Art trip to m-m-m-m-MENAI!
During upper sixth we went on an art trip to Anglesey. As deputy head boy I also got additional duties such as looking after some of the first years who were also there on their induction. The added bonus was that whilst all the other lads in my year had to go dry we spent loads of time in the teachers lounge getting loaded and playing darts.

highlights of the trip included:

Getting up on a really high rocky outcrop with my mates and throwing sheep shit at the deputy headmaster.

One lad dressing up in a bin bag with a big smiley face drawn with toothpaste running through the first year's dorm screaming and the first years shitting themselves and crying (having been prepared by our insistence that the building was where the Shining was filmed and that it was actually haunted - although tbh it did look like the bar/ballroom enough to freak me out whenever I walked thru there alone)

Same bin bag lad climbing a hill and levering a boulder which came crashing down the hill and caused everyone to shit themselves and jump out of the way. Thank god for them welsh dry stone walls otherwise the school minibus would have been totalled.

The sight of 'schools fittest teacher' every morning exiting the shower in her wraparound towel.


there are many others but the highlight was this. Our art teacher and educator legend Tony Butters (famed for doing flame throwing in classes, setting light to tennis balls and chucking them at you, and his best trick which was to completely over patronise the shittest pieces of work known to man - yes this man convinced me that sculpting a 6ft piece of Sweetcorn on the cob made with balloons and Mod roc would look great and not like the worst known case of genital warts ever recorded - a year after we finished me and a couple of mates went back to see him and he gave us all the porno mags he'd confiscated during that time)

Anyway Mr B set up a visit to see renowned natural artist and sculpturist David Nash (http://www.sculpture.org.uk/artists/DavidNash)

Us sixth formers felt very privaleged and after an hour or so in the minibus we landed outside of a converted museum or church.

We go in and Mr B shows us around some of the huge sculptures - basically Nash makes his art from trees and carves them, burns them etc but they are immense in their size and we were dwarfed by many of them. Mr Nash wasn't quite ready to see us so we wander around all being very pseudo and talking the artistic talk and polishing our 'art-cocks'.

Finally Mr Nash is ready and he comes down.

His work has already set the context - we are impressed and respectful of the ocassion.

Mr B gives an introduction and then asks us all if we have any questions for Nash.

One art-cock polisher puts his hand up.

'Mr Nash - out of all the natural medium that you choose to work with -which is the easiest and the most inspirational?'

pause. Nash has a think. Then replies:

'b-b-b-b-b-b-BEACH'

All of a sudden 20 students stifle laughter and bite their lips - very much like that scene in police academy 1 after the fella's head gets stuck in the horses arse and on parade the one who makes the noises neighs.

The inner laughter in all of us was such that nobody had the capability to open their mouths without laughing. There were a few laughs that exploded out naturally and were quickly turned into coughs.

Nash continues:

'b-b-b-BEACH is my f-f-f-fffff-fFAVOURITEMEDIUM' and then goes onto list his reasons with interspersed stutters, but as he reaches the conclusion to the sentence it's like the stutter builds up, trying to be contained and managed and then explodes in a shout.

think welease woger from Life of Brian but instead of the laughter getting louder, that the laughter became more difficult to contain. Think the same of Nash's stutter.

It was a stand off of will

Several of us started to move behind some of the scupltures simply to silently laugh. Even more outbursts of laughter were quickly turned into coughs.

Not one student dared to look the other in the eye otherwise they'd break.

This Q&A eventually continued for a good ten minutes or so and thank god for the more mature amongst us who had the calm to ask a question and keep the session going. However, it cracked the less composed up even more.

Honestly, people were doubled up crying whilst Nash became more nervous and the stutter more pronounced.

Eventually we were all so dispersed around his exhibition that there was hardly anybody but Br B and Nash to keep the Q&A going.

We all applauded him with tears in our eyes, from behind sculptures of his own creation as he went up back to his study upstairs.

One of the funniest things I have ever experienced.
(spike starski, Sat 9 Dec 2006, 0:17, Reply)