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although it is commonly noted how he stands and stares and stands and stares at showering boys when neither standing nor staring is necessary. One day during five-a-side, I flip forwards and crash down on my right hand. This stirs a blip of compassion from Mr Sweeney, who then takes me into his private office, whereupon he proceeds to massage my wrist with anti-inflammatory cream. At 14, I understand the meaning of the unnecessarily slow and sensual strokes, with eyes fixed to mine, and I look away, and the moment passes. Shortly thereafter, drying myself off after a shower, Mr Sweeney leans into my mid-region to ask, ‘What’s that scar down your stomach, Steven?’ – but his eyes are lower, and these are the moments that cause you to check certain words in dictionaries, and for the first time you are forced to consider yourself to be the prize, or the quarry.
    Air from 1947 hangs in the school stockrooms where outmoded textbooks stockpile against unwanted plaques anointing proud achievements of boys long-since gone, like a roll-call of the war dead. The slowness of days drills the brain, especially around 2:30 in the afternoon, when time never seems to move, and the 3:40 bell hangs lifelessly until the last drop of nausea has been wrung from the brow. Chalk and stale sweat catch whatever air escapes into these barren vaults, and a yellowing world map is all that the eye can rest upon, with not one continent available to you or meant for you. It is impossible to imagine a time when we shall feel free of all of this dissonance, and it is impossible to meet the situation halfway. Sadly, it is also impossible to simply just get on with it. My eyes lock permanently on the view from the windows, as I long to the point of tears to be released from this prison maze, or this maze prison, where I am ridiculed simply for just turning up. Mr Pink is reading aloud a story entitled Boris the W ig-maker. He stops suddenly and burns in my direction as my eyes watch the black rain banging against feeble windows.
    ‘Steven, who exactly was Boris?’
    ‘I’m sorry, I’m not interested,’ I quickly reply, but very softly.
    ‘Right!! Stand up!!’ Warhorse Mr Pink charges to a cupboard to grapple for his treasured leather strap, and I am ordered to stand and take four whacks of the belt across my hands. I am then ordered to sit down, and, his turbulent rush fed, he continues to read to the class. I return my gaze to the rain. It is all so utterly stupid. I am at this point struck by the understanding that this freakish use of the leather strap is the answer for all teachers who find themselves in a situation that they simply cannot deal with, or answer. It is their weakness, not ours. Simply because I quite honestly admitted to having no interest in Boris the W ig-maker , how does a violent charge with a leather strap provide an answer?
    Occasionally we suffer the disdainful presence of a local priest, young and patronizing, with a name never to be recalled. Oddly, he seems to fix his curiosity upon me, possibly because I sit aloof, possibly because I do not contribute to polite laughter, possibly because of the newly tended weave in my hair.
    ‘And what do YOU like in life?’ he asks me, ready to play the patronizing game at my expense in order to raise a giggle from the rest of the class, thus rendering him popular for a few perverse minutes.
    ‘Mott the Hoople,’ I answer truthfully.
    ‘Oh, I see,’ he smirks, greater and grander than us all, ‘most boys like girls – he likes Mott the Hoople.’
    The Catholic priest looks to the rest of the class having given them their cue for courteous laughter. But no laughter comes, and the priest looks back at me with his face of hate – as if to warn me that there will come another time when he shall score.
    The topsy-turvydom of 1972 had brought an explosion of music and art and newness into my life and I was now in full self-development mode and desperate to be free of censure.