Medicine Balls

It occurred to me, today, pretty much in the form of a bright light suddenly flicking into brilliance that the loss of a single notebook at the age of eleven has probably had a rather disproportionate series of consequences for the way my life has since developed. Bearing in mind that this was forty years ago it seems not just churlish even to mention it now, but actually a serious sign of delusional wishful-thinking ... and yes that is a deliberate tautologous expression. Not everyone is familiar with the 1960's British educational system. In the school year that one attained age eleven we joined a secondary school. When I joined mine in september 1964 the minimum leaving age was 15. This was raised to 16, where it remains a year or so after I passed my 15th birthday. In those days pupils were selected on the basis of an exam taken during the final year at junior school. I had done pretty good and so I got a place at the local state-run grammar school. This was a stuffy academic institution with a bevy of Ph.D doctors in the staff room and a published playwright of a headmaster. It had a long a distinguished record of sending students on to Oxford or Cambridge universities many with so-called open scholarships (those being the closest thing to a blank cheque, university expenses defrayment, for the use of, to which anyone of humble background might aspire). Within this hallowed institution of learning pupils were further segregated into an "a" stream and a "b" stream each of which was further subdivided thus A/alpha; B/beta. I started in 1A ... I have often been stupid, I have frequently been ignorant, I freely confess to being too gullible; dumb, I am not. Toward the end of year one a crucial series of end of year tests loomed. By this stage I had already formed a passion for blood and gore and most earnestly desired to widen my knowledge and ultimately I hoped to become a surgeon. I also liked to read a lot and also to write. Sometimes I dreamed of becoming a writer instead. Anyway we draw close to the fateful moment when one of the trucks in the van of my ambitions took an unexpected derailment. The one subject that I had struggled with during the year was Physics. The principle of Archimedes' was so much spilled bath water as far I was concerned. However I had a secret weapon. I had one of the best short term memories this side of Alpha Centauri. I would swot through the whole year's worth of semi-legible scrawlings that I had made in the county issued hard-backed notebook and upon whose green and faux-leather crinkly cover I had illumined, with ballpoint pen, the imaginative title: Fizzix. Tests for 11 year olds aren't especially challenging. Spew out a few facts and the marker is happy to award a few marks and the happiness is spread fairly and squarely all around. Imagine my childish horror when I discovered that book wasn't anywhere to be found! I remember quite clearly coming to the conclusion that it had been stolen by someone with a less than honest approach to keeping good scholarly records. Whatever ... the thing never did reappear in my life. The physics test was an excruciating embarrassment. I believe that I did well in remembering my name ... though I wasn't at all sure at the time. I actually got 15%. It is a rather ghastly blot on my academic record ... and I have all of my end of term reports for the whole of my school career. It was the nadir of my learning curve ... Hell, nadir? Curve? This was the Mariana Trench! I started year 2 in 2B. It could've been worse. If it had been 2-beta I would have been forced to find a way to type greek letters. Actually it was worse. The A/alpha stream got to do character forming subjects like Latin and English literature while we dumbos were gifted extra classes in the basics of life ... like breathing. Without even making an effort (and I cannot say this without it sounding conceited) I came out at the top of 2B 2 terms running ... not by a mark or two by a light year. I finished the year in 2alpha. But by then the damage was done. I was already taking the dumb-ass courses and Eng. Lit was off limits. I still won the Third Year Literature prize anyway. So there it is. For the want of a notebook a night's cramming was lost, and with it went the opportunity to be guided through some of the most significant landmarks of literature. Instead I have stumbled around, pretty much in the dark reading trash and high art, often simultaneously, both for contrast and for also for light relief, each from the other ... Oh, I know what I mean. In some way it is an advantage, I can rate Stephen King as highly as Steinbeck. I can look through an Ayn Rand and wonder: "why" and gives a shit who John Galt was. Dickens made me laugh and Homer impressed me as the kind of man who would have trouble finding his way home after a party ... but I wouldn't mind cos he told a good yarn. All the same ... an earlier grounding in the principles and mechanics of the science of literature might have cured me of my obsession with chopping pieces of formerly live tissue into minute chunks (the better to determine why it was once "alive") ... it might also have kept me from becoming the natural corollary of a dissectionist: a dentist. Which would have saved me from wasting the best part of two decades doing something I loathed, mostly to people that I detested. Still ... it is never too late. I am learning to wake, on demand, my recalcitrant muse, to tame it and to steer it. Now all I need to decide is which way to go ....