A fun
loving girl of dangerous maturity, Toni didn’t hesitate when Raymond told her
to get on top of me. Getting straddled by the class femme fatale might have
been the stuff of wet dreams but not with Raymond pinning me down.
‘Gerroff!
Gerroff!’
At
Raymond’s prompting, Toni laughed and teased as her hands hovered where they shouldn’t. Twisting and turning failed to dislodge
her and when I felt my zip opening, I panicked and yelped. In the fight to save my honour
I wriggled and bucked in a manner that would have had Mister Potts foaming at
the mouth if he’d witnessed the incident from the school building. Toni
eventually dismounted and though I escaped with my virtue intact, she’d taken
her fun to the limit. Phew!
All classes
took turns at doing assembly. The same old formula, usually, with the same old
faces recruited from the same old volunteers. Like most of the lads in 2A1 I
was happy with the status quo, but Miss
Lake made it clear, when informing
us we were in line for assembly again, that the usual suspects need not apply. She
wanted some new faces. ‘One boy and two girls,’ she said.
The
news might have disappointed Richard Pascall and Eddie Adams, whose combined stage credits
rivalled Morecambe and Wise, but it was discomforting for the rest of us. With
no sand to stick our heads in, we boys stared blankly at the window, the wall
and anything but our teacher.
The
girls were more willing. Of those eligible, Hilary Austin and Valerie Farrow
were quickly chosen, but which boy lucky boy would join them?
‘I’d
like Peter or Gerard,’ said Miss
Lake.
Bloody hell!
‘I’ll
hear you read at dinner time and pick the best. Peter, come and see me at one
o’clock, will you? Gerard, I’ll see you after Peter.’
What
a choker. Nobody saw that coming, least of all me. Things looked grim until I
realised I only had to make a balls of it for Burty to get the job. Suddenly, I
felt much better.
I was
in the playground when Burty appeared around 1:15.
‘Your
turn, she wants you now.’
‘How
did you get on?’
‘Alright.’
So
far so good; now to put my plan into action, I thought, as toddled off to our
classroom.
Oh
dear what a shame. I stumbled and fluffed my lines and made a right mess of it,
leaving Miss Lake with an easy decision. Immediately
after registration, she made an announcement to the class.
‘Gerard
will be doing our assembly with Hilary and Valerie.’
What?! How the bloody hell did
that happen?
One
look at the grinning Burtenshaw told me all I needed to know. The conniving git
must have read like a five year old.
On the telly…
The
BBC screened The Seekers farewell concert. As Mam had it on the telly there was
no getting away from it, but as one familiar song followed another, my
indifference faded. Captivated by the voice of Judith Durham, I settled down to
watch the rest of the show. It touched me to see her presented with a large
bouquet after singing The Carnival is Over and when the show closed with a celebratory
rendition of Georgy Girl, I knew I’d seen something special.
Lots
of people were talking about The Seekers at school next morning. Girls, mostly,
so I kept my mouth shut. Miss
Lake had seen the show
and so had Miss Bridgen, I learned, when we went for our Maths lesson.
I
liked Miss Bridgen but she was way too soft with the likes of Burty and me.
Sitting together at the front of the class, we spent most of the lesson
buggering about and imitating Titch and
Quackers. No wonder I dropped like a stone in Maths.
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