Free Noisy at the Wrong Times by Michael Volpe Page B

home was not the kilometre long passageway, nor the entrance hall that was larger than my bedroom, or even the kitchen that was big enough to have a large oak table at the heart of it. No, what really astounded me was the fact that their living room was so big that the sofas did not have to be lined up against the wall. I’d heard the old fable that
Doctor Who
would get kids hiding behind the sofa, and I never understood that. My sofa was against the wall in our lounge, so how could one possibly hide behind it? The opening at the back was paper thin, dark andfull of things that had been lost for months. It was a genuine curiosity to me – until I got friendly with Manus and we really did hide behind the sofa. And if we felt the need to run screaming from the room, we still had ten yards of Persian carpet to cover before we hit the door to the lounge. The Egans had money, but they weren’t posh. They were Irish and very nice people, too.
    At Waterloo, I have to confess that despite my friendship with the Egans, I found many of my new schoolmates very odd creatures indeed, and I chuckled quietly to myself at some of them. Nevertheless, it still remained a little intimidating to be around so many people I didn’t know, and I can only imagine the anxiety of those new boys who knew nobody at all. I soon became aware of the sixth formers, who all seemed to have whiskers and in fact looked like fully-grown men. Serge’s stories about them had rendered some of these aloof, trendy bigwigs as legends, normally of the rugby field. I knew of some who were regularly mentioned as bullies. Some were Good Blokes. Being labelled a Good Bloke was to be welcomed, and Good Blokes in the sixth form were a class above because they did not
have
to be Good Blokes; as seniors, they could have been unexpurgated bastards if they wanted. When you are at primary school, even the older kids still seem like kids, but now I was at school with adults, so knowing that among their number were some nice people offered reassurance. But Good Bloke or not, there was a hierarchy. These sixth formers would tell others what to do, talk to younger boys with dismissive rudeness (except for the Good Blokes, who just didn’t notice them, which I suspect is all it took to be labelled a Good Bloke) and everyone seemed to defer to them.
    I was largely unaware of what this all meant in real terms, and so it was no surprise that I would fail to take my place when the hierarchy swept me up. Today, I am fully behind thenotion of a hierarchy in the workplace because on the whole I think it works as long as you apply scrutiny and equilibrium to what those further up the line are asking you to do. But at eleven years of age, if I had ever been compliant in a hierarchy, it was because I had conceived it, designed it and put it into practice: marbles hierarchies, penny-up-the-wall hierarchies, football-in-the park hierarchies, stunt bicycle hierarchies etc. The common factor was my position at the top of each of them because I had probably initiated the game or pasttime. Either you fell into line or you didn’t play. Playing alone for lots of the time didn’t dissuade me from my stubbornness. At Woolverstone, first formers were at roughly the point on the totem pole where the tufts of grass are growing at the base, but for me, that was a mere inconvenience to be overcome. When I felt a shove in the back, it was to instinct that I resorted.
    “Get out of the way pleb.”
    What on earth is a pleb? I thought.
    The shove shocked me since I hadn’t been looking.
    “Fuck off you c**t”, I snarled in a high pitched voice.
    * * *
    It continues to be a trait of mine that I don’t really know when to take a low profile. If there is a parapet, I will perch my head atop it, and if I am in a room full of people whose acquaintance I have never before made, I will still feel the need to point out which of them is an idiot. I do this not in a wantonly rude fashion but by simply