Dave Spence Bomb Maker
Where to begin…

I suppose I ought to start with a bit of background info. I went to a Catholic school, a school where teachers were sometimes Nuns and sometimes they weren’t.

Did I say it was a Catholic school?

Some of you, might, just might remember there was a weeny little problem over the water in Ireland, where the Protestants and the Catholics never always saw eye-to-eye.

So, with bombs and shootings all the rage over the water, some where along the line, my school receive a telephone call, from, we are guessing a ‘yoof’ who is desperately trying to put on an Irish accent and claiming that there is a bomb in the school.

Panic erupts and we are evacuated. Not in some noise sensitive way, but with the full on fire-drill (obviously, Sister Claire was so up on her bomb making, she had no doubt that the fire alarm wouldn’t set off a home made device, but that’s another issue). So there we are, the assembled masses, out in the playground a good 6 or 7 feet away from the building with the bomb in it.

Word soon spreads that this isn’t just a fire drill, but rather a sinister attempt to kill us all.

Dave Spence raises his hand and asks Mr Jeffery ‘if, being this close to the building with the bomb in it is a good idea?’

Unsurprisingly, Mr Jeffery agrees and moves us.

He moves us to the other end of the playground, buy the gym. That’ll be the gym with one wall made entirely of glass.

Dave raises his hand again and asks ‘Do you think we’ll be okay standing by all this glass if the bomb goes off?’

Mr Jeffery tells Dave to shut up. He (Mr Jeffery) was proper angry by this point, both at the inconvenience of being removed from class and then being given – a completely valid – health and safety lecture by Dave Spence, a mouthy chain-smoker who reckoned he could get his hands on any electrical item you desired.*

Anyway, the police are on scene by now, and word is going round that they are taking the threat seriously, so naturally, we are all buzzing with equal measures of fear and excitement

Did I mention it was a Catholic school?

So, within an hour of the call, we have a distressed Mr Jeffery, Old Bill, the Fire brigade and two green vans with members of bomb disposal squad ready to conduct the search, oh, and a Dave Spence who reckons he’d be able to defuse the bomb, all you need are scissors and a steady hand.

Clearly, this is going to take some time to sort out, by now on the sports field (the police made us move away from the gym and described the decision to make us stand there as, ‘frankly ridiculous’). We are all itching to go home (its coming up to lunchtime) and a free afternoon off school with no homework is just the ticket as far as me and my mates are concerned. Okay, none of us are sure how we’ll get home, given that there is no school bus at midday, but by god we’ll try!

And then it happens.

Sister Claire is clearly more organized than anyone ever gave her credit for, over the hill come 6 coaches. Brilliant we think, they’ve managed to get the school busses here early!

On we get, safe in the knowledge we’ll soon be going home and we’ll be there in time for the lunchtime edition of Neighbours! Only once we get on our respective coaches we notice we are joined by a few Nuns’ and a couple of teachers.

And then it happens. (pt2)

We are now sitting on a moving coach, harbouring plans to have a nice easy afternoon watching telly and we get told. ‘Settle down kids, you’ll be delighted to know that the police and army are continuing the search of the school and will let Sister Clair know in due course if there are any suspicious devices that need attention’

‘Many thanks are due to Sister Clair for her decisive action on hearing about this threat, from the caretakers house, she has organised sufficient busses for you all to travel on.’

(By now we are over the moon)

‘Our first stop, is at St Mary on the Quay church, where Father Joseph has generously agreed to read some passages from the Gospel of Saint Mark and you’ll be invited to discuss it’s meaning’

Oddly, that wasn’t the only bomb threat we received. Over the 5 years I was at the school, we must have had half a dozen or more, the format was usually the same, us put on coaches and driven to a church somewhere for bible discussions.

None of us ever knew who was responsible for the calls, but we all had our suspicions and no one ever owned up, either to mates or to peers.

I reckon it was Dave Spence.

Not exactly a laugh a minute that was it? Never mind eh, I’ve written it now.

I also have vivid memories of when we all went to some god-awful camp site in Exmouth for an ‘activity week’ (read, God and occasionally swimming in a freezing cold outdoor pool’), evil PE teacher, Mr Davis was (as we all did in the days pre mobile phone), using a phone box to make a personal phone call. That’ll be him taped (and stuck solid) in a red phone box desperately trying to get out as various ‘pranksters’ have gone round and round the telephone box with sellotape.

A whole roll.

Tell ya, whole roll of tape around a phonebox makes it nigh-on impossible for the unfortunate trapped inside, and there escape is not helped by about 30 4th years pissing themselves laughing, he was in there a good half hour or so.

The Sellotape-massive had, by now, buggered off. Why? I don’t know, they didn’t have any sort of disguise and were laughing the whole time they did it. Eventually, Mr Davis gets released and back at camp, we are all lined up and shouted at. The lads responsible had their reasons for perpetrating this particular crime. Apparently they were bored shitless and knew that if they misbehaved enough, they’d have to go home.

The father of one of them drove down and collected them all.

At school, we were all desperate to know what punishment they received when they got back home. Turns out, they’d collectively lied to their folks about the quality of the food, the violence with other schools also staying and the leaking tents and that the only way they’d get home without losing face was to misbehave.

Their parents were, so they said, happy enough with that explanation.

The school weren’t, as well as being banned from all future trips, they were all on ‘litter duty’ for a month.

Mullered
*The closest Dave Spence ever came to fulfilling his ‘I can get you anything electrical’ claim, was nicking all of the batteries out of the calculators in Maths and knocking them out at 10p a time to kids with Walkmans.
( JeffTheDogFucker Can you dig it?, Thu 29 Jan 2009, 16:53, 2 replies)

Character Building!
Hence *click*!
(Beer Elf Thought this was like a campfire, anyhow, on, Fri 30 Jan 2009, 10:56, closed)

but!
how did he know it was a bomb?


it was him!


i just Quincyed it.
(Mong goose, Tue 3 Feb 2009, 1:39, closed)