Time of My Life: School in the Disco Era

T I M E   O F   M Y   L I F E

6.33am local time, Fri 15 May 2015, air conditioner on (20°C, 68°F)

LET’S go into the Time Tunnel for a bit today.

At the Temple of Apollo (actually northwest London), we replied in our good old English tongue merely to convince ourselves that none of us could understand each other; but I noticed that when I smiled slightly on concluding, others did likewise. This fact, and the similar occurrences of our lives, made us unable to resist the temptation to leave. The crisp, freshly polluted air of the town air outside the cave acted as an immediate tonic, and I felt a new life and new courage coursing through me.

School, London, 1970s (Photo: Michael Arthy)

Smack in the coveted front row, behind the schoolmasters and schoolmistresses (as we used to call teachers then).

We used to do this (on and off, whenever we’re in the mood):—

British school life had a longish ‘tradition’ of getting students considered good in certain subjects to stand behind that subject’s teacher — even if the student never took the subject. So a chemistry and biology major like me stood behind Mr Gerald Shuster, a novelist and our History and Politics schoolmaster, because somehow I was considered ‘good’ in them. WTF, right?

From this fine young thing…

Yours truly, 14 years old, London, 1970s

It took me a long, long time to locate the picture. It is a crying shame that the UK never had that fine American tradition of school yearbooks, which would have made life miles easier.

Two or three years after this picture was taken, some chick in Lancashire in the northwest of England gave me the handle “The Naked Listener.” So now you know.

… to this excuse:

Yours truly today … what a rusted-up c*nt of a loudmouth

It is true — the nose has remained the same.

Let that be a lesson to you all.

__________

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