All coppers are bastards! (except the ones that aren't bastards of course)
Oooh. Where to start. I know, when, before entering the final year of primary school, we were all tasked with a summer holiday project.

This, in itself was unusual as normally, you’d leave for your summer break, safe in the knowledge that you’d have no homework as on your return to school in September, you’d have moved up a year and you’d have a new teacher and you’d start the new year at a leisurely pace.

Not this year. It was compulsory. But there were also big prizes on offer, prizes made of cash!

Now, to the average 11 year old, all money is good money, from the purse of your Nan, or the deep pockets of favourite uncle. Cash was king. Even though I was never allowed to spend it (no, not because I’m spoilt, but because requests to go to the shops were normally met with ‘Why?’ from my mother, to which I say ‘I want to buy some sweets’ this was always shouted down with ‘but you’ll be having dinner is 6 hours, I don’t want you ruining your appetite!’).

So, the summer holidays kick off and on my way home from school, safe in the knowledge that cash is king; I’ve decided that I want to win. 9 weeks of hard work and that money can be mine, not that I knew how much was being awarded.

Well, for some reason, (it may well have been an anniversary of its creation) all projects were to be on the Police Force. And that, therefore, was my mission, to write about and draw pretty pictures of all things police related. On the way home on that last day of term (where you got to wear your own clothes (I probably worn some jumbo cords)) I insisted that we stopped in the library and got some books to help me. My mother was shocked. Little ‘ole me wanting to get some books from the library? Books that would help me with my school project? Really?

That’s exactly what we did. So impressed was my mother, that rather than the 2 or 3 books I could take out with my own library tickets, she actually afforded me the honour of being able to take another couple of books out using her library tickets as well, and, because it was for a school project, the library extended the amount of time I could borrow them for, even letter me take a reference book (although this had to be on my Mum’s ticket)

So there I am, armed with books that weigh more than me, books that detail everything from the modern police car (a Ford Granada) to the early days of Robert Peel. Enough information to produce a project of immense proportions.

And so started the summer of work. Work that started early in the mornings, ‘Aren’t you going to watch Why Don’t You?’ ‘No, I want to work on my project’. Work that was taken with me on our annual static-caravan trip to Sandy Bay in Weymouth, work that accompanied me on a week away with my Grandparents in Wales, in fact, I think I carried on working on it, rather than watching the UK television premier of the Bond film ‘For Your Eyes Only’

By the end of the summer I was done. 50 or 60 pages of text and hand-drawn pictures. Of facts, figures and historical information. There was nothing in that project that could be bettered. Absolutely nothing whatsoever.

And so, the first day of school comes round, the assembled final-year of primary school students hand in their summer projects. Some were laughably bad, a couple of pages in a note-book that said quite clearly ‘I watched James Bond’ others, more detailed, but with none of the flair, design or craft of mine.

The money was in the bag.

The first assembly of the year came within a fortnight of the return to school, sat there in my grey flannel shorts, a young Mullered is almost bursting with pride, most people are resigned to the fact that the did a crap project having spent the summer waiting for Friday nights so they could watch The Fall Guy or TJ Hooker, not sweating over a kitchen table with the big-light on.

I knew I was on a winner.

Head teacher is standing on the stage and rattles off a bit list of do’s and don’ts – us old hands had heard this speech man times before, surely now it was time for ‘AOB’ a time where, towards the end of assembly, she’ll say, ‘and well done to the 4th years who completed their summer project, blah blah blah blah and the prize goes to Mullered’. But no. This doesn’t happen. Instead, the prize has gone to Lisa. Lisa the fucking simpleton. Lisa who pissed herself in the 3rd year and had to spend the afternoon sitting in her gym gear. Lisa who wore odd socks. Lisa who could hardly spell her own fucking name.

The reason? Her old man is a copper and because of her old man, they’d manage to arrange for some special demonstration by the emergence services, a few coppers come into school and tell us what we need to do to avoid going to prison (it was wasted on us, at the time we were all god fearing folk thanks to the church school) the fire brigade came in and told us no to play with matches and the ambulance service (pre paramedics this) told us that in the event of an emergency, you dial 999.

Her prize? A fiver. A fiver was (and still is towards the end of the month) an absolute fortune. You could buy yourself an original game for your ZX Spectrum with a fiver. You could buy more cola bottles than you’d want to eat in a single sitting with a fiver. A fiver? A blue bit of paper that held the keys to the universe. I’d have killed for a fiver in those days.

We were told before we broke up that there would be prizes – as in more than one. But no, because her old man was a copper, she gets given a fiver. My total reward for all that hard work nothing? The fact I went a whole summer without watching Junior Kick Start or Play Chess or Wacaday? What was in this for me? Absolutely nothing.

I went home that night and cried. And my sister laughed at me for crying.

I did get my project back and I kept it right up until I bought my first house, which was the point my parents insisted I take ‘all of your crap out of the loft once and for-all’ when I deemed it completely unnecessary/

Top tip kids, it’s better to not try than it is to try and fail.

Lisa – if you are reading this, it wasn’t me who threw your towel in the swimming pool in Easton leisure centre. It was my mate Matt Jefferies who felt aggrieved on my behalf. I’m now over this incident and I’m sorry you were forced to dry yourself with your (odd) socks and regulation school jumper.

I don’t know why I bothered with that last bit, she probably still can’t fuckin’ read, the daft, cheating bitch. Police corruption was clearly still rife in the 80’s.
( JeffTheDogFucker Can you dig it?, Thu 13 Aug 2009, 16:53, 1 reply)

Ohhh nostalgic 80's school holidays !
Very well told story. I actually shouted "That's not fair !" aloud when the prize went to Lisa. Got me some funny looks in the office :D
( rabbitz, Fri 14 Aug 2009, 11:25, closed)