Looking Back

Looking Back ©

By Michael Casey

Well today is the first full week of the school holidays, so mum’s at work while I “supervise” the girls. This involved taking our smallest to the doctors’ as she had bumped her elbow a few weeks ago and now, only now did she tell us. There had been no bruising just a little pain, enough for her finally to tell us. Luckily I got an appointment and the nurse had a feel before saying she could feel a small swelling. The nurse then went and got a prescription signed by a doctor, while we waited I told my daughter it was because of her she did not now have a dog. I had said before Christmas that the girls could have a cat if I had a heart attack and a dog if I died. It was the very prompt action of the nurse that got me my first cardiac appointment which lead to my bypass. I only discovered the other day that I had 4 grafts not the 3 I’d been told. So I have had my money’s worth from the National Health Service.

After a trip to Aldi we went and got the prescription filled at my local pharmacy, there I could drop some news into the conversation. My other daughter had got 100% in a Chemistry exam, not forgetting 2 Astars in 2 mock GCSEs, 2 years before the real ones will be taken. I told him it was just a ruse to get more pocket money. She even got a distinction in her Grade One Piano Music exam, even though she has to be dragged kicking and screaming to the piano. But 91.3% is nothing to be scoffed at. The cat Totoro likes to dance on the piano, otherwise it may gather dust. No more piano lessons until she practises of her own free will every day for a year. Then we will know she is motivated. If we could bribe our musician neighbour with chocolate, to give free lessons, then maybe they’ll resume. Or if Ed Balls is ever in the neighbourhood…

All these exam results make me look back at my own school days, I was Head Boy at primary school I can boast, but really it was chief jailor locking up the school at dinner time so the kids could not run amuck. For one year I was left alone to read at the reception desk in the school, because I was ahead of the pack. Once you go to Grammar school you are ordinary, with an ability to kill on the rugby field.

I was called Casey Minimus at my grammar school, as my 2 elder brothers went to the school before me. This was ironic considering I was the heaviest by far. Ali Campbell later of UB40 was in 1B with me, though after the first year I went into the fast stream, where they try and kill you, only joking, it was fun. I can boast I did 5 years of Latin, which is a form of torture, but I suppose it does make you think. Why God am I in this classroom? Please release me, let me go, for I do not love Latin, I never did, not now, not ever not ever. I even had double Latin, 2 hours worth on a Friday afternoon in 5^th year. We had the joys of the Ablative Absolute, I will never forget that lesson on a Tuesday, a double lesson with first break in the morning dividing it. This is when we all lost our linguistic virginity, when we sweated for the result. I think it was Patel, the son of a doctor, who finally cracked it. 4 other future doctors in the class hadn’t a clue but he did. If 2^nd years were allowed Stella Artois, we’d all have had 3 pints each and forget the fancy glasses.

These are the things that bind us and remind us of our schooldays, the torture in Latin, or O’Callaghan getting the pump for calling my “Witty comment” a “S*** comment” and Mr Ealy the woodwork and gym teacher not being impressed in 1970. Mr Ealy was 6feet 2 but on the rugby field I could fling him, and I was just 12.

If you can look back with smiles then your school days haven’t been wasted. If you still have a friend who has lasted down the years that is even better. Pain lessens with the years, getting 4 of the best on you bum with a pump because you did not know your multiplication tables, is just a memory now, but then it really was a pain lesson. Next time I was asked to multiply I could with ease and without any pain. Now 40+ years  on my mental arithmetic is still quick, so thank you Mr Gallagher.