Just call me Jimy Hendricks

I have wanted an electric guitar for about four years now. I don't know why. It isn't like I have a single musical bone in my body. Although, thinking about it I DID play the recorder for two years. Got to Grade 2 thankyouverymuch. There wasn't a finer player of 'Au Claire De La Lune' in all of Twickehnam. And then I played the clarinet for a bit... but we don't talk about that particular stage of my life. Let's just say, I was going through some dark times, it was generally a low patch, I turned to the clarinet for comfort and... well... things happened.

I don't even know what I'm talking about now. In recent posts I have been blogging like I have Alzheimers. Every two paragraphs I have to mentally climb out of my head, put on some big clompy boots, then kick myself in the back of my skull - thus re-BOOT-ing my brain (oh, ha-ha) and getting myself back on track. And in this case, the track is the hardcore chord track that I be layin' down with my new electric guitar.

Whoops, I skipped ahead a bit there. Basically - yes - I have wanted an electric guitar for a while. It's just something that appeals to me, like being able to bodypop or growing a moustache. Well, after certain events in my Lower 6th (fucking Asians with their powdered glass and their mocking laughter), the bodypopping is out of the question. For now. And if you have met me you will be well aware that I am simply incapable of growing proper facial hair. I have like two long black hairs on my chin and a load of blonde hairs that are invisible to the naked eye. Blonde hairs do not an impressive moustache make and so I have pretty much had to cross those two dreams off of the list of things to achieve. Luckily, though, getting an electric guitar does not require any particular level of dance skill or testosterone, and so that was definitely ON the list.

So I decided to myself 'I am definitely getting a guitar, and hell to all who oppose me'. This basically consisted of two people. The first was Rose, my little Jimmeny Cricket, who's dad MAKES guitars and who was basically 'Do you know anything thing about guitars, why you want one, or even the first thing of how to play it?'
My answer was a resounding snort of derision. Do I know anything about guitars? Do *I* know anything about guitars? Me, Thomas Phipps, with my two years of recorder training and all the practise I've had on my baby cousin's brightly coloured plastic guitar that has all the buttons that you press and it makes farmyard noises? The way she asked me implied that she thought my knowledge of chord progressions, seventh barre scales, chops, licks, hammering, harmonics, tuning, strings, tremolo bars, artificial dead string or arpeggios was somewhat lacking. To answer her question, I simply laughed heartily and clapped her on the back. Metaphorically.
"Oh Rose, you do make me laugh! And as far as I can tell, it's all pretty simple... you just plug it into the amplification bellows, put your 50p into the slot, then you press one of the sound-strings and to the best of my knowledge that makes it play the solo of Sweet Child of Mine. Or a sheep."
That shut HER up.
The other person who was offended at my attempts to enter the musical spectrum was my good friend Steve. Don't let the name fool you - Steve is not a boy. She's a girl. I think. Well, biologically she is, but you wouldn't know by looking at her. I swear she has more facial hair than me. And the boobs are about comprable. Anyway, Steve is quite the new romantic arteest. I would describe everything about her as either post-ironic or quasi. She goes to the beach and watches the sunset and writes bad poetry about it. She likes to go raving and take ecstasy and then cry on the train home just because life is so... damn... beautiful. She then goes on the Stanley Kubrick group on Facebook and types clever messages like "The man was an innovative genius". Her interests include "pursuing the absolute heart of the poem of life". She once read a poem by Ginsberg. I think that she thinks that anybody who cannot flawlessly quote reams of poetry is a philistine. She also plays the guitar so I made the mistake of asking her for advice - "Which type of guitar is better, red or black?"
She was actually offended that I'd decided to get a guitar. I think her exact words were "YOU ARE JUST LIKE ANOTHER NU-COOL WANNABE WHO ONLY WANTS A GUITAR TO PULL THE BRAINLESS BIMBOS THAT YOU GET INTO YOUR BEDROOM!"
That kind of offended me. Firstly, because... nu-cool wannabe? From somebody who lists "psy-rock" and "psy-trance" amongst their favourite music genres? Secondly... if there's any brainless bimbos in my bedroom, I won't be needin' no guitar to be pullin' them. They don't call me 'Fifteen Second Phipps' for nothing.

NB: The 'fifteen second' is the time between me meeting the girl and me getting off with her. It does not refer to anything else.
NB: Nobody has ever called me that.
NB: It's not a nickname that really sums me up, to be honest.
NB: Hey guys, everyone's calling me 'Fifteen Second Phipps' from now on! Pass it on.

Thirdly, I feel that somebody who is meant to be such a free spirit should not be trying to cut down my talent in the prime of its life. Imagine if someone had told the young Leonardo Da Vinci "That's rubbish, that"; do you think he ever would have achieved greatness? NO. THAT IS THE ANSWER. So, in mocking my burgeoning talent, Steve is essentially breaking the young Leonardo Da Vinci's paintbrushes and stealing Richard Ashford's lunch money that he was saving up to buy a guitar and not letting Lassie go to rescue-dog school. But did that thought deter Steve? No it did not. She then proceeded to confirm that I know nothing about music. She asked me if I knew who Bob Dylan was. I said 'Who?' She said, had I heard of Jimmy Hendrix or Bob Marley. I thought that they were the same person. I actually did. Well, to be honest how many Jamaican singers do we NEED? Seems like we're doubling up on a lot of them. I bet they were pretty samey. She then confidently told me that I'd get bored of it in a week. Yeah well. I GOT BORED OF HER FACE IN A WEEK.

Anyway so I then thought of what guitar I was going to buy. There were so many options, there were Les Pauls and Fenders and Stratocastsers, basses and electrics and classicals and multiple pickups and nylon and steel and second hand and autographed and jazz and blues. After a lot of deliberation, I finally decided on the model I wanted: Cheap. I'd already figured that the height of my guitar career was likely to be me sitting on a mattress on the floor twanging it to the beat of a hippy playing one drum. I certainly wasn't blowing 300 of my hard-woogas on some twanger. I figured fuck it and bought a cheapo one off eBay. This was pretty exciting as it was my first eBay purchase ever. It became even more exciting when I realised that I had bid on a guitar with only twenty minutes left on the clock, and I hadn't bothered to set up PayPal or even find my credit card yet, so there was a mad panic when I thought that I'd be jailed for bidding on an eBay guitar with no financial backup. Fortunately my total lack of knowledge didn't appear to matter, as what did my feedback for the sale say? "Quick response and fast payment. Perfect! THANKS!!" Check it out, "pemburytrading" digs me. I got TWO count em TWO exclamation marks. WHOOP. I especially like the way that the feedbacker yelled the word THANKS. Like it was only at that point that he had realised just what a GREAT ebayer I was and just had to shout about it to the entire world.
After a long and nail-biting wait, my guitar arrived. It came in a box packaged with an amp. The box had a picture of some flames and a guy playing the guitar and shooting waves of pure concentrated cool onto an audience. I was like woah so I excitedly got it out of the box.

There were lots of things attached, including wires and springs. I plugged it in, then searched vainly for the slot in which to insert the money, or - indeed - the cranking lever at the back to wind up the bellows. There was nothing. There wasn't even an activation switch. I was somewhat annoyed as this meant that either my understanding of how a guitar worked was severely flawed, or they had simply not come included. Fortunately I looked it up on the internet and it turns out that this particular make of guitar was neither steam nor kinetic powered, so that was a relief.

After about a day of casually twanging wires at random, singing a song that I'd made up called 'Look At Me I'm Playing the Guitar and Twanging the Strings Oh Yeah (acoustic mix)', I decided to learn how actually to play it. I allocated an hour, after which I was going to put my name in NME and book myself into a tour of Europe with my new band, 'Just Thomas'. It's like Just Jack, except in this case, the name is more literal. There was some stuff about tuning it at the beginning. I couldn't find a 'tune' button on the bodywork so I just figured - hey, it's making a sound, I'm musically deaf, who cares if its tuned or not - then turned to page one of the internet site. "Playing Scales". Scales? Scales are for girls who play the clarinet, not wicked hard awesome legends like me. I laugh at your scales! So I thought fuck this then skipped at random to about lesson seven. This is the sight that greeted my eyes:



I was like wtf. Guitar sucks.

After some more excitement, I read another lesson. After a bit of practise, I have now learnt some chords. For those not possessing the same musical talent as me, chords are like small groups of notes that when played together buzz and go mute. The chords I know are G Major, C Major and D Major. Interestingly, every time I play them they sound different. I also am unable to switch from one chord to another without stopping, looking up the chord in the book, slowly changing fingers one by one, then twanging again. This makes me playing "Leaving on a Jetplane" a long and tbh arduous affair. It basically sounds like I am anally raping John Denver's mushy corpse. After about a week of this I figured that the noises I get basically sounds a bit like a guitar, so I can get away with just playing G major over and over again and singing tunefully over the top. So for about five minutes the other day I sang Wonderwall in G Major, just strumming in time. What's good is the fact that my fingers aren't exactly adept at staying in place so every time I strum it sounds a bit different. It didn't sound GREAT tbh. But then I reckon that Leonardo's first stick figures were a bit shit.

However, I persevered and every day I learn a new and exciting skill on the guitar. For example, today I figured out how to attach the strap. Then, as my mother had gone out, I wandered around the house in just my underwear and my Hampton Boat Club hat chasing my dog and madly playing C Major over and over again. The dog got so stressed that she ran into a door.

My mother was out buying my little brother - who is 16 - his birthday present. It was a skateboard. I am so totally gonna steal it so then I can continue my mission of annexing, lameifying and belittling every single teenage sub-culture that I have missed out on during my formative years. I have already ruined rave music, spray-painting, hoodies and the guitar for my siblings. I'm working on clubbing: "IT'S JOLLY LOUD IN HERE, AND WHY ARE THESE GIRLS RUBBING THEMSELVES AGAINST ME? THIS SUCKS." I reckon that pretty soon I'll move onto piercings, drugs, and 'rap music'.

ROCK AND RAAAAWWWWWWWWWWWWL *Does rock and roll fingers*

I reckon that there are probably really good guitarists out there who are reading this post and getting actually angry about the fact that I own a guitar. Me owning any sort of musical instrument is giving a hungry korean guy a new puppy. They're most likely thinking 'There's probably a nice Mexican boy out there who would really LOVE a new electric guitar and who would really put some effort into learning it and getting good, while here you are just not even bothering and frankly taking the piss.' NOT TRUE. If I was taking the piss, would I have thrown a stapler at my little brother when he tried to pick it up and made a little dent below one of the pickups? I'm not taking the piss. I'm just uncaring.

Ben's Party (2nd June 2006)

This is not a post about the party that my Ben threw for his birthday - THAT IS NOT IMPORTANT TO THIS STORY. In fact forget about it. Things happened. Some hearts were broken, some allegiances formed, some tears shed, family albums were looked at and tiny penises admired, some conversations had, some gastric juices expunged and some awkward flirting done. That is all taken for granted. It's all you need to know. What is important in this case is the state I was in at about ten past midnight; everyone else was leaving in their taxis and cars or feet. The music was being turned down. A cat was asleep on the floor. I was swaying unsteadily, pretty much rat-arsed, staring with bloodshot unfocussed eyes on the two wheeled contraption that sat in front of me.

"Oh, you knob," I said, rocking quietly from side to side to the baseline of Ben's remix of Bound 2 Da Reload/Sandstorm. I looked about, then gave my bike a little kick just to make sure that it still worked. It fell over. I sighed. Then I did that little drunk dance that you do when you think that nobody is watching - you know, the one when you kind of bob from foot to foot on semi-tiptoes with your arms in a little spazmoidy flipper mode, weaving a bit and trying not to spill your beer down your leg again. Yeah, that dance. Eventually I figured that there was no way that I was going to get out of this, so I unsteadily picked up the bike, swung one leg over the saddle, then overbalanced and tipped sideways onto a wall. Fortunately, I didn't fall all the way over as the wall was in the way so for a few seconds I perched there, both feet on the pedals, my head pressed against the wall at a 45 degree angle, staring intently ahead. I looked like a lean-to. It was a pretty religious experience. A blonde girl walked past me. She looked at me. I looked back. She nodded. I nodded back and fell the rest of the way over. Ohhh dear, I thought. That was certainly not intentional. I quickly got back up - although to be honest there is no smooth way to do that - but the girl Had Gone.

I sighed. Then I realised that I was in no real state to cycle home in the dark. I then realised that I had not turned on either of the lights on the bike. I switched on the front one. It was out of batteries. I switched on the back one. It was out of batteries. Oh, that's a shame, I thought. I put on my helmet. Well, I say 'put on my helmet', I actually meant 'Scratched my head and wondered why I hadn't brought a helmet, working bike lights, or even bright coloured clothes'. However. To cut a long story short about five minutes later I was pedalling down the road from Ben's house as fast as my fat little legs could carry me. This is the story about some things that happened to me on my ride home.

Night cycling. Is anyone getting a sense of deja vu? Oh yeah. I know that I have blogged about this before, but, well, life is circular. The more you spin it, the quicker you get back to where you started. Kind of like the wheel... of a bicycle (that is a good link that would probably get me a few points in my synoptic literature exam). But all of the great masters had to repeat work. Cezanne painted the same apple every five years. Damien Hirst is back to slicing animals in two. Even the musical group 'The Automatic' have released the same basic song three times in a row under different names. Now I am not trying to compare myself to 'The Automatic'; heaven forbid. However I still feel that there is an untapped reserve of material to discuss when talking about cycling home in the dark from a party.

Especially as this time I was drunk! That's the key difference here.

Is cycling drunk illegal? I hope not or else I broke the law. Actually at the party I asked this of some guy who had been in my yeargroup for the past five years but who I had not spoken to ever. His response was "Yes. It is illegal. And if you crash into a car you get turned jewish." At the time he was drinking two beers and a bottle of wine so I do not know how accurate this information was, but wouldn't it be excellent if it was true! Just like some really obscure by-law from Disraeli's Ministry (1874-1880, fact fans THAT'S RIGHT I'VE BEEN REVISING HISTORY). Kind of like that law in that town in Scotland that says it's ok to shoot a Welshman, as long as it it is done on the third Monday of the month with a bow and arrow from the town clocktower. I would love to get pulled over by a policeman who breathalises me, then reads out from his little book "Any man found pedalling a bicycle drunk shall henceforth be converted to Judaism... sorry, sonny, I'm gonna have to take that foreskin".

SORRY this isn't relevent to the story in hand which was what I did when I was drunk cycling home.

It is fascinating the ideas that come to you when you are drunk. For example, making a mixture of biscuits and wine called wiscuitbine (not delicious). Or telling the scary mother of my friend that her sweater looked "Like vomit... seriously, I don't want to be rude, but VOMIT... sick..." [apparently]. Or wearing a top hat and thinking that it looks good. One girl at this party told me that the previous night she and her friend had gotten wasted and then decided to have a three-legged race, and then they'd fallen over and she had nearly broken her nose. At the time, I am sure that it made perfect sense. That's the kind of gold I'm talking about here. So the situation while cycling was that I was obviously wasted, wearing no safety gear, on a bike which was missing a pedal and couldn't switch gears and had questionable braking skills, on a road with very little lighting and lots of drivers who were probably as drunk as I was.

So basically I decided to phone my friend Rose. Now this may not sound crazy, but consider the fact that I'm not great on the phone at the best of times and it basically requires my total concentration to stay on top of the conversation. Also consider the fact that it meant that I lost an all-important hand. Thirdly, consider the fact that I have never ever phoned up anybody out of the blue ever. EVAR. So basically the conversation went along these lines.

ME: HI ROSE.
Rose: What.
ME: I'M CYCLING DRUNK
ROSE: Good.
ME: HOW ARE YOU? WHAT'S GOING ON WITH ROSE?
ROSE: Revising.
ME: HEY CHECK IT OUT NO HA-
ROSE: ??
ME: NO HANDS IS NOT A GOOD IDEA
ROSE: Oh. Well.
ME: HOLY SHIT A LORRY!!!
ROSE: :o

It continued like that. I think I was quite an irritating person to have a phone conversation with. Especially as my phone arms kept getting tired so every two minutes I'd have to put the phone in my mouth and then swap. I also gave a running commentary on every random thing that happened, including bumps in the road, the lack of light, and the license plates of most cars that drove past. It was pretty good. For me. I mean, Rose was not sleeping to hear this shit so I guess that she didn't enjoy it much. But I have been pretty much abusing Rose for the past five months and I see no reason to stop now.
I think I phoned Rose because I was a lonely bean and so wanted someone to talk to on the way back; I mean I was fully expecting my cycle back home in the dark to be a solitary persuit. However, I was amazed to find myself joined by a FELLOW NIGHT CYCLIST on the way back. He suddenly pulled out into the road while I was cycling along and kind of weaved back and forth madly. "Ding-dong," I thought, "Here comes trouble."
It was an indian-looking man wearing overalls. I am just describing what he looked like. He was on a bike. However he did not have a turban on. If he had, I would have been able to break out the joke that I made up the other day. Fuck it I am saying it anyway it's been built up enough. Right.

What do you call a guy with a turban on a bike?
A SIKH - LIST!!!!!!!!!11!!!!!1!!!!!!

!!!!

The other biker was annoyingly cycling along at such a pace as was not fast enough to move away from me, but not slow enough that I could overtake his ass and speed my way home. To be honest it felt like he was listening in on my phone call. He wouldn't have gotten much out of it.

My side: "Tell me a joke... A physics joke? OK!... I don't know, please tell me the answer... What's an elepton?.... Well if you knew I didn't do physics and was unlikely to get the reference WHY DID YOU TELL ME THAT JOKE?"

Eventually I got bored of him and so quickly did a smooth little overtake and sped away, still talking on the phone. However, about a minute later I was surprised to see him overtake me back. He didn't look at me or talk to me or even make any reference of having seen me at all, but good God that gauntlet was down and I was in no mood (AKA sober enough) to resist a drag racing challenge set by some little indian fellow. So I overtook him, still chatting blithely to Rose. He overtook me again. Then, he TOOK OUT HIS MOBILE PHONE, and HELD IT TO HIS EAR as though PRETENDING to have a conversation with somebody. He didn't say anything, he just kept the handset lit up so that it was obvious that I could see. He kept making surreptitious little glances behind his back to make sure that I could see. I swapped ears. He swapped ears. I started laughing, he turned round and pedalled away.

I overtook him again but he wasn't having any of it and so finally we reached the t-junction. He went left, I went right. Never were we two to meet again, but maybe... I hope to see him again, some darkened night, with the wind whistling through my hair and the thrill of the cold night racing through my veins, for another race, a race to end all races, a true proclamation of our right to be alive, to be free, to cycle with no lights through darkened streets, to tame the devil and ride him all the way to pandemonium and back, to couple hell, stiffen up the limbs, proclaim the aspect of the tiger and let our thoughts be bloody or nothing worth!

When I arrived at my house I hit the brakes too hard and I fell off and smooshed my goolies on the crossbar.

Blogging, eh?

I am an impotent blogger. I can no longer blog properly. I mean, I never thought this would happen to me. It has happened every now and again and it does happen to every guy and I know that it really isn't a big deal, but my god I feel emasculated. I can no longer get the blogging boner like I used to.
It used to be that I'd be constantly up for a bit of blog love. Day or night, 24/7, the computer would whisper so sweetly to me. "Tom, come and let us make sweet blogging love." And I'd be right in there, blogging away about things that have happened in my life or what I thought about stuff or weird little rants or anything that came into my head.

And now I am gone. The cupboard is bare. The bunker is abandoned and the violinists have gone home. This is a sad sad day as I still have SO MUCH TO OFFER THE WORLD. And I do still have amusing thoughts about things. And I still have as many zany adventures as I always have had. For example, the other day, I decided to make myself some scrambled eggs as I had learnt to do so the previous day and was basically looking for any excuse to eat some eggs. However, WE HAD RUN OUT OF EGGS so I went to the shop to buy some. I paid the money but only on the way back opened the carton and THREE OF THE EGGS WERE BROKEN IN THE PACKAGING. Disaster! I had half a mind to turn back and write a letter of complaint to the indian fellow who sold them to me but at that point I was halfway home and I had walked to the shop wearing pyjama bottoms and slippers. I probably deserved it. But then I still had enough to make scrambled eggs. The secret is to put little cubes of butter inside the egg mixture. So that was a pretty hardcore day. What else have I been up to? OH I KNOW. I got told off at school! That's a pretty exciting story which oughta fill a few inches of blog column until its time for me to go home.

My school ended last Friday. FOR GOOD. That's right. FOR GOOD. I am no longer a schoolboy. I am a school... man. It's true, you know. I have grown a few hairs on my chin and have purchased a wifebeater. I still however have no hair on my upper thighs. Smooth. I like the eunuch look, though. I'll give me an advantage the next time that my fellow schoolchums and I have to swim across a muddy crocodile infested river to get to a watering-hole. Remember, you don't have to be the fastest to escape the crocodiles, you just have to be faster than the slowest. Who I reckon will be a fat hairy kid.

So, what are my reactions to my days at school ending? Am I distressed? Angry? Hurt? Nostalgic? Any of these things? To be honest... no. Not even in the slightest. I have no opinion whatsoever for or against my school. I went, I made literally no impact, it made very little impact on me, I finished, I'm leaving. I can barely remember the middle two years and I spent pretty much the entire 6th Form being apathetic. Language. Meh. Literature. Meh. History. Mehmehmeh. Meh is the word. I have been pretty much itching to get out of this place for the last year and a half.

So the end of school really isn't that much of a big deal for me. However, I have found it pretty interesting on an anthropological basis, as like a microcosmic example of what would happen to society if suddenly there was a zombie plague or apocalypse or something that caused all systems of rules or regulations to break down. A really SMALL microcosm, to be fair. But still a microcosm.

Microcosm microcosm microcosm.

Because, in the past few weeks, the entire Upper 6th form has realised that the system of rules and regulations that previously held us so rigorously within the boundaries of 'acceptable behaviour' will soon simply cease to exist. THE TIES ARE BROKEN. We are being cut loose! We see that the walls are crumbling. And thus a slow process of boring them down has begun. First of all, standards of dress slipped - regulation jackets were abandoned, ties were fogotten or replaced with funky brown 'East Berlin Rationer' models, and pretty soon people just started showing up in tshirts with hastily added jackets. That was if they showed up at all. Those glorious days of whole classes showing up to lessons or teachers even giving a shit are long gone.
It's now a case of "So, only two people today? Where's John?"
*John walks past the open door to the classroom, blithely looks in, then scurries off*
"Bye John!"
And in those lessons in which people are present, everything has been taught. Education has ground to a humiliating halt. It has degenerated into either an angry question and answer between pupil or teacher, or a 'Oh, fuck it, let's talk about the football/fitness of the new RS Assistant/the class Asian who can't really understand English that well' kind of thing. For the past fortnight, one class has simply been the teacher insulting our educational potential and actively mocking us.
"Sir, I'm not quite getting the syllabus for 2704... do you have to include lexis?"
"Seriously, where have you been for the past year? Fucking retard."
As for work... nah. Work stopped. People just starting to point blank refuse to do it. Teachers would ask for essays for homework and it would just be a case of "... nah, didn't do it." I quite like the way that we started to decide what work would be useful for us to do or not. We have finally taken our destinies into our own hands. This is worrying, however, as we have all decided that we are already perfect and thus need to do no more. I pretty much figured "I'll do it in revision time". Hasn't happened. Has. Not. Happened. I have not picked up a book to start revision yet. Or done a piece of homework for a week and a half. I kind of wish we'd just been on study leave like EVERY OTHER SCHOOL IN LONDON. At least then I would have done some work. But as it is... nah.

The majority of the teachers get it. They get that things are breaking down. They get that we are now above the law. They get this, and so they make concessions. They don't bother us with petty crap like doing up top buttons or tucking in shirts. It is just pointless, we have like ten minutes left in the school and then we fuck off on revision leave. They don't try to force us to work, they just feed us cake and play Articulate and bitch about their fellow co-workers. It is a good system. It keeps us from being rowdy. There's a delicate balance, but we just manage to keep things in check.

However, there are still some teachers who don't get that things have ended. There are those who still try to cling to those outmoded and outdated systems of law and order, the particularists who try to preserve their ancient powers of control and deception. They are like traffic wardens giving parking tickets in Hiroshima. They are rearranging the cutlery on the Titanic. They are ordering shiny shoes in Vietnam. They can't see that the Empire is crumbling. The classroms are standing tenantless and the sheeted pupils are squeaking and gibbering in the school corridors. They can't see that it's all coming down and the best they can try to do is ride the wave and survive for another year.

These teachers are knobs.

You know I said that I didn't really like my school? I don't. I have been trying to bring it down from the inside for about three years now. I have waged a war of resistance against 'them' - you know - the man and authority and the system and all that. However, when it comes to Edu-Terrorism, I am pretty pathetic. I don't even really want to be a nuisance. And so my resistance has personified itself in a series of pointless and insignificant and petty rebellions that even in the small picture mean nothing. For example. Last year I made loads of little men out of wire and scattered them liberally around the school. There was a week when you couldn't go anywhere without seeing a cheeky little wire man perched on a window-sill or sitting in a flowerpot or waving merrily out of one of the wanky pieces of sculpture that the Upper-6th artists had produced. What was especially fun was when I saw a wire man peeking out of a place that I hadn't originally left it. Unfortunately, the art department ran out of sculptor's wire (possibly because of my massive production line of wire men) and so THAT little covert resistance had to end. I wonder if there are still any wire men hangin' about in school now? That would be an interesting experiment, to check and see.

... actually, on second thought, it wouldn't.

My latest cunning scheme is just to switch off all of the lights I come across. There are so many lights left pointlessly on in our school; lights that do nothing and make no difference to the ambient light levels. It's my opinion, if you can see well enough with the lights off, then turn them fucking off.
I would like to say that this is some drive towards ecology and retention of electricity, but to be honest I do not give a flying fuck about the environment. Our school prides itself on being Carbon Neutral but seriously, don't get me started on that. What a wank idea.

So anyway there's this lightbulb on the landing below the English staircase and it is literally the most pointless shit ever. It is next to a window and thus the entire corridor is always lit up. However even if it wasn't, it lights up a corner section of the corridor. It is between two corridors that DO need to be properly lit up and so are. It is a three metre square hunk of barren landscape. There is NOTHING to trip up on. Only a total fucking retard would injure himself in this area of carpet and to be honest if you need a lightbulb to teach you not to trip over your own feet, should you really be allowed in our school without a team of small indian boys carrying you about? Or a leash?

So yes. I have been busily breaking down the system and turning off that light every time I pass it, which is about three times a day. And every time I return, somebody has been switching it back on again. It is like my nemesis, some shadowy (or the opposite, as the case may be) figure who sits in the background and constantly foils my attempts to have the corridor below the English offices half a shade darker.

Well. On Wednesday, we met. I was heading to the common room and I just did the usual thing of turnin' down the beatz, and as I was walking away, relishing the thrill of my crime, I heard a voice.

COME BACK HERE is what the voice said. So I naturally turned and for the first time faced my foe. And in that instant, everything made sense. He was some fucking Twat DT Teacher. Let's not get into my opinons of Design Technology as a subject (it isn't one). At best, it's a hobby for virgins. And I could tell, just by looking at this guy's super-lame tie and his too-tight trousers and his instantly forgettable glasses and his dumb shiny shoes that he was the very definition of an angry little virgin. Oh dear mate, no girls like you? THAT'S BECAUSE YOU ARE A KNOB DT TEACHER. Get a proper job. Teach a proper subject. Even economics would do. I was like grr wtf so I strolled up and gave him a look of such whithering contempt that I bet he probably thought to himself "Oh shit, this guy appears to be an English Student... all I know about is LEDs and wood. I'm out of my depth here... WHAT HAPPENS IF HE ASKS ME A QUESTION THAT CAN'T BE ANSWERED WITH A CIRCUIT DIAGRAM?"

However, I think he then realised the flipside of the equasion, which was "Well, I'm wearing a tie and shiny shoes and I am still technically a teacher so I can be as officious as I like."

"Turn on the light and explain why you switched it off," he said firmly. I turned on the light. The ambient light levels in the corridor were raised about half a degree. A moth that was flying by moved half an inch towards the ceiling then quietly said 'Fuck this' and flapped morosely away.
"I don't think it needs to be switched on."
This sort of flustered him. He mumbled something, then concluded his speech with "... and if anybody injures themselves in here because the light is switched off and I know that it's you whose done it, I'll have you."
I swear he must have been about an inch off of doing that thing when you point to your eyes then point back at the person. I think he was aiming for a kind of John Wayne "I'm the law around these parts, sonny" dangerous cool, but to be honest the effect was kind of debased by the fact that he was talking SWITCHING OFF THE WORLD'S MOST POINTLESS LIGHTBULB.

I kind of shrugged in an ice cool 'Do I give a damn' kind of way then I walked off. Suddenly there was a cracking sound behind me. I span and saw an electric cable come loose from the wall. It sparked and fizzed and then I realised that a small child was about to STEP ON IT. Fortunately, with the illumination from the light which the teacher had switched back on, the child saw it and managed to leap over it. 'Oh thank you Sir' said the boy 'You turned on that light and saved my life from the cable which was absolutely invisible to the naked eye in the daylight streaming through this window! You are a true hero!'
'Don't thank me', said the teacher 'Thank THE LIGHT'. And then a gang of 11 year olds carried him cheering down the corridor. He got a promotion and a medal and was regaled as a hero in the press. And then a week later, he finally had his first kiss.

No, wait, sorry, none of that happened. BECAUSE THE LIGHT DID NOT NEED TO BE TURNED ON. Knobhead.

Two days later I saw him skulking, lizardlike, along the art corridor - a place where HE HAD NO RIGHT TO BE - switching on all the lights. Seriously. Maybe lightbulbs are his thing. Other teachers concentrate on tucking in shirts or doing up top buttons or, you know, teaching pupils useful subjects in an inspiring way that will help them further on in their lives. But ol'Mr Twat DT likes to make sure that we're getting our money's worth from the school's lightbulb budget.

I am so glad that I don't go to that school any more.