Back to the Autobiography
It occurs to me I may have inadvertently left a lot of my audience hanging. In some cases that is no more than the kind of sentence a competent court could impose, but still I feel a sense of responsibility towards my readers. What with digressions into Kuwait climatology, elimination habits of the Middle and Near East and my patchy career, I have neglected my original story about the life of the young Hogga.
Those of you who have been paying attention will recall I departed from the Hogga biography while still a tender fourteen year old in my 'O' level year at Fort Victoria High School. "Fourteen?" I hear you exclaim. Yes indeed. As I mentioned earlier, Mashaba Primary School was a sort of catch all for kids of the local mine employees and contractors and my ability to read without moving my lips soon brought me to the attention of the teachers. As did my intense curiosity and sense of mischief. I am still not sure if I was moved ahead a year because I was bright or because I was naughty. Anyway, the nett result was that I was 11 on entering Fort Vic High School in 1973, 14 in Form 4 and a mere stripling of 16 when I hit Chaplin High to complete my A levels (and incidentally to escape the wrath of a senior policeman in Fort Victoria, whose daughter and I had been unjustly accused of lewd behaviour while we were both boarders in Les Sharp House - I left at the end of the year but she was expelled immediately).
Chaplin was a bit of a disaster actually. More of the same turgid teaching of science and very little to actually fit me for social competence. In their defence they did at least realise that a diet of physics, chemistry, maths and biology would lack certain trace elements so we were also required to do "General Studies" (usually rudimentary overviews of native languages, basic music or the like) and "Use of English". I was still a miscreant, prone to sneaking out the school hostel and playing table soccer down in the "black" part of Gwelo, smoking, and generally being a nuisance in class. And hopeless at pure maths too. My inability to master calculus, and my penchant for bursting into song in class or mimicking the "Attack of the Man Eating Desk" with full body motions, screams and sound effects were a sore test of the patience of our chainsmoking maths master, Mike Neale (affectionately known as Duck for his weird walk). He was marvellously patient - unlike the ratbag chemistry teacher who developed a fermenting hatred of me from the first day. And in my callow and careless way I saw to it that he was kept well supplied with grievances - a decison which came back to haunt me in 1979 when the selfsame weasel was able to blackball me from receiving school athletics colours, the M level French prize and the A level Chemistry prize, all of which I had earned. Oh how we laughed in our cruel childish way when his wife left him for a Shona gentleman.
Strange how school days have such a profound influence on us, an influence that lingers years later. In fact I went fishing at Chirundu with my dad in 1981 once I got out the Air Force, and this same nameless and wifeless geezer was apparently somewhere close by but I was deliberately not told for fear I'd do him a mischief.
One of the funniest events (one of many, of course) was my ceremonial departure from Chaplin after completing my A levels in 1978. I had just turned 17, was off on an overseas holiday and full of rejoicing at finally leaving the stultifying, khaki-clad environment of a Rhodesian school. I guess smoking in the dining hall and burning my school tie on the steps of the Beit Hall were a little excessive, but as far as I was concerned I was off to the military the next year and cared not a jot what the teachers thought. A sad day indeed when I was rejected for military service for being too young. My Dad, bless his authoritarian hide, decided that what I really needed was to return to school to improve my admittedly putrid A level results. Ah, the shame of it. Creeping back to Chaplin (and we had to pull some strings with the Ministry to allow that), into the tender care of a new neo-Nazi housemaster with a nanoscopic sense of humour and a wicked right arm and under final warning of expulsion from Day One. A sad year for the Hogga, only mitigated by my romantic life livening up and by the advent of some new blood into Chaplin from Plumtree, Guinea Fowl and Que Que High Schools. But more of that later, I need to scan some photos when I get back to Bracknell.
Those of you who have been paying attention will recall I departed from the Hogga biography while still a tender fourteen year old in my 'O' level year at Fort Victoria High School. "Fourteen?" I hear you exclaim. Yes indeed. As I mentioned earlier, Mashaba Primary School was a sort of catch all for kids of the local mine employees and contractors and my ability to read without moving my lips soon brought me to the attention of the teachers. As did my intense curiosity and sense of mischief. I am still not sure if I was moved ahead a year because I was bright or because I was naughty. Anyway, the nett result was that I was 11 on entering Fort Vic High School in 1973, 14 in Form 4 and a mere stripling of 16 when I hit Chaplin High to complete my A levels (and incidentally to escape the wrath of a senior policeman in Fort Victoria, whose daughter and I had been unjustly accused of lewd behaviour while we were both boarders in Les Sharp House - I left at the end of the year but she was expelled immediately).
Chaplin was a bit of a disaster actually. More of the same turgid teaching of science and very little to actually fit me for social competence. In their defence they did at least realise that a diet of physics, chemistry, maths and biology would lack certain trace elements so we were also required to do "General Studies" (usually rudimentary overviews of native languages, basic music or the like) and "Use of English". I was still a miscreant, prone to sneaking out the school hostel and playing table soccer down in the "black" part of Gwelo, smoking, and generally being a nuisance in class. And hopeless at pure maths too. My inability to master calculus, and my penchant for bursting into song in class or mimicking the "Attack of the Man Eating Desk" with full body motions, screams and sound effects were a sore test of the patience of our chainsmoking maths master, Mike Neale (affectionately known as Duck for his weird walk). He was marvellously patient - unlike the ratbag chemistry teacher who developed a fermenting hatred of me from the first day. And in my callow and careless way I saw to it that he was kept well supplied with grievances - a decison which came back to haunt me in 1979 when the selfsame weasel was able to blackball me from receiving school athletics colours, the M level French prize and the A level Chemistry prize, all of which I had earned. Oh how we laughed in our cruel childish way when his wife left him for a Shona gentleman.
Strange how school days have such a profound influence on us, an influence that lingers years later. In fact I went fishing at Chirundu with my dad in 1981 once I got out the Air Force, and this same nameless and wifeless geezer was apparently somewhere close by but I was deliberately not told for fear I'd do him a mischief.
One of the funniest events (one of many, of course) was my ceremonial departure from Chaplin after completing my A levels in 1978. I had just turned 17, was off on an overseas holiday and full of rejoicing at finally leaving the stultifying, khaki-clad environment of a Rhodesian school. I guess smoking in the dining hall and burning my school tie on the steps of the Beit Hall were a little excessive, but as far as I was concerned I was off to the military the next year and cared not a jot what the teachers thought. A sad day indeed when I was rejected for military service for being too young. My Dad, bless his authoritarian hide, decided that what I really needed was to return to school to improve my admittedly putrid A level results. Ah, the shame of it. Creeping back to Chaplin (and we had to pull some strings with the Ministry to allow that), into the tender care of a new neo-Nazi housemaster with a nanoscopic sense of humour and a wicked right arm and under final warning of expulsion from Day One. A sad year for the Hogga, only mitigated by my romantic life livening up and by the advent of some new blood into Chaplin from Plumtree, Guinea Fowl and Que Que High Schools. But more of that later, I need to scan some photos when I get back to Bracknell.
posted by Shane Hodgson at 12:10 pm
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home