Free King's Cross Kid by Victor Gregg Page A

sound of singing. Us boys were very proud of our mum; she was much in demand.
    John and I were on our own there as all the kids came from different areas and we knew none of them. The first item on my agenda was letting all the other kids know that ‘anyone taking the piss out of my bruvver is going to cop it’. It wasn’t that I felt belligerent towards the other kids; it was what I saw as the proper way to protect John, who I always thought was a bit on the slow side. Anyway, we kept to ourselves and the holiday ran its course without my getting into any trouble.
    Then all of a sudden it was time to go. I’m sure our mum enjoyed herself but we never went again. I think the pole in the toilets was too much for her.

15
    Mr James and His Canes
    I was now eleven and along with all the other eleven-year-olds I was sent to one of the three senior boys’ schools in the area. I ended up in the roughest of the lot. The streets surrounding this establishment were completely run-down. The people who lived there could hardly be blamed for giving up hope, and yet there was a never-say-die spirit of survival and it showed in the way people lived. On the one hand they circled the wagons and thumbed their noses at all authority, but come a royal occasion or a national day of celebration out would come the flags and the bunting, all home-made, but bringing the dull streets to life. At school the whole of the new intake was marched into the main hall where the senior teacher laid down the law which we were to abide by. He had a habit of accentuating each sentence by whacking his cane on his desk. ‘You boys will turn up each morning clean and tidy.’ (Whack.) ‘You boys will stand up when a teacher comes into the classroom.’ (Whack.) And so on. Throughout this oration his eyes swept along the two lines of boys standing in front of him. As soon as he had finished, another man came in. This was no less than the headmaster himself who turned out to be an entirely different character. The senior teacher was built like Charles Atlas, while the head was short and had a benign smile on his face, indicating that here was a man who wouldn’t hurt a fly. The big stick and the velvet glove.
    The message was that we were here for the next three years, after which, at the age of fourteen, we would be thrust out into the big nasty world. ‘Just get stuck in, boys, and learn what you can, you will not get any second chances.’ So said the headmaster. Then he disappeared into his office leaving us to the tender mercies of the muscle man who went on laying down the law.
    I didn’t know it at the time but I later learnt that this was a school that made other boys tremble at the thought of being sent there. Each teacher had his own classroom, and me and the other boys in my class filed into the room where the most feared of the teachers held court: the dreaded Mr James. Mr James didn’t talk like any of the other teachers; this was because he came from Wales and the people there all worked under the ground digging out coal. Those who were too clever for the coal job came to England and became teachers.
    Mr James had a selection of canes that he kept hanging on the wall behind his desk. When we were all sitting down he stood up behind his desk and glared down at the tribe he was to teach. After studying us for some moments he carefully selected the stick that he fancied and then, without warning, brought it down with a resounding thwack on the top of his desk, sending clouds of chalk dust billowing into the air.
    Mr James was the geography teacher and he spent three sessions teaching us about India. ‘Right, boys, this morning our subject is India, same as last week. Now, which one of you bright lot is going to tell us the name of the capital of India?’ Up went the hands of half the class. ‘Delhi, Mr James.’ ‘Good show,’ said the teacher. ‘Now, who’s bright enough to tell us which side of the continent Karachi is on and which side