Eng­lischsch­lichacha (part two)

…con­tin­ued from Eng­lischsch­lichacha (part one).

Eight thirty-eight. I wondered how soon they would cut the cake, and if there was any­thing I could do to accel­er­ate the pro­cess. I briefly con­sidered diving wildly into the cake then act­ing drunk, but although this com­pared favour­ably with the pro­spect of two hours hov­er­ing around the event hori­zon of the Ring, I demurred.

I stood alone for a moment, per­fectly enun­ci­at­ing “Eng­lish Lit­er­at­ure, Eng­lish Lit­er­at­ure, Eng­lish Lit­er­at­ure,” under my breath and trav­el­ling through time and space, to a long, con­crete room under the gym­nas­ium of Aqui­nas Col­lege, Ring­wood in 1989. Before me, on a bench that smelled of ammo­nia, lay an apron, a paper hat and a bowl, a bag of flour and two eggs.

I swept my long fringe out of my acne and tried to work out what had just happened. Ten minutes ago I had signed up for Eng­lish Lit­er­at­ure, at the head of a queue which snaked as far as six feet behind me. I and four other boys were promptly marched through the Boy’s School, past the labor­at­or­ies and into No Man’s Land.

In the eighties, Aqui­nas Col­lege was divided into two main parts: the Boy’s School, which was a large, brick edi­fice last painted dur­ing the Reform­a­tion, and the Girl’s School, a newer struc­ture which depar­ted only from the Boy’s School design by the addi­tion of com­fort and the install­a­tion of teach­ers qual­i­fied in dis­cip­lines other than Phys­ical Edu­ca­tion. The two build­ings were sep­ar­ated by an acre of bar­ren asphalt over­looked by machine-gun tur­rets and fif­teen feet of razor wire, known to those who spoke of it in hushed tones over the drink taps as the Co-Ed Area. It was into the Co-Ed Area that we were now marched. The Eng­lish Lit­er­at­ure class, we had been told, was to be co-educational. The Girl’s School loomed above us. We pulled our jump­ers down as far as we could.

Inside smelled like hair spray and bubble gum, con­trast­ing the Boy’s School’s tra­di­tional aroma of saw­dust and sexual frus­tra­tion. As we were lead through the cor­ridors, female voices echoed from unknown sources. Giggles floated through the air like the most dirty prom­ises (remem­ber, I’m six­teen). We turned a final corner and walked numbly up to a red door, which the teacher threw open like Gene Wilder in the Chocol­ate Factory.

It was empty.

An anim­ated con­ver­sa­tion between the teacher and an admin assist­ant about mixed up sched­ules passed over our heads like dis­tant air traffic. The five of us stared dumbly at each other, no one quite able to fit the No Girls situ­ation into the quite prom­ising uni­verse we trus­ted the Almighty had pre­pared for us.

The con­ver­sa­tion shif­ted to study of a big card­board timetable on the wall, one square of which the adults now poin­ted to enthu­si­ast­ic­ally. The teacher lead us back out of the Girls’ School, which we couldn’t help but think was the wrong dir­ec­tion, but we elec­ted not to say any­thing, espe­cially when we were drawn towards the gym. Given that we were sup­posed to be shar­ing this class with girls, the pos­sib­il­ity that we might be shar­ing it with them in the gym struck us a bit like sim­ul­tan­eously win­ning two lotteries.

We were taken to a room we had never noticed before, which had a row of win­dows look­ing onto the Girls’ School. At the door, we quivered. It was silent inside.

The door was thrown open, and the five nerdiest boys in the school walked in to find the twenty largest foot­ball play­ers in the school dressed in aprons. They looked upset.

“There’s been a schedul­ing prob­lem,” explained the teacher. “The girls are doing Lit when you’re doing Maths, so you can’t do it. Wel­come to Home Eco­nom­ics,” he added. “See you in twelve weeks.” He scarpered.

The Home Eco­nom­ics teacher gave us all aprons and told us to pair up with one of the foot­ball play­ers. “Right,” she said. “Les­son one: scone dough.”

We looked at the foot­ball play­ers. They looked at us. One of them had a whisk. This is not a euphemism.

“What did you guys get kicked out of?” asked my new partner.

“Engleschlitchacha,” I twitched.

“Oh great,” he said. “Not just nerds. Retards, too.”

They never ran Eng­lish Lit­er­at­ure for Boys again. I spent the fol­low­ing twelve weeks per­fect­ing Tuna Mor­nay and learn­ing the import­ance of wash­ing my hands after wip­ing my bot­tom in full view of hun­dreds of attract­ive girls, sev­eral of whom I knew were learn­ing the mean­ing of words like ‘pros­ody’ and ‘iambic’ and swoon­ing over the sex­ier bits of Ovid. I kneaded dough until it went through the bench top.

I never signed up for another Eng­lish Lit­er­at­ure course, and I have never pro­nounced the term prop­erly again either, espe­cially not in the kind of com­pany in which I think there is the slight­est pos­sib­il­ity someone might sud­denly grasp me by the lapels and demand to know what I think of George Eliot. I’m filled with doubt that a diver­sion­ary offer to whip up an excel­lent Devon­shire Tea won’t suffice.