Too Cool for School

It was way too sunny to spend the day cooped up in a classroom. Having been raised on comics in which characters often played truant to go on fishing trips or similar adventures, I decided to emulate them. I went into school to get my attendance mark on the register, and then I sneaked off.

As I walked along a farm track that led down to the riverside, the noise of the traffic behind me faded out, to be replaced by a much sweeter sound; the song of a skylark. I was reminded of a line from Blake’s poem The Schoolboy, which we had recently studied in English class.

And the skylark sings with me:

O what sweet company!

For this particular fourteen-year-old schoolboy, smoking, exploring and mischief making were on the timetable that day.

Keeping a Low Profile

I decided to walk to the town of Bedlington, some three miles away on the other side of the river. Here I would go unrecognised by the locals; an important factor, as a previous truancy trip had come unstuck when I was spotted in my home town by a friend of my mother’s, and she didn’t hesitate to snitch.

I made my way along the riverside walk and through the maintenance tunnels of the huge iron railway bridge that spans the river Blyth. After much trudging, I arrived at Bedlington town centre, parched, and weary from the walk. I was also hungry because I had spent my dinner money on cigarettes. I passed the time looking in shops and aimlessly wandering around.

Looking back, I wonder what the point of the venture had been. I was forfeiting a day’s education in order to tramp around the pavements on my own, bored and hungry, and with a three mile walk home on an empty stomach to look forward to.

In the afternoon, I decided to have one last cigarette before heading home. I went into the local Presto supermarket, where I sat down on a long row of seating that stood against a wall facing the checkouts. It may seem odd today, but smoking inside a supermarket was tolerated, if not encouraged, back then.

A Race Against Time

I was about half way through my cigarette when I got the feeling that someone was watching me. I scanned the checkouts and was mortified to see my own mother in a queue, giving me a glare of similar intensity to the laser beam that almost cost James Bond his family jewels in the film Goldfinger.

I told myself to stay calm and resist the urge to run from the store, but I needed to think fast. At that time my mother had a wool shop and she took a half-day on Wednesdays. Clearly she had decided to pop over to Bedlington to do some shopping on her afternoon off.

Although I was wearing a pretty conspicuous white jumper under my school blazer, I determined to issue a flat denial when I got home to face the inevitable angry grilling. My first objective, though, was to get out of the store. I waited a few seconds and then rose and walked casually towards the exit. Once outside, I ran like the clappers down the main street towards the woods.

My task was to get back to school to retrieve my bag and then get home before my mother, and to accomplish this, I would have to run all the way. I trotted through the woods, stopping frequently to get my breath back, and by the time I climbed the hill by the aforementioned railway bridge, I was in a state of near exhaustion.

I was making decent time, but it was touch and go whether I’d win the race, and I approached the school just as pupils were coming out. Then I had a stroke of luck. I saw a friend of mine coming down the road on his bicycle. I called for him to stop and, after explaining my predicament, he loaned me the bike so I could hurry along in my race against time. I rode into the school to retrieve my bag.

My friend’s bike was a Raleigh Chopper Sprint, that being a chopper bike, but with dropped racing handlebars rather than the usual ape hangers that typified that style of bike. I couldn’t see the point of these machines at all. To me, a chopper is all about being laid back, in the manner of Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda in the film Easy Rider, not leaning forward over the handlebars like someone doing a sprint in the Tour de France. Where’s the comfort in that?

Spilled Blood and an Unexpected Alibi

I got my bag from the deserted cloakroom. I reckoned I stood a decent chance of getting home before my mother, and I’d have time to get out of my distinctive white jumper. But fate had other plans for me.

On my way down the drive towards the school gates, the strap slipped off my shoulder and the bag, a haversack weighty with books, smashed into the front wheel of the bike, causing me to lose control. I came a cropper, hitting the tarmac quite heavily, grazing a knee and cutting my head. I was somewhat dazed but a passing prefect helped me to my feet and took me to the Medical Room inside the school.

A female teacher patched me up, my friend’s bike was placed in a secure room, and then the deputy headmaster, no less, took me home in his car. My mother answered the door, and the deputy head explained that I’d had a bit of an accident at school. Although I was in pain, I allowed myself a smile at this iron-clad alibi that had fallen from the sky into my lap.

Recuperating on the settee with orange squash and a bag of Hula-Hoops, I came under intense scrutiny from my mother, whose look seemed to be saying, ‘I know that was you at the supermarket’, but I played the wounded soldier admirably and I got away with it.

I did ‘fess up’ many years later, and I got a clip round the earhole for my trouble. My mother said, “Of course I knew it was you. Do you think I don’t know my own son?”

(Originally published on Medium)