Jessie's Finish Second

During the 1970’s and 1980’s I attended school with and was in fact schooled by some very colourful characters. A shower of bastards the majority of them may have been, however all things considered a life enhancing experience non the less and I thank the lord that I am not condemned to attend school these days. Where if the media are to be believed the politically correct brigade and their close relations the politically correct brigade “Gone mad” are allowed to run amuck through every aspect of a young persons life.1

For example, these days the mantra of these do gooders when it comes to sporting matters is not “Citius, Altius, Fortius” as favoured by Olympians, but and I quote “It is not the winning but the taking part!” What a load of horse shit that is, when I was a young chap winning was everything and to once again quote from my sociopath of a physical education teacher Mr. Jenkins aka Bullet Head “Jessie’s and poofters finish second!” 2

Herein lay the basic problem of what transpired that sunny Friday afternoon at the business end of May 1985.3

Being a sporting type of chap I was into all manner of activities, football, rugby, golf, cricket, namely anything remotely sporty and I was your chappy. One thing that I had always been blessed with was a good turn of speed from a standing start, so it was of no surprise to me when I was selected to run for the school in the county championships as part of the 4 X 100 meters relay team.4

The team comprised of myself, Ewan Forbes aka Yamble, a moniker earned by the fact that he was no stranger to stretching the truth. Dave Smith aka Monkus, so called as he bore a striking resemblance to a gorilla and last of all Andy Joss. Andy alas had no nickname due to the fact that everyone thought of him as a bit strange if not a complete lunatic.5

Due is has to be said that he seemed to live his life labouring under the misapprehension that he was an American, despite the fact that his family had moved to our small town from his birthplace of Pikeytown a few miles down the coast. The cowboy boot wearing tit regularly donned a shiny bomber jacket which had an electric blue body with scarlet red sleeves and had taken to adopting an accent lost somewhere over the mid Atlantic. Not only that, he was also the stickiest fingered thieving cunt on the face of the planet. Nothing was out of bounds as he had even been caught taking money from the collection plate at the school church service just prior to Christmas.6

In the run up to the race, as a team were press ganged into giving up our lunch breaks to practise batten changes, on the track every school day for a week before the big day. Following many hours of trial and error, Bullet Head decided that our strongest running order was as follows. Yamble would kick proceedings off; pass the batten to yours truly, who in turn would pass it to Monkus, who would then pass it to Andy to run the anchor leg.7

Simplicity itself, what could possibly go wrong? 8

The day of the county championships arrived and the athletics team boarded the coach outside the schools main entrance prior to being waved off by the schools rector. The venue for the championship that year was a small town on the east coast, perched on a cliff top at the arse end of nowhere and so the journey only took around forty-five minutes.9

Spirits on the team coach were high as the smell of Brut aftershave wafted around the coach’s interior. This was due to the fact that we were all fifteen years old, had only recently discovered what our penis’s were actually for and lived in hope that we may encounter some females from another school who would be keen to let us do the sex on them.10

Anyone who has ever watched any athletics on the television will tell you that all of the individual events take place first with the relay races bringing up the rear of proceedings. So for the best part of the day the majority of the team had sweet nothing to do but hang around and kill time. Andy true to form decided to spend his time smoking, spitting and cursing like the true bumpkin he was. The rest of us decided that the best course of action would be to take a leaf out of Yamble’s book, try to chat up some girls in the vein hope of returning home sans virginity and in the process of so doing generally lie for Scotland.11

Having talked to innumerable people in possession of bumpy jumpers and alas all our virginities still intact, as far as I am aware, the time for our event loomed large.12

Mr. Jenkins then proceeded to take us through the most rigorous and publicly humiliating warm up every witnessed on a school sports field. The routine included star jumps, deep knee bends and lets not forget the obligatory lunges, which lets face it, make even Olympic athletes look like raging perverts. All the females we had spent the past few hours attempting to impress were openly laughing. As for the chaps, they were making hand signals in our direction that insinuated that we were no strangers to knocking a quick one out “Off the wrist!”13

Finally we took our positions and the starting pistol fired.14

Yamble came hurtling down lane three like a train and the batten change went like clockwork. I was right up for this and took off at top speed handing off to Monkus what seemed like only a few seconds later. Monkus being more primate than human hoofed it down the back straight utilising his by now customary ape like gate and stride pattern. He actually handed the batten to Andy in first place. Andy partly due to the amount of practise he got running away from shopkeepers, homeowners, store detectives and the like, having just purloined some item from their stock or premises, was our strongest runner. Therefore Mr. Jenkins was getting very excited, leaping up and down in his far to tight chocolate brown tracksuit by the winning line.15

So we had it in the bag then?16

Back to school as hero’s and in all likelihood we would undoubtedly be forced to beat the women off with shitty sticks, such would be our fame.17

Oh spoons!18

Andy, not unlike the rest of the heterosexual males on the track, had noticed a large amount of very attractive young ladies sitting in the front row of the temporary scaffold type grandstand that had been erected adjacent to said winning line. Clearly distracted, he then turned his head sharp right to face them while still running headlong towards the winning post. Now you do not require a degree in sports science or human physiology to know that running flat out in one direction while looking in another is not a recipe for great success.19

To come to the point and not chase this around the houses, he managed somehow to clip his own heels and proceeded to go arse over tit, ending up in a sprawling heap five or so meters from the line. Not only that but he had also managed to bring down another runner in lane four who in turn impeded the runner in lane five.20

Mr. Jenkins went in to orbit along with his like-minded physical education teachers from the schools concerned. At one point the P.E. teacher from Pikeytown High School, a big fat bastard with mutton chop sideburns and a slightly disturbing speech impediment, actually had one hand around Mr. Jenkins throat and was shaping up to feed him a knuckle sandwich with the other.21

Alas no, as the host schools Headmaster interjected and put the mockers on proceedings.22

Bollocks, I thought to myself as I sat onboard the coach during the trip home, I’d have paid good money to see that.23