the school’s façade which now included a lifelike bust of Bumcheeks. The bust sprouted a quick finger and bellowed, “My study, now!”

“I have meant to make your acquaintance earlier, young man. Of course I have spoken to your mother once or twice. I spent a good deal of time at the start of the year apologising for you to the airport authority and now I dare say a car manufacturer will be in touch. This is not going to become a craze, do you understand?”

“Yes sir.” I knew Razza had written to a Chinese company about a clever-looking military vehicle which could fire bridges across raging rivers.

“And I think you would do well from now on to restrict your activities to the school. Stop getting muddled up with the outside world.”

“You mean lower my horizons, sir? I have always tried to aim high…”

“I mean, Jack Curling, focus your energies where they count, which is in the classroom.”

Before taking this advice, I couldn’t resist writing to the photocopier company and getting a manual which I learnt off by heart. Schuman was much impressed by my enlarging, my stapling and my shrinking. He gave me increasing access to what I now saw as key school power node.

“I’ve never really understood any of the buttons but you seem to realise it has been underachieving,” he moaned. “Like so much round here…”

There were delicious dividends. Teachers, stressed and confused, so often left behind on the glass what they had been copying. Salary statements, pages of their own boring stories, an invitation to a taster bell-ringing evening in Feltham. Nothing, however, on Miss Price, whom I was looking forward to introducing to Mum and Dad at parents’ evening.

The atmosphere was good. The teachers looked a bit knackered but the really mad kids never come to these dos, their madder folks refusing to be bollocked by smarmy young graduates – so there was little for anyone to worry about on such a beautiful sunny evening.

I had left Miss Price to last on the bookings sheet. I told Mum even as I saw the Science teacher setting out his table that he had said he was unable to make it.

“Family matters, I think.”

This avoided a difficult meeting for me and gave Dad the chance to moan about the school (“We’ve come all this way and he can’t be bothered to stay. Think of the holidays they all get…”) which improved his mood. History, Maths, English and ICT passed OK except Mum thought the English teacher was a bit snobby.

“Always were,” said Dad.

Bumcheeks breezed by and greeted us civilly which did no harm. Ronaldson let me down a little by saying I wasn’t trying hard enough and called me a “great asset”, which sounded rude. Miss Price alone remained, in the still sunny Modern Languages room.

“Hello, miss,” I beamed at her, eagerly pulling up a chair and letting Mum and Dad find their own. “How are you?”

“Fine, thank you, Jack. Hello, Mr Curling, Mrs Curling.” She’d done her research and knew there were no carers, guardians or steps for me.

“Really, I have nothing but praise for Jack. He has been a wonderful student all year and he has improved a great deal.”

“In what way, Miss Price? Can you give us some specifics?”

She looked at Dad and entered into some curriculum detail and the way I’d been handling it.

“… Furthermore he has also been a tremendous help to other less talented students in class, especially in group work. He’s even helped with some of their homework.”

“I can’t see what good can come of that,” sniffed Dad. “That was called plain cheating in my day.”

But he and I both knew Mum would love it. She squeezed my shoulder.

“It’s really nice to hear about you helping – poor Michael, was it?”

I remembered my cheeky little comments in his margins, ‘Bon soir, Madame, je suis partout!’ and ‘Ici aussi!’ and I beamed too.

On the way to the car, Dad put his arm lightly round me and said, “Well, they seem to like you, Jack.”

“Yeah, it’s all right there, isn’t it, Dad?”

“Your tutor is a funny looking man though.”

“Oh I do like Mr Ronaldson!” chimed Mum. “He’s got such a nice way with you all. And he really does care.”

“Yes, Mum, I suppose he does.”

“Oh definitely, Jack. You are lucky to have him.”

I asked her quietly the meaning of ‘asset’ and she didn’t hear.

“No, Martin, we’ll walk thank you.”

“I came across a stall trying to sell the Business Studies department, Jack,” said Dad as he unlocked the car. “Very enthusiastic teacher actually. You might like to find out some more about that…”

“Jack seems to be doing the business anyway, don’t you think, Martin?” Mum hugged me and laughed. Suddenly I wished I were alone with Dad again, eating caviar and hearing about how he really thought I was doing on the survival front.

He drove home, and Mum and I meandered back past the familiar premises of Nobbi, our neighbourhood greengrocer, who was just throwing down his metal casements.

“How’s it going, with big school?” he called.

“Fine thanks, Nob.”

“One to be proud of, eh, Mrs C?”

Mum laughed and patted my head.

“I really am proud of you,” she said as we walked on. “You’ve settled in so brilliantly. Even Dad has to admit it.”

“Do you think he does? Thanks. Did you like Miss Price?”

“Well she certainly seems to like you.”

“Do you think so?”

“Nice girl. Horrid perfume though.”

It sometimes seemed to me that the school tried to lay on events to distract us from our work. How else can you interpret the arrival of student teachers? Certainly it is open season if you’re lucky enough to get one. Which we were – in place of the History teacher. Clean-cut and youthful, Mr Carew was very friendly. So we took the piss immediately.

“How long are you with us, Mr Caroooo?” I felt obliged to open the hostilities.

“Oh, for a good long while. You must think of me as your permanent teacher now, Jake.”

“It’s Jack actually.”

“Sorry.”

“That’s all right, Mr Caroooo, but don’t you return to the institute soon – for feedback? Stress counselling?”

“What? Look, why don’t you just get on with the task?”

“Only if you tell us your Aims for the lesson.”

“My aims?”

“And afterwards your Objectives. They should be written in your lesson plan.”

“You cheeky little—”

“In fact, Mr Caroooo, I wouldn’t half mind seeing your entire Scheme of Work. Michael’s Uncle Denny takes a lively interest in modern approaches to the subject, when he’s not pumping iron down at the gym…”

This got reported to Bumcheeks, who gave me a two-hour though he could hardly deny I’d been concentrating my energies in the classroom – and specifically on the teacher.

The next few History lessons went better – from Carew’s point of view – largely because the Head himself was ‘observing’. Nevertheless, Razza couldn’t resist again asking our trainee when he was going to let our ‘proper’ teacher back in and soon there was a general chorus of “How do you do, Mr Caroooo?” going down.

In the photocopy room one lunchtime Miss Price said Mr Carew was having a tough time with some of his classes.

“Does he teach you, Jack?”

“Er…”

“Well, if you do come across him just be helpful – as I know you can be.”

“How do you mean?”

“It’s a bit of a jungle, as we know. And his supervisor’s in next week.”

“Leave it with me, miss,” I said, flattered to have her go so unprofessional on me. “We’ll get Mr Carew through.”

Just for yoooou.

But here I made two fatal underestimations: of my classmates’ malice and of Carew’s teaching skills. For the lesson in question, with the geezer from the institute stroking his clipboard at the back of the room, Carew made a pig of a choice. Of course he had worked it down to the last minute. I could see the spindly writing of his lesson plan had dedicated the eleventh and the twelfth minute after ten to ‘greeting pupils and settling them’. He did the first and I just about managed the second though Michael, it so happened, was out for blood today.

“Fuck off, Jack,” he said, as I tried to hush him. When I gestured to the back of the class he elaborately turned in his chair and whistled salaciously at the grey-haired suit already scribbling on to his clipboard. We wet ourselves. Had to.

“Right, everyone,” Mr Carew started, “today we’ve got a lot to get through so I just want to explain a few things and then we’ll, er, get right into the fun stuff. OK?”

“We know you, Mr Caroooo!” had started up, though it mutated around Michael’s area into, “We’ll have you, Mr Caroooo!”

I had to break the destructive cycle – for Miss Price’s sake.

“Sir?”

“Yes, what is it, Jack?” He was wary.

“Can I just say something before the, er, fun stuff?”

“As long as it’s relevant. And quick.” He looked at his watch and I realised I was eating into his three minutes’ introduction so I just blurted it out.

“Can I just say I’ve never really seen the point of History…”

“What?”

“Up till now, I mean. Until you started taking us. You make it come alive. I think a lot of us feel the same way…”

I was just trying to help. But this was not the way to do it. Mr Carew smiled with gratitude for about a second but then the peers started burrowing noses into imaginary holes and making powerful sucking noises which darkened his brow.

“Let’s talk about your love for the subject after the lesson, shall we?” He then revealed his absurd plans for cutting out statements about Napoleon’s life, discarding the false ones and ordering the trues chronologically. On sugar paper, if you please. With scissors. And glue.

I tried to cheat the historical inevitability of Mr Carew turning to another profession. I still ask for forgiveness from time to time. Mr Caroooo, I did try but you were one of my failures, a campaign too far.

He was everywhere – and nowhere – that lesson. I still like Napoleon and firmly believe we should have buried him as he fancied in Westminster Abbey. He taught us a thing or two. Mr Carew, however, didn’t. And when, towards the end of that deciding battle he set about retrieving the weapons, seven pairs of scissors and seven glue sticks, he only got six scissors – and no glues.

“Come on, can we have the rest of the gear in? Quickly, shall we?”

Nothing more came forth. So Mr Carew panicked and shouted at us more desperately.

“Right! Open your bags! Come on! Everyone! Now! Open them!”

He moved through the desks, abusing our privacy with the bag search. Caroooo, Caroooo, now nothing can save you! Even quite harmless punters glared at him as he approached their bags with his rummaging adult touch. We don’t touch you, you don’t touch us. Or our bags. Ever.

“Don’t come any closer,” said Michael, his voice rich with warning.

“Come on then. Let’s see what you’ve got in there, Michael.”

Michael drew out his mobile and put it slowly on the desk.

“What else have you got? Come on…”

Another mobile. Laughter. And another and another. More and more, louder laughter. Michael stared at him as he put each one down on the desk.

“All right, all right, that’s enough. I won’t ask you how you come to have these in your bag.” But Michael, still staring, pulled out another three to massive approval.

“Stop it, stop it! What about the glue?”

Mr Carew backed away in despair. I raised my eyes to the ceiling where I knew they’d have been fired and his sad eyes came with me. There, that’s what you get for your practical History, seven stalactiting glue sticks.

The buzzer began and everyone had charged out of the door before the final clang.

“Carooo, Carooo, you’re through, you’re through!”

Mr Carew’s head was in his hands so he didn’t see Razza toss the missing pair of scissors into the bin and he didn’t see me shrug helplessly at his supervisor who was drawing a line across his clipboard, through Mr Carew.

So, now I had conquered the playground and the photocopier. The corridors held no fears and I could handle most things in a classroom, excepting incompetent student teachers. Furthermore I had an ongoing relationship with a qualified teacher. But I wasn’t finished yet. I wanted to learn more about the staffroom. Razza’s account of trying to get into this sacred space in order to find a teacher during break had made a great impression on us all.

“They just screamed they did, screamed at me to get outside.”

“Who did?” we asked.

“Loads, all going ‘Get out!’. I felt like I was blasted back into the corridor.”

“What d’ya do?” we went.

“Course I wasn’t having that, specially being as my dad’s caretaker, I mean site supervisor, and they never made him feel all right in there neither. So once I’d recovered me senses I goes right back in.”

“And…?”

“That Physics teacher only body-checked me! I swear he did. An’ he’s built, man. He goes, ‘You are never, ever, allowed to come in here. Do you follow?’”

“Didja?” we went.

“I went, ‘I follow. I hear what you say. But it ain’t right. Sir.’”

“What did he go?”

“Slammed the door in me face, didn’t he!”

“Didja tell your dad?”

“Course. But he jus’ went, ‘Wot you want to went in there for? There’s nothing for you in there my son. Nothing for me an’ all,’ he went.”

“But didja get a look in?” we went. “What were they doing in there, the teachers?”

“Sittin’, talkin’ and with Ms Grundle’s buns and cakes bulging down their necks. Mainly they was jus’ feastin’.”

“So what if you have to see one of them in break?”

“Wait outside The Door, innit,” said Razza. “Catch ‘em on the way in or out.”

“Or wait and wait,” we went, “and wait and wait and wait, more likely.”

“Innit,” went Razza. “They ain’t in any hurry to serve ya. They’ve got easy chairs in there an’ all.”

“Bastards.” In this school, chairs upholstered in anything more than plywood, gob and gum have always been exciting.

“The bastards!” we chorused again. Clearly I had to get in there. Yes, Jack Curling had to do something about the staffroom.

I was leaving for home one afternoon as Miss Price drove out of the gates in her ashtray of a car. Perhaps she could help me with this campaign, I thought, preparing myself to wave and smile with my best side. But there in the passenger seat was Mr Carew, pale-faced, with eyes red and, I noticed, staring straight at me.

“That’s him! That’s the kid!”

I didn’t need to lip-read the words which spattered against the grey interior. The car swerved and I hopped into the border as Miss Price stopped and opened her window.

“Jack?” She looked at her passenger – whose hand she was holding. “Is this really the boy?” She turned her clear, fresh complexion on me again. “I can’t believe you’re responsible for this. If only you could understand what it is you have done—”

“But, miss—”

“Why do you find it hard to believe?” Mr Carew was snarling. “He’s just another fucking teenager.”

“Calm down, sweetheart! One day this youngster will be ashamed of himself, one day Jack’ll have to take responsibility for this. And to think I once asked for your help, Jack!”

“Please, miss, listen won’t you?”

But the window scratched shut and they bumped out into the road, leaving me as crushed as the pansies I was standing on.

Next term’s new idea from Bumcheeks, to which he dedicated a lengthy assembly, was Culinary Studies. Equal opportunities for the boys, while the girls go to do ‘Motor Vehicle’. He had appointed Mrs Sally Donald, and us lads were soon offering up sincere thanks that her restaurant career had veered in our humble direction. For me personally she filled the gap created by the news (surprise, surprise) that there was now a Mrs Carew. But more than that, Mrs Donald (who insisted on us calling her Sal) won us over with her brilliant lessons. We sat like so many rows of fresh fairy cakes longing for her smiles, which she sprinkled across us in hundreds and thousands. And all because she had cottoned on to a new educational idea that us boys like to be praised.

The Culinary Studies suite was like a busy restaurant kitchen. We were her apprentices and she would threaten one moment to slice us up with her knives and next kiss her fingers in our face, all but hugging us before popping out for a fag on her window ledge. She was not good at hanging on to her cigarettes which kids tended to nick by the bushel from her bulging bag but it was seen to that she never lost her purse or mobile. Bumcheeks was always dropping in on the ‘new subject’.

“We can’t have you doing nothing in my lessons, honoured Head,” she’d say, and before he knew it his bumcheeks would be framed in a little apron and he’d be beating the guts out of an egg.

Ms Grundle, the school catering manager, was a less amused but no less frequent visitor, huffing in to retrieve pans and ladles which Sal had taken from the canteen. It seemed that “Lady Disgruntle”, as Sal called her to her face, was an even more embittered member of the support staff than Mr Schuman or Razza’s dad.

One morning Sal praised my rock cakes and drew the class’s attention to my tray. “They’re not perfect, Jack, but they’re pretty perfect.” She munched into a second, her crumbed and glossy lips confiding that I’d ruin her with such baking.

“Why don’t you get a bit of praise in other subjects too?” said Ronaldson when I told him. “French, for example. It used to be your best subject. Mrs Carew has complained about you twice this week already…”

But I couldn’t give a monkey’s now about silly little Mrs Carew. Very next day I got a commendation for rapid progress on carrot cake. Undiluted praise was much better than a boring relationship which had not been going anywhere.

And a few weeks later Sal summoned me to a lunchtime meeting in the Culinary Studies suite. None of the peers was called. Was it to be a one-to-one souffle tutorial? But Mr Finch, Head of Business Studies, was perched on a stool in his grey and brown mail-order clothes, prodding a drop scone.

Sal beamed at me, dusted flour from her chest where it always seemed to gather, and outlined her scheme for me to go commercial with my heavy finger food.

“You want me to sell, miss? In break?” I settled on a stool.

“Certainly do, Jack. Carrot cake, soda bread, cheesy puffs. The rock cakes, of course. And this morning’s drop scones are… mmm, sensational.”

“I’ll second that,” said Finch. “Do you do a sausage roll?”

“But, miss, you may not realise that selling’s been banned.”

And so it had, ever since kids had arrived in school swollen twice normal size because there were crisp-running profits to be had. Michael and Razza had gone further than anyone else and had managed to make a buck recycling gum. (They chipped it off the bottom of desks and melted it down in Michael’s mum’s best saucepan with a couple of bags of caster. Then they rolled it on silver foil and cut it peppermint cream style.)

“But this will be an officially sanctioned project,” said Sal gleefully. “School inspectors love this stuff and so does the Head.”

“Projects with a Business Studies dimension,” chimed Finch.

“I see… Where do you want me to do it?”

“Playground, of course!”

“I’ve retired from the playground, miss.” I got to my feet. “It holds nothing for me these days.”

“OK. So what about the corridors?”

“Corridors are for fighting and bullying, miss.”

“Where else is there, Jack?”

“Library?”

“Crumbs in Mr Schuman’s bindings? Forget it.”

“So that only leaves one place,” I said with a grin, easing back on to the stool. “A place where the project will get a lot of exposure…a place where Lady Disgruntle already sets up every break…”

Sal put a hand on her hip and smiled with dawning awareness.

“Beyond The Dooooor…” I teased.

And they were there.

“The staffroom!” we barked together.

“What about the competition?” asked Finch, suddenly rubbing his beige knee.

“Lady Disgruntle will be swept aside!” cried Sal. “The Head is hot for Culinary Studies right now! It got him a mention in the Times Ed.”

“This really should work. Pure competition. And rampant demand. We’re gannets at break,” said Finch.

Sal handed round the plate.

“To GCSE status for Culinary Studies!” she said, toasting the plan.

“To Business Studies in, er, action,” said Finch.

“To the staffroom,” I cried and we each whoomphed a drop scone.

On the agreed day Sal came to collect me from Maths before break. We were carrying my tray of wares downstairs when the Head met us.

“Feed ‘em up, Jack,” he said, chivvying off.

The buzzer had still not gone by the time Sal squeezed my shoulder and I moved Beyond The Door.

There, straight away, was Ms Grundle, all mouth, opening and closing like an old cod as she prepared her tray at the far end of the room.

Hungry teachers shoved through The Door and formed a slavering queue in front of Ms Grundle whose own mouth now simpered moist greetings as she poured the tea.

I was too fascinated by this secret world to feel ignored. I can report that Beyond The Door there is laughter, joking, cussing even; the grumpy ones remain grumpy even there, the whingers whinge and the good ones are good in there too. It is, fundamentally, a human environment.

I had a view of the notice board: Mrs Carew’s pretty ‘Thank you’ notelet to staff (‘for the really special CD rack’); Nadir Sharma had had a knock on the head and would probably have ‘trouble with even the simplest instructions’; a little poster for a staff stress-busting volleyball game on Friday next to celebrate ‘making it this far through the term’. I saw another teacher staring at what I realised was a large bank of form photos. He suddenly yelped with joy having matched a picture to a class list.

“Gotcha! I’ll teach you to give me a fake name, you pathetic waste of space.”

These photographs, I happened to know, were also for handing to the newspapers when we got murdered.

Meanwhile all the teachers fell on Ms Grundle’s stodge and minced it up in their chattering gobs with great gulps of her stewed tea. I didn’t notice at first but Finch was trying to open my trading. I sold him a drop scone but he was never going to start a consumer trend. Sal’s entrance and noisy enjoyment of my carrot cake, however, did the trick. Those at the back of Ms Grundle’s queue came over immediately and the sudden surge of latecomers meant I was soon sold out with about nine quid in my pocket.

The staff herded out with the buzzer, followed soon after by Ms Grundle who ran her trolley over my foot.

“The door,” she said, without looking up from her crumby plates and greasy doilies.

“Allow me!”

In the canteen at lunch the dinner ladies had clearly been told to spatter me. I stared one of them in the eye to show I knew whose orders she was obeying.

“It shows how frightened she is already,” said Sal when the three of us met later for banking. “How do you think her Ladyship’s going to react to these tomorrow?” She pulled a tray of beautiful sausage rolls from an oven.

“But…”

“We’ll pass them off as yours,” she laughed.

“Excellent,” said Finch. “And this is for raising brand awareness…” He presented me with a word-processed sign to hang around my neck.

CURLING’S CAKES A BUSINESS STUDIES AND CULINARY STUDIES JOINT VENTURE

“I had it laminated,” he added. “Wipeclean – in case the marketplace gets nasty.”

Unfortunately Mrs Carew was not quite secure enough in herself to buy from me but almost everyone else did over the next few breaks. Ms Grundle’s rage was not the only thing to grow: Finch plotted a sales graph which looked like a cheerful erection, my share of the profit clearing £70. Another mention in the Times Ed and the Head was all over his ‘joint venturers’.

Events moved fast. They do in business. Finch made a plan for heavy finger food at the next parents’ evening. Sal was expanding the frontiers of canape science and each day my wares grew more exotic: strips of rarebit, the mini-pizzas, angels on horseback negotiating perfect fairy toast jumps. Since she no longer required my cooking skills, I had more time for informal seminars with insatiable mates on life Beyond The Door.

Then, just as suddenly, came Lady Disgruntle’s response. She dug out her grease-spattered union membership, made a few urgent calls and was able to dangle the threat of action in front of Bumcheeks who promptly buckled and terminated the project. The thought of her leading her dinner ladies from the canteen to his office was too much.

We wound the business up but, two days later, I literally tripped over the means to our revenge. I saw my old mate Nobbi, the greengrocer, raise his hands just as my foot squished a rotten avocado. I skidded and fell sideways into a pile of fruit boxes, part filled with other dying fruits. Nobbi cackled as he pulled me up out of it.

“Scholars! You want to take your head out the clouds, mate!”

His stall had always struck me as magnificent and at Primary I must have painted more greengrocers than aeroplanes. But now I was staring at it with new fascination, particularly at a plump and weighty fruit I’d never seen before.

“What are these, Nobbi?”

“Canadian cherries – and there’s a bastard blackbird sits on the gutter over there and knows just how much they cost. He swoops at ‘em…”

“Not the cherries. These.”

“Mangoes, Jack. Never seen them before? Jet-fresh, these, from Mother India.”

He whipped out a knife, slit it down the middle and rapidly criss-crossed the flesh. The first brilliant cube made me grin. This was up there with caviar. I wanted more, now.

“Go man, go!” Nob removed the flat stone and prepared the other half.

“How much are they?”

“To you, 40p. You wouldn’t get a can and a frigging choccy bar from him next door for that, Jack.”

I subtracted four tens from my dinner money. He grabbed a handful of cherries and stuffed them in with my mango, swinging the paper bag round and round till it had mouse ears.

“Prefer you to have them than that bleeder.” He stuffed the treasures deep into my bag and we stared at the beady bird who got embarrassed and crossed to a distant satellite dish.

My love affair with fresh produce had begun and I quickly established myself as the first and most significant fruit-and-vegetarian in the history of Chevy Oak School.

By the end of the week I had an arrangement with Nobbi. I helped him set up for an hour each morning in exchange for as much produce as I could carry. It beat the paper round and provisioned me for a day of steady consumption at school.

“What’s that you got there, Jack?”

At first they took the piss.

“Apple of course.”

“A apple? What for?” They’d proudly show their tongues cradling sweets and yank their digits to spurt their cans. But long after they’d finished the day’s quota, when their gum too was unbearably tasteless, there was I still eating! With their pretty chocolate bars a sticky memory, the fizzy drinks an ugly fur on their tongues, I simply plucked out another brown bag. Radishes, Antiguan tangerines, Frisbee mushrooms and Congolese bananas. I wasn’t darkening Ms Grundle’s canteen doors – and I felt great.

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