S'cool Days

There is an “Inside Joke” challenge on Vocal, the premise of which is “Share a funny, true story about you and one of your childhood friends.” The problem with this challenge is that very often funny stories are over very quickly when they are committed to paper.

Two of my favourite funny books , Spike Milligan’s “Puckoon” and Harvard Lampoon’s “Bored of the Rings” have lots of funny lines and incidents in them , but cannot keep it up for the whole volume. See what I have done , I have already written a hundred words and not even mentioned anything funny about me and a childhood friend.

My secondary schooling and sixth form studies was at Preston Catholic College, an all boys school taught by Jesuit Priests located in Winckley Square next to an all girls school , Winckley Square Convent taught by nuns; instant temptation there then.

So anyway the following paragraphs are incidents that still bring a smile to my face.

The first was not in school at all , but my friend Harry used to tell jokes, similar to the style of Billy Connolly or Eddie Izzard , the punchline was almost irrelevant but obviously necessary, but to use a Tolkienesque expression “the tale grew in the telling” , and kept us all entertained for a good half an hour. This night however he started around seven and it was after ten when he finally said “I can’t tell you the punchline , it’s not funny”. Three hours we were waiting for that , and it was engrossing and funny. Two lads stood at the door . “You’re not leaving til you tell us” . The whole incident was quite funny. Harry relented , delivered the punchline and it wasn’t funny , but the story and effect was.

I can hardly remember the story except it involved aqualungs.

Back to school now and in an Religious Instruction lesson my mate asked the priest this question:

"Say you die and go to heave and meet up with Saint Peter at the pearly gates and he says - 'We gave you , wine , women , gambling , food and so many opportunities , and all you did was say prayers and be celibate , you have totally wasted your life , we don't want the likes of you in here'"

Credit to the Jesuit priest , he replied you could be right , we rely on faith , and if we knew death would lead us to a perfect heaven , people would be throwing themselves off cliffs to get there.

Another incident was at a school disco , one of my mates was DJing and all the cool kids got up to dance to "The Jean Genie" by David Bowie , but he had a cunning plan , he managed to segue it into the Sweet's "Blockbuster" which uses the same Bo Diddley "I'm A Man" riff.

It took about two minutes for the "cool kids" to realise they were dancing to the bubble gum pop of The Sweet (actually the Sweet could more than hold their own in heavy metal company) but the "cool kids" sulked and left the dancefloor. That was a most amusing episode.

Then there was the occasion when one of my friends brought in the Amon Duul II debut album. The Jesuit Latin teacher saw it and said to my mate, "Do you know what that means?" With a wry smile.

The album was "Phallus Dei" If you don't know what it means Google it and see why the Jesuit priest smiled.

He didn't take any further action , and it is a great example of the "Krautrock" genre which if you are a little musically adventurous you are well worth investigating.

The lead in song is "S'cooldays" by the Australian Stanley Frank , a song I have always loved , which you will probably have to hit Discogs if you want a copy.

I hope these tales have brought at least a smile to your face. Thank you for reading.