New bod

[liv]

Oh look chaps, there's a new bod in the Remove. Who's game to go and rag him?

Comments

Gaah?

[compilerbitch.livejournal.com]

Having been to a scary run-down comprehensive in North East England, I'm afraid I didn't get that at all.

We did have forms, though. I was in form G. As were about 30 other people, at least two of whom have since spent time at Her Majesty's pleasure for armed robbery. Another died from the effects of glue sniffing one fine summer's afternoon.

Ragging wasn't a term that was used. The people responsible for equivalent (though perhaps significantly more brutal) actions didn't really use terms like 'rag'. It would require a whole syllable, you see, when simply hitting someone wouldn't even require that much effort.

I don't know the significance of the 'Remove' form. I'd assume it means the class made up from the dodgy leftovers who aren't allowed in with the normal sane school body? If so, my school didn't do that kind of thing. Apart from their 1970s socialist ideals getting in the way of anything so non-egalitarian, they would probably have found it easier to create a Remove comprising the tiny percentage of functional individuals. Ok, maybe that's a jaded view. A lot of people I never thought would get anywhere did make it to university, and did go on to relatively interesting careers. As far as I know I'm the only one who made it to Oxbridge (albeit somewhat through the back door, twice) -- such an outcome would have frankly been beyond the imagining of my teachers.

My school did do some things well. It had amazingly good science and engineering facilities, having been heavily subsidised by the local chemical works at its construction. In Billingham, you didn't grow up to be a lawyer, doctor, astronaut, international tennis player or porn star. You grew up to be a Huxleyesque gamma or delta, destined to toil away making chemicals for a living. 'Imperial Chemical Industries'. As a child, this sounded amazing -- redolent of the Empire. Where gunboats might occasionally fail to subdue the fuzzywuzzies, we could always send our local produce and just DISSOLVE THE BASTARDS!

Most of the plant just made fertiliser, which isn't quite so impressive sounding. A bit of it made plastics, though. One day in 1977, during the hot summer that allowed me to be sent to the headmaster for kneading all the classroom's crayons into a single misshapen colourful ball, I had excused myself from class and was sitting on the loo. There was an enormous bang (not, I might add, of my own making), followed by an extended roar. Later I discovered that Olefin 8, a substantially large conglomeration of pipework and reactor vessels, had ruptured a hydrogen pipeline, exploded and razed itself to the ground.

House prices went down a bit, as I remember.

Some time later, during Mrs T's tenure as Dictator-in-Chief of our great country, government policy dictated that all that nasty radioactive stuff that was being produced on the opposite coast at Windscale needed a longer term home. About 400 feet directly below my house. Property prices literally hit zero, if not negative figures.

I found an old photograph at the weekend of Richard Mason, one of my school friends. His mother (I'm afraid I don't remember her name) was big in Billingham Against Nuclear Dumping. BAND. Lots of press happened. Our obscure north east chemical town was suddenly national news. Greenpeace supported us!

Protest movements historically have little power, and rarely result in direct change. I doubt our experience would have differed from the norm, was it not for ICI (no doubt worried that it's beta/gamma/delta feedstock would become a depleted) refused permission for its anhydrite mine to be appropriated by Nyrex.

We won.

At first available opportunity, I left.

Re: Gaah?

[liv]

Let me just make this absolutely clear. My post was in no possible way intended to be a class statement. I apologize unreservedly to anyone I accidentally confused.

I have never used language remotely like that. Nor did anyone at school. Any more than we went around saying 'Fie on thee, jackanapes, for thou hast done a most grievous wrong.'

I think I'll just go away and hide in a corner now.

Re: Gaah?

[compilerbitch.livejournal.com]

No apology required. I didn't understand the reference, but certainly wasn't offended by it.

It's OK. You can come out now!

Re: Gaah?

[shreena.livejournal.com]

Awww, don't do that. *hugs* I understood - it was just a retro comment. In the same way as one might quote/allude to 80s childrens' TV you were alluding to the kind of literature that many of us read.

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the significance of the 'Remove' form
AIUI, the Remove existed in a system where your progress through the school was only partly tied to your age. It was used to mop up not just dodgy leftovers, but people who were way too bright to be with their own age, but too young to be with people of their own academic level. Or people who had had their schooling disrupted for whatever reason, but were too old to be held back as far as they needed to make up.

Hence lots of school stories tend to be set in the Remove, because you've got plenty of excuses for interesting character background and dynamics. It's quite possible that in real life the Remove was actually full of people who were just too stupid to progress properly through the academic system, but that's not how it's usually portrayed.

[liv]

By the way, thanks for this piece; you do cynical extremely well. And it's not the kind of situation that gets written about a great deal, so also very interesting.