Today people might have called Bert "special"
I've always thought that Bert was not too bright but there was not really anything much wrong with him mentally or physically. At the school, it was clear that he suffered from a lack of exercise though he was not fat at all. He did have a good memory and it's not everyone who can pass second year chemistry examinations, even it it did take him a tremendous effort to do it. A friend of mine has a late teenage lad with Asperger's Syndrome and from what she says, he does not sound like Bert.

Frankly I think he had been squashed by his parents as a little kid and never got over it. They did belong to some odd sect, Plymouth Brethren or suchlike and that can be a bad environment.

The copperplate handwriting was a sign of something, maybe he had been browbeaten into it. It was sort of consistent with a lot of other things I knew then and heard later. Of course it was a handicap when trying to compress a year's physical chemistry into a three hour examination.

He might have been better off in some kind of back-room job, storeman, postal worker, something with a bit of paperwork and a little fetch and carry.

I can't claim to have been kind, I tried to avoid him at times but I always gave him the time of day. More than some did, perhaps.
(Redemption blamed it on the Bossa Nova since, Sun 13 Sep 2009, 12:32, Reply)