The Sixth Form

The Sixth Form is the pinnacle of a school education, the time when everyone gets along despite any previous problems because we've all grown up. With a few exceptions, this was true.
The other feature of the Cathedral School is that girls arrive. Sadly, while everyone else seemed to be enjoying an orgy of pleasure, I was sat at home watching Star Trek. Story of my life, really.
The biggest problem with the Sixth Form was the organisation. The first year was fine; we all fitted into the purpose-built common room. However, the second year, we were supposed to move into Abbey House, an old building of the Cathedral's that the school had purchased. We never did due to various legal problems. Sadly, the old rooms had already been converted into classrooms so we were effectively homeless. The dining hall was half-heartedly converted into a common room, but it never really worked as such. Mind you, considering the permanently appalling quality of the school lunches, it never really worked in its previous capacity. Of course, the following year Abbey House was finished, and the new sixth formers could move in. Gits.

The One Way System

One thing that should be noted about the Cathedral School is the fact that it has several staircases which are quite thin and therefore difficult to get up and down when you have people heading both ways on them. Roy Collard , in his infinite wisdom, decided that a One-Way system was needed, whereupon you had to use one staircase to go up and the other to go down. Of course, that caused even more problems, as being lazy, everyone kept sneaking up them the wrong way and running back if they saw a teacher about to catch them. Considering that even the teachers ignored the concept, and using the system usually took you totally the wrong way, it was doomed to failure. In a mock school election, it even caused the 'Ban The One-Way System' party to romp home to a win. If only they’d got into power in real life.

The Public School Education

Public schools are probably the only places where everyone still stands up whenever a teacher enters. Until everyone gets fed up with doing it and stops, much to the annoyance of some teachers. I could also have done without being referred to by my surname at all times, until I got to the Sixth Form when it finally stopped. Mostly.

The Safety Video

One Physics lesson, in a last desperate attempt to gain our interest, Mr Stephenson decided to show the class a video on safety. This was probably the one clever thing that he ever did. The video was hilarious, showing incredibly unconvincingly what happens should you get electrocuted., amongst other things, with what was clearly a fake body thumping to the floor. The video was so popular that rather than a film or comedy show, the safety film was requested as a Christmas treat.

The Phone Gag

One of the students brought a fake mobile phone into a French lesson with Mlle Quarin, and set it up to ring sometime during the lesson. When it did, he proceeded to pretend it was his mother, telling her he was in a lesson and not to phone him, while Mlle Quarin began to look annoyed.
When he rigged the same thing to happen later in the lesson, Mlle Quarin almost blew her top, telling him to turn it off so that it wouldn't happen again. The rest of us tried to stop giggling. When we tried the same trick with Mr Hoskin, he wasn't fooled for a second.

Young Enterprise

The Young Enterprise group was supposed to run for a couple of terms during the first year of the Sixth Form. Despite being beaten to the post of secretary, I was eventually appointed when I filled in almost every week when the original candidate failed to turn up. A tremendous success under Jeremy Harper and Simon Parris, our first two managing directors, the decision was made to continue for the rest of the year with a new MD, who I didn't believe could do the job. Therefore, I resigned and retrieved my shares. That final segment was a complete shambles, and the remaining members were lucky to get their share money back at all. I'd just like to say that we did extremely well and would have finished in style without the final term, having sold some tremendously well-made and innovative products, and done quite nicely at the trade shows we entered.
It did teach me that the real power seems to be in the second in command, as despite my subordinate status, Simon and I (and to some extent Jeremy and I) worked as a team, and worked well. I'd also like to mention that we couldn't have succeeded without Joy Coupe. No, really.

Speech Day/Commemoration Day

Two Saturdays of the year, the entire school is forced to come in and sit through an incredibly tedious service. The first of these is Speech Day: great if you've won an award for something, but incredibly dull if you just have to sit and applaud for a couple of hours. And the school always invited the most boring local alleged celebrity they could find. There was a rumour that Tony Robinson was coming one year, but sadly it never came off.
The second event was Commemoration Day, to celebrate the founding of the school in 1542. Now, this was at least slightly entertaining in the 450th anniversary year of 1992, but the rest of the time it seemed rather pointless. And the school still couldn't find anyone interesting to do the obligatory address. The only thing I got out of it was the ability to spell commemoration properly.

CHAOS

The Charity for Helping and Aiding Our School, a dubious title from the outset, was theoretically there for students to suggest changes that could then be implemented if good enough. Unfortunately, as everyone took CHAOS as a bit of a joke, it never really accomplished anything. It couldn't even get rid of the One-Way system.
The only thing it did manage to do was provide CHAOS Entertainment each Christmas, which in its early days did a brilliant job of taking off various teachers to the amusement of the pupils. Sadly, it was another casualty of Mr Collard who wanted it 'toned down', spoiling it for all time. CHAOS was also responsible for a staff pantomime performed the first year I was at the school: Jack & The Beantin. I later finished up in one of the female roles when a group of gullible volunteers performed it as part of the school's annual Old Folks Party. And that's as much detail as I'm going into. I did get a nice dress to wear, though.

Choir

I was a member of both the School Choir and the Chamber Choir, which were both good fun to be in. Sadly, as an alleged musician, I was drafted in to do a feeble performance on drums in an otherwise wonderful attempt at the Hallelujah Chorus, but Mr Donald should have known better and replaced me. The Choir was much better, as we performed some truly inspiring concerts with great songs, helped out the trebles by singing falsetto, and plagued Mr Donald by requesting Torches at every opportunity when we went to sing to the patients at Bristol Eye Hospital. He said we needed an accompaniment, but we knew better.
The Chamber Choir was an experience, being made up of Sixth Formers and staff members. Although we kept separate and tried not to talk to each other, we did pull off some great performances, which were fun to do. Being in these choirs did cause me a slight problem trying not to be beaten by Simon Parris. Despite the fact that we weren't supposed to be performing it, Simon suggested we sing a piece with the adult's Choral Society. Not wanting to look pathetic or inadequte to the task, I stupidly agreed. I just about got through it by following Simon's singing. Never again.

Sports

I've always hated sports, but unfortunately I was forced to do them every week for PE and Games, and they were never the games I wanted to do.
I hated rugby until I tried a position in the second row of the scrum, at which point I suddenly seemed (despite not being able to see a damn thing without my glasses) to be able to score tries, or at least get close. Sometimes people would even pass the ball to me, although this was usually when no-one else was available. And this was the biggest problem I had with sport: the sporty people only ever acknowledged the other sporty people, leaving the rest of us non-sporty people, who could still have been quite good given half a chance, standing around at the back in case someone died or something. Thus, my rugby career ended with a grand total of two tries scored.
Further to this, when we played basketball and my height could have come in handy, I never even saw the ball. They never knew what they were missing, especially as I'd played netball at Junior School to avoid having to play football then.
I was ridiculed at cricket due to my ever-helpful parents buying me the complete kit; hence while everyone else came out wearing a t-shirt and trousers, I arrived in full cricket whites. Still, there was no way I was going near that big heavy ball, so I wasn't really a success.
My football career consisted mainly of being thrust in goal where I could be kept out of the way, although at least I got to spend most of my time chatting to Martin Walton and Chris Barrett who were also kept out of the way by being put in defence. I experienced much the same treatment during 5-a-side football, the point of which didn't seem to be scoring goals, more kicking the ball really hard at people and trying to injure them.
Whilst I was getting to grips with these sports, there was also the yearly cross-country run, which was compulsory until the Sixth Form unless you had a damn good excuse. I think I did one of the runs, then managed to get out of the other ones by playing my 'asthma' card, thanks to a nice letter from Mum. In reality, my asthma was probably never so bad that I couldn't have done the run, but it enabled me to spend a nice quiet afternoon as a 'marker' on the course, eating sweets and reading a Doctor Who book one year. Of course, if the weather was horrible, this didn't necessarily work. The other yearly event was the athletics championship, but it was possible to sit in the crowd, read, eat and listen to your Walkman, so that wasn't so bad.
The first time I came close to being good at something was tennis, and even then everyone else seemed to be better than me. Luckily, my usual collection of friends were useless as well so I played against them. Chris did appear to rather irritatingly show some ability on court though.
The only sport I enjoyed was Badminton. Although I certainly wasn't the best one there, I was reasonably competent playing it. The other beauty of it was that being indoors, I could play it all year.

If you like, you can now move on to:

Best friends and worst enemies

The people who shaped my life: the teachers

Of course, if you're just going to complain about grammar, you can go back to the beginning.

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