» Schadenfreude

The Arsehole
A bit of a long one, but bear with it...

Back in the day, as they say, I was part of a large group of assorted social misfits who used to hang around together, smoke loads of dope, take mushrooms and the occasional acid tab, and generally have lots of fun.

Our little social scene was mostly centred around a cellar somewhere in Birkenhead, that belonged to the parent's of two brothers, one of whom was the drummer in a couple of bands I played in. People would call round there all the time, get stoned and have endless jams. His parents were remarkably tolerant, all things considered. These were good fun times, until the smack started to appear...but that's another story.

Most of the people 'on the scene' were pretty cool. This was early 80's, so there was the usual assortment of punks, rockers, goths, skins etc. An interesting and colourful melting pot. There was of course, the occasional arsehole who nobody really liked...

There was one guy in particular who was made Steve Martin's character in the Jerk look like the Dude from the Big Lebowski. He was loud, obnoxious and had a peculiar lisp-like speech defect, so was destined to be a figure of fun from the word go.

His worst quality though was his constant bullshitting and bragging. If you had done something noteworthy, anything at all, and were telling someone else about it, he would jump in and tell you how he had done it bigger and better. He constantly bragged about how much money he had, how many women he was shagging, how much drugs and booze he could handle etc, etc. You get the picture - he was a twat of the highest order.

At some point, he started turning up regularly at the cellar late at night, totally off his face, having spent the evening at the local rock nightclub. He would then generally fall asleep, and be subjected to various forms of mild torture - dead arms and legs off four people at the same time was particularly memorable, he would writhe about like a slug and mumble some insult but would still come back for more next week.

One evening, myself and one of the brothers had partaken in a fine mushroom and dope cocktail, and were leaving the house for a visit to the all night garage for some munchies, when who did we spot lying on the grass by the half constructed flats down the road but...yes, you’ve guessed it, it was the arsehole himself!

We poked him a bit to make sure he was alive - he was, but was in an advanced state of dishevelment. He’d obviously been on his way to the cellar for some abuse, but decided to have a bit of kip instead. It was then that we noticed the money sticking out of his top jacket pocket.... tenners, and quite a few of them, 40 or 50 quid in all.

Now I’m not generally given to thievery, and I’m not particularly proud of myself, but this guy was the bane of everyone’s existence, so we weighed up the options...and we dipped into his pocket and took a tenner each. We left the rest of it, we weren’t completely ruthless, in fact I think we even zipped his pocket up for him to assuage our guilt a little.

It wasn’t a particularly cold night, and such was his monged out condition that we couldn’t have moved him anyway, so we decided to leave him there and go for munchies, and check on him when we got back. When we returned, he’d vanished.

The next night, we were in the local boozer, enjoying a pint or two on his money, when lo and behold, in he walked...

“You’ll never guess what happened to me last night” he says. “What was that?” we replied innocently, as we sipped our beers bought with his cash. “I got jumped and someone stole all my money!”.

If it was true, then it kind of negated us taking a tenner each, if it was just more bullshit, then I guess he deserved it anyway. In spite of a few pangs of guilt, it was a delicious moment.
(Tue 22nd Dec 2009, 12:45, More)

» PE Lessons

Amusing and not so amusing gym teacher nicknames
Another first time poster after many years of reading....hello peeps!

My first secondary school was a Public one in Birkenhead (i.e. extremely Private, never really understood that). Think Tomkinson's Schooldays but without the fun of nailing the smaller boys to the school wall. The head was a dour Welshman, ex-rugby player for his country. He was big on God and small on humour. He had a mangled ear, presumably from the rugby, but it had earned him the amusing nickname of syph, as in syphilitic. He was a cunt.

The gym teacher was a Mr Liddell, grandson of Eric Liddell on whose life the film Chariots of Fire was partly based. He was mildly sadistic and also rather pious, but actually not too bad on reflection. His nickname was, rather unimaginatively, Eric...ho hum.

I got expelled from there after 4 years on the pretext of fighting. The truth was I just had too much attitude, was academically lazy and not particularly good at sport (if I had been, I would have got away with the laziness). This didn’t really fit in with the school ethos of getting the highest possible A Level results, oxbridge entries etc coupled with excessive bestiality on the ‘rugger’ pitch, so I ended up going to a former grammar school, but by then a comprehensive (this is the early 80’s) in rough and ready Rock Ferry (of the Duffy album fame).

I thought I might have a hard time there, ex-public boy school etc, but it was actually pretty cool, and I’m still friends with some people from there now, which is more than I can say for the other school. It was much more my kind of place.

One of the gym teachers there was a Mr Fielding. He was tall, lanky, slightly effeminate with a balding, flyaway comb-over hair job, and used to shoo us into the showers with a limp wristed wave of his hand and an enthusiastic cry of ‘come along boys!’. There were the usual allegations of gayness, probably unfounded, but he had one of the best teacher nicknames I’ve ever heard...

Mr Feel-Me-Ding!

He should have been a character in a Carry On film.
(Thu 26th Nov 2009, 10:40, More)