Breaktime at school in the 1970s

An extract from a piece I'm writing about my secondary school days.

Of the first two years I don’t remember anything particularly good or bad happening, but this changed in third year. There was a boy who I shall refer to as AG. One lunch break a few of us were mucking about in the classroom. Someone came up with the idea of putting an empty ink bottle on the teacher’s desk and lifting the lid up quickly, so the bottle flew up in the air. It was all fairly gentle stuff with the rest of us taking turns to catch the bottle. But then AG came into the room. 

After watching us for a minute or two he then said he wanted to have a go but decided to use a full bottle of ink. Needless to say, when he launched this into the air the rest of us got out of the way sharpish. The bottle landed on the floor, broke open and ink went everywhere. We told AG what we thought of him and that he should go and get a bucket and mop to clean up the mess. To his credit he agreed to do this.

With the drama over, or so I hoped, I headed out into the yard to “go down the hill”. This was a rather quaint expression we were told to use when we wanted to go to the loo. The toilets were indeed down at the rear side, if you will, of the school so you did in fact go down to the buildings where they were located.

After relieving myself I headed back in the direction of the classroom. But who should I see coming towards me with a bucket full of inky water but AG. When he saw me his eyes lit up and he proceeded to chase me and try and soak me with this dirty water. Fortunately one of the chemistry teachers came out from the science block and shouted at AG to stop what he was doing.  

But by this time I realised he had managed to hit the back of my jacket with some water, so I made my way to the classroom and stood with my back to the radiator to try and dry off a bit. The next thing I knew AG was back in the room looking a bit sheepish but worse was to come. 

Being on the ground floor it was possible to look into the classroom from outside and one of AG’s friends appeared at the window and started making rude gestures at him. AG then picked up another ink bottle (this one fortunately empty) and told me to move as he was going to throw it at the window. I told him not to be so bloody stupid as I was not in the mood for any more of his antics. But this did not stop him, and he threw the bottle at the window.

It was one of those situations where things almost went into slow motion as I saw the bottle coming through the air towards me. I dived for cover. The bottle hit the window. It bounced off the window. It hit the radiator and smashed into pieces. Glass shrapnel flew everywhere including towards my head.

I’m guessing there must have been a moment of stunned silence from the other boys in the room as they could not believe what they had just witnessed. We knew AG was a bit unhinged, but this took the proverbial biscuit.

My immediate reaction was to put my hand to my head and to my alarm I found I was bleeding. The PE teacher did First Aid, so I made my way to his room below the gym and waited for him to come and patch me up. I recall him examining my head and asking who had done this to me. When I told him it was AG he shook his head but was not completely surprised to find out who the culprit was.

I then went back to the classroom, by which time the first lesson after lunch had started, so had to hurriedly get my books and go off to my next class.

Years later my mother told me that she and my father decided to keep me off school for a short while as presumably there were not happy at the school’s reaction to what had happened. I can’t say I remember what the aftermath was. This was an unusually eventful lunch break, but I suppose I would have adopted a stoic attitude and accepted that this sort of thing just happened. There wasn’t much I could do about it.