Spud - Learning to Fly (11 page)

After practice we caught up with Simon and Rambo who were hitting balls at the far end of Trafalgar. Simon’s golf looks nearly as good as his batting. All his shots ended up in a tight circle and he never seemed to make an error. Rambo hits the ball miles but nearly falls over in the process because he’s trying to thrash it so hard.

I must admit that hitting a great golf shot is one of the most splendid feelings I’ve ever experienced. Unfortunately, I only felt it once.

00:30 Fatty stubbed his toe on the corner of my locker on his way back from the bogs. He screamed with pain and said that his toenail was loose. He wailed on in agony and only shut up when Boggo gave him four aspirin and a sleeping tablet, which Boggo later conceded may have been one aspirin and four sleeping tablets. Fatty passed out almost immediately.

Unfortunately, then I couldn’t sleep. The realisation struck me that in a mere nineteen months I will leave this place forever and be truly free. The thought was terrifying.

13:00 Fatty’s toenail is hanging by a thread. He was in so much pain that Garlic and I had to help him to the san after lunch. Unfortunately, Red Tape was on sanatorium assistant duty and his eyes lit up when he saw Fatty in distress. It’s a known fact that Red Tape returned for post matric just so that he could torment more sick and injured boys. Fatty groaned as he realised who was on duty and looked around desperately for the san sister. No doubt he was reliving the moment Red Tape took great pleasure in sending Fatty off to athletics trials last year despite his having a peptic heart murmur.

I helped Fatty back to the dorm. When we finally arrived at his bed, I’m not sure which of the two of us was more exhausted.

Fatty then buried his face in his pillow and wept.

Received another letter from Mermaid who’s obviously feeling guilty for giving me Valentine’s bat yet again. She rambled on about being worried that she’s hurt me and that the only reason she told me about her new boyfriend was that she wanted to be honest and not operate behind my back. (Like last time.)

Not sure if this was something to throw me off course, but she says her new boyfriend is a cricket umpire (?) and a junior minister in her church. She also admitted he’s much older than her. That must be a joke, surely – the umpire bit, I mean.

After reading the letter twice for hidden meanings, I scrunched it into a ball and hoofed it out the dormitory window. I then remembered that I hadn’t told anyone about getting savage Mermaid bat and tore down the steps before my paper football fell into the wrong hands.

I reached it just in time because Rowdy and Gastro were on the verge of picking it up. I gave them a commanding shout and the two first years bolted away like I was a homicidal maniac.

Dad phoned to say that they have moved back home at last!

My father reckons the whole house smells like a terrible mixture of fertiliser, Jeyes fluid, and Wombat’s cheap perfume. It seems Blacky has recovered well after his stint behind bars.

8:30 The Glock called me up in assembly to shake his hand and receive the match ball. I tried to look proud about my hat-trick but as The Guv says, ‘Playing for the fifths is like clubbing baby seals in the springtime.’

I kept an eye on Norm (I don’t believe in spinners) Wade for the rest of the assembly. Behind his thick horn-rimmed glasses his beady little eyes revealed absolutely nothing.

Roger was behaving weirdly this morning. He kept spraying all over the place and howling mournfully whenever he felt like it. Fatty blamed Roger’s behaviour on Friday 13th and said it was a sign that supernatural forces were already at work.

Spent the afternoon with Fatty, Boggo and Sidewinder in the archives. Fatty was desperate for me to join them and even offered me unlimited hot drinks and toast. Poor Sidewinder was up and down the turret stairs all afternoon ferrying drinks and snacks. Boggo tasted his first cup of tea and made Sidewinder take it back down to the annexe because it wasn’t sweet enough. When he returned, Boggo complained the tea wasn’t milky enough. Sidewinder raced down to the annexe again and returned a few minutes later, carrying a mug and still looking desperate to impress. Boggo took a noisy slurp of tea once again, but then decided it was lukewarm and poured it out the window. The small first year then raced off eagerly to begin the tea-making again. Fatty suggested to Boggo that he lay off Sidewinder since he was going through a tough patch. Boggo reclined on the couch with his legs open and said it was important to keep up standards.

Meanwhile Fatty was rummaging through a drawer of papers labelled SUPERNATURAL REPORTS with a pencil behind his ear and a plate of peanut butter sandwiches at the ready. He kept calling me over to read out reports of unexplained ghost sightings. Each time he would conclude the point with, ‘So come on – you’re the boff – explain that then!’

Boggo showed us a picture from a 1981 Scope magazine of a semi-naked nun with pink stars over her nipples. He prodded the nun’s pink stars with his fingernail and said, ‘God, it’s good to be an Anglican!’

Pike spent the entire evening camped outside in the passage in case Fatty tried to make a break for the first year dorm. The swine perched himself in a deck chair and kept making orgasm and ghost noises, and threatening to molest our mothers. Fatty was beside himself that Pike was ruining all his supernatural plans for the evening and kept creeping to the door to peer through the crack to check if the coast was clear. By the time the menace left it was Saturday the 14th and nobody was willing to leave the safety of their beds.

Boggo made us each put up cash for the Crazy Eight Masters Putt-Off. With a grand prize of twenty bucks (Boggo took a sizeable commission as an organiser’s fee) there was everything to play for. The rules were simple. There would be one hole only. It would begin in our dormitory, cross the landing at the top of the stairs, pass all the way through the second years’ dorm to finish at the far side of the first year dorm. The hole itself was a capsized teacup stationed beneath the old nightswimming window. Boggo made it compulsory for each player to have a caddy to carry our putter and make the whole thing look professional.

Lennox spent the entire lesson talking about the national referendum tomorrow and said it was white South Africa’s second chance to cross the Rubicon after PW Botha blew it badly back in ’84. Thanks to Wombat’s news bulletin fetish I was already well versed on all matters referendum, although I was under the impression that a majority ‘yes’ vote for change was a dead certainty to win. However, judging by the worried frown on our History teacher’s face, it seemed that the ‘No’ for change voters were growing in rapid numbers due to last minute underhanded racist scare tactics.

Only a moron could want to go back to a government of twelve bald seventy-five-year-olds in safari suits!

Lennox said that if we were really concerned about change in our country then we should call our families and friends and encourage them to vote ‘yes’ tomorrow.

I rushed off after History to call home and double-check that my parents weren’t about to sabotage my future by voting ‘no’ instead of ‘yes’.