Westgate Old School: memoirs of a head girl 1
During the course of the day, we have the usual lessons, tests and quizzes and those who fall behind are suitably dealt with as you would expect from a school which is famed for its liberal use of old fashioned discipline.
As the day goes by, sometimes there are moments which stick in my memory as being out of the ordinary and worth making a note of, so I present my journal of extraordinary events.
Unequal treatment
We had a maths test comprising of three problems, each problem was more difficulty than the last. The pass mark was 75% so if you are reading this and you understand the basics of maths then you will have figured out that the only way to pass is to get all of the problems correct, this is of course unfair but it is not the only unfair thing that happened during this test.
While we are all working through the problems, Miss Hastings walks around the room offering help to people who are struggling and preemptively marking answers for those who have finished one of the maths problems.
I managed to finish quite quickly and Miss came to mark them but noticed that I had the second problem wrong, the second problem was around twelve equations and I had got the very last equation wrong so I was able to correct it very quickly and Miss came back to mark it correct. All was good, I was going to avoid a caning!
Unfortunately Miss Hastings had other ideas, at the end of the test she asked us all to read our results out, when it came to me I of course called out 3 out of 3 correct Miss. This is where it all became unfair, I was told that even though I got them correct by the end, I never got them all right to start with and had this been a proper exam I would have failed and so I will still be receiving 6 of the best for not checking my own work.
This is complete unequal treatment just because Im head girl and if you know anything about me, you will know that I’m not one to use foul language, but after such unfairness I couldn’t help but blurt out ‘this is bullshit’.
Miss Hastings: Oh you are definitely coming to the front young lady.
Inequality is not fair and I plan to do something about this unfair treatment at the next full school day.
You cant trust anybody
One of the students brought in some toys a long time ago and when you turn them on they make fart noises. He’s always getting into trouble for them.
I managed to get hold of one and turned it on then quickly tossed it under someone else’s chair and it let out it’s fart noise just as Miss Hastings was talking. It was so funny and she looked over in the general direction where it had landed.
The boy who was sat in the chair I tossed it under realized what happened and quickly picked it up and just as he was about to hold it up and tell Miss what someone had done it let out it’s fart noise! Miss looked at him and his face was mortified, he’d been caught red handed and Miss wasn’t taking any prisoners, she ordered him to the front of the class all the while he was exclaiming his innocence.
Half listening to him, she held it up and asked if anybody else knows about this? It was at this point that all of the tell tales piped up….
Oh I think it was thrown from over there miss (pointing towards me)…….
Why don’t you ask Lucie about it miss…….
The last time I saw it, Lucie was holding it miss……
And once more I was brought to the front of the class and punished even though I wasn’t the one that was caught with it.
The Christmas angel and the not so perfect crime
With christmas coming up, we were all given cut outs of christmas angels to colour in to decorate the class with while Miss went to prepare for the party.
As soon as Miss was out of the room, the class felt a bit more relaxed and I soon finished colouring in my angel with felt pens. I coloured mine in blue skin with red clothes so it was like a smurf angel and then started looking around at what other people were doing with theirs.
It was then that I had a fun idea so I started asking people to pass me their angels to have a look at, none of the class would because they didn’t trust me but we had a new boy who passed his angel over without any hesitation and I immediately grabbed it and drew a big penis on the front of it then handed it back!!
I knew it wouldn’t be easy to get away with because I was the only one that had that colour of felt pen, in fact most were using crayons but while one of the other boys was turned around looking at the angel sporting a penis, I seized the opportunity and slipped the offending felt pen into the side pocket of his blazer.
This was going to be the perfect crime!!!
When Miss Hastings came back in she slowly went around the class looking at everyone’s angels until she got to the new boy..
Miss Hastings: I suppose you think that’s funny do you?
New Boy: I don’t know where that came from, all I can say is, it’s not me that did it….
Miss Hastings: Does anyone else know where this might have come come from?
Me: Miss have you tried looking in Geoff’s pocket?
So Miss Hastings searches Geoff’s pockets and surprise surprise she catches him with the offending pen in his pocket that perfectly matches the colour that the penis was drawn in!!!
Geoff immediately denied having anything to do with it and said he didn’t know how the pen got into his pocket but if you compare the colour with the colour of the clothes that Lucie’s angel is wearing then they look very similar.
So of course a big deal was made holding up the pen against my angel, then holding the new boys angel against mine to compare the colour and once again my plan was foiled.
What should have been the perfect crime was thwarted at the last minute.
Once again I was called to the front of the class and we all know how that goes…..
Throw the parcel
During our after party we all got to play pass the parcel, for those of us who have played this before at Westgate we all remember when peeling back a layer of paper would often reveal an order to be caned rather than a treat.
So as you can imagine, I treat the parcel like a ticking time bomb, throwing it onto the next person after it had barely fallen into my lap. I did not want to get caught holding it when the music stops.
As time when on it became more and more apparent that the parcel was full of treats and nobody had so far unwrapped a layer to reveal any kind of punishment whatsoever, it was all novelty toys.
This was confusing and I refused to be lulled into a false sense of security. I was sure that maybe all of the outer wrappers might reveal a toy but I felt like there was a good chance that the final inner wrapper might contain a sentence for the beast of all canings so I continued to treat the parcel like it was made of hot coals.
As the parcel got smaller and smaller, so did my sense of impending doom and instead of just quickly passing it to the person next to me I began throwing to whoever I was looking at, anywhere across the circle of chairs just to get that parcel away from me as quickly as possible.
Of course that game descended into chaos, other people catching my lead started doing the same too and we were all determined not to be the one left holding it when that final wrapper came off. The parcel became like a typhoon, flying everywhere, chaos descended, Miss Hastings came over to calm everyone down and the music finally stopped.
One of the boys were left holding the parcel and as an anticlimax the final present ended up not being a punishment but was actually a cooling gel face mask. Which I would actually have liked.
All should have been good with the world, pass the parcel had been genuine, nobody got sneaked into getting caned…. except Miss Hastings didn’t see it that way, she wanted to know who started the chaos and to make sure they got what was coming to them.
Sometimes you just cant win. You start throwing the parcel because you’re sure that if you are left holding it then you are going to get caned, but then you get caned anyway for throwing the parcel.