Yes, so I left school after that cruise. It must be said that things weren't going particularly well there anyway. I'd started the sixth form off in a blaze of glory with French, History and English. I was pretty good at French and had enjoyed History. I'd added English because I'd read somewhere in a magazine that the three subjects together were a classical combination for any future in the arts.
There was one small problem. I didn't read. Oh, I could read. I'd been doing that for years. But regular burying of head in book was a foreign country to me. I was convinced it was bad for you. After all, all the head-buriers in the school library, without exception, wore glasses. I made a simple equation in my mind:
reading = specs
Mind you, it was also put about that masturbation drove you to the optician as well, but I thought I'd be brave and risk it with that one. Another problem I had with reading books was that it kept me away from the TV. I'd always found the TV a constant distraction. I just couldn't turn the bloody thing off. Life seemed to end with the all-consuming silence that came with the push of the off-switch. Reality was just so, well, intense! Along with my uncordinated body I had developed a gangly, spotty mind, a mish-mash of trivia. To get it to concentrate through an entire paragraph without wandering was nigh on impossible. The day we took delivery of our first colour TV, at the end of the sixties, was the day I gave thanks to the God of all things technological. The weird thing is that I'm sure that the first programme I saw when we had the grand switching on was the Double Deckers, a lunchtime show, so I must have been taken out of school especially for this Coming of the Radio Rentals Lord. The afternoon back at school was a bit of a blur. I rushed home and, as I marvelled at the bright colours of Valerie Singleton's dress - Peter Purvis still managed to look monochrome strangely enough - my heart leapt when I realised that every single programme I watched from that day on would undergo a similar injection of life-giving colours. Everything would be transformed. The same but so, so different, so much better. All would be colour! All my favourite programmes would be born again! It was as though we'd been shown a life previously kept from us by cathode ray tube cataracts. But now colour was not only here, but available from your local rental shop! I was black and white but now I can see...
Despite this addiction to all things televisual, I had managed surprisingly good results throughout my school career. I had developed various distraction techniques where I could look at text books within spitting distance of a TV screen and get the work done. When complete avoidance of the box was required, the only solution was to work on the floor of our six by six bathroom with the door locked. Coming a close second was ripping myself off the living room carpet, where I worshipped at the feet of the beast who must be watched, and shutting myself in my bedroom with Kate Bush and a spread of exercise books in front of me. The warm June evening before my Maths 'O' Level, I thought I'd actually leave the house with my books of sums and equations and achieve monk-like concentration through solitude 'al fresco'. I cycled to my favourite spot, a lone tree overlooking the town, determined to injest everything I would ever need to know the following day, lay on the grass and stared up at the sky for hours thinking nothing mathemetical at all.
I passed the exam with flying colours despite this and, armed with delusions of competence, entered the sixth-form with a timetable full of French, English and History.
For a boy who liked his TV, this came as a bit of a shock. In French, the set books had to be read; in English, the set books were to be read and books about the books read too; in History, there were no set texts as such but it was assumed you would read books on and around every major event, theory and philosophy ever written...and then some. No amount of bathroom, bedroom or lone tree usage would ever be enough to keep up. It was impossible. I'd spend my entire life in the library straining my eyes so much I'd have to wear glasses the rest of my life! Something had to give. I decided it would be History.
Mr. B, our history master, was something of a one-off. His lessons were a tight-rope of mental agility. He held a power over us that only insane passion for your subject coupled with sadism can provide. His party-trick was to throw out some awful question when you were least expecting it and eeny-meeny his way over the back rows for what seemed like forever and then, with a flick of his wrist, choose the poor sod right in front of him. Get the answer wrong and you were made to feel a complete idiot. Very clever that. There was no need for name-calling. He would humiliate you with a lift of his eyebrow and immediately rush on with the lesson leaving you a speech-less puddle in his wake.
So I marched towards the History Room door and tapped. The door swung violently open. "Yes?" I stammered that I had been thinking about dropping one subject and that it may be History. "Fine. Good-bye." The door slammed in my face and I wandered away stunned. After coming to terms with the reality of the situation, I felt a little back-tracking was called for and, later that day, tapped again. Again the door was yanked open impatiently. As I opened my mouth, he barked, "No, thank-you!" and shut the door. I stood outside the door for a few moments completely shocked. Here was a teacher responsible for the moulding of young minds behaving like a sulking child! So that was that. Years later, I heard he had made the local paper. He'd been arrested for driving his car too slowly and too close to the kerb in certain areas of Birmingham - allegedly. If it were true, I can't say I'd be devastated.
So then there were two. Even with two-thirds of the workload, I found it hard to concentrate. The Ideal Husbands was in full flow and, more significantly, I'd sort of decided I was going to try for Drama School, something for which A Levels were not required. That took the edge off and gave me the get-out clause I needed to slack effectively. It was only a matter of time. The cruise rounded things off nicely. There was a nice touch on the morning I left school forever. Some wag called up the headmaster and announced there was a bomb in the place. The first I knew of it was when two uniformed police rang the bell of my house that morning and I had to profess innocence in the face of damning circumstantial evidence. I stood there hiding the liquorice roll-up behind my back - I thought it made me look like just the sort of guy who'd ring up schools he'd just left - trying to convince the constables. "C'mon, just tell us you did it..." They left a quarter of an hour later still believing they had their man. It was very frustrating. I consoled myself by going over to Sophie's farm that afternoon to get my first taste of adult unemployment. We sat in her bedroom and chatted. All the while I was aware of my whole life still going on somewhere else. Afternoons were for lessons! Evenings and week-ends were for chatting in bedrooms. Like driving on your own the first time after passing your test, things were technically the same but actually completely, irreversibly, different.