“Decolonising” Hadrian’s Wall?
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Irving and Isaiah played no part in building the Berlin Wall.
The Great Wall of China is made out of brick, and the Wailing Wall has never put to sea.
The only prize I won at school was for the largest ringworm. Egad!For three months I was more worm than boy! I bring this up here because a bald head painted violet prevented me going on a school trip to Adrian’s Wall.You possibly had a lucky escape, you might have bumped into my school’s annual trip out to the same site, although I think our outing might have been a wee bit different.
Our trip consisted of ramming 100 kids from the East End of Newcastle and about 6 teachers into a couple of dilapidated trip buses whilst journeying the 30 odd miles on the old Military Road to the Twiced Brewed Inn. When we arrived we were then marched along to Housesteads camp by the two most junior teachers (about 3 miles) and let loose.
Our school had a rather bizarre form of streaming which put the 10 or so “posh kids”, i.e. those who didn’t have head lice, into the top class along with some of the more delicate members of the year group whilst the other two classes were put together from the rag bag of psychopaths, thieves and trainee gangsters (with the addition of me, to make up the numbers) that made up the residue.
I suppose this was my first experience of what could be called Class Warfare. Basically when we got off the leash, the two bottom classes got together with the poorer renegades from the top class and then re-enacted the sacking of Rome by beating the shit out of the “posh kids”. Of course this was at the days when Doctor Marten’s boots, brogues studded with seg nails and bicycle chains were very much de rigueur. Fortunately for me, for the once and only time in my life, I was part of a class that was winning.
We then rampaged through the small gift shop stealing, everything that wasn’t nailed down, and then marched back to the pub. When we got there we were joined by the four senior teachers that had been left behind, who had been drinking themselves into a coma in the Twice Brewed Inn. Finally the whole untidy rabble was packed off into buses again to return to the old Alma Mater.
Strangely my brother, who is five years older than me, thinks that by the time I got to that school “It had all gone a bit f!*+ing soft!”
Ahh school, the scariest days of your life!
To be honest, I don’t think I’m a belligerant person, but that’s hard for me to judge, because I’m not really a judgemental person. I will leave that to you (TM) as you seem to be far better qualified in that area.
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