The Mark Rutherford Days

Tonight has been a good night. Plan A of going out into town for a midweek night of what may have been madness, was shelved in favour of a 2nd poker night in 3 days, and I have to say, I think we made the right choice. The choice between winning your own height in VK or winning on a King High Full House, and by the end of the night, it was clear we had gone down the right road, despite a brief thought that we could fit in both.

I won the poker. I made hard work of it, but through a mixture of getting the right cards and maybe a bit of skill of knowing when to fold and when to bet high, I eventually beat Adam and the novice, Lucy, into submission, after the other remaining players had been knocked out with relative ease. It does sound like a boxing bout now. It wasn't. It was after the game of poker however, where the craziness of the night really revealed itself, as the remeniscing began about our days at Mark Rutherford Upper School.

I had a feeling I would feel a little left out, as all of the players sat round that table are in the same year, a year below me, but the stories they told were amazing. All from Fallis' Christmas Records Special CD that was created in a particularly interesting IT lesson, to Mr.Woodhouse dropping a particularly expensive piece of science equipment after warning the whole class not to drop the particularly expensive science equipment. Apparently the look on his face was priceless.

There were many, many more, but I did contribute with stories of my own, which were greeted with many a laugh from my fellow playing partners. And seeing as I'm typing, I may aswell tell you a few!

My favourite, without a doubt, was the Larkin Remix. Mr.Larkin was our IT teacher in Years 9 to 11, and he was marginally the best teacher I've ever had, followed not long after by Mr.Nicholls. Mr. (Raymond) Larkin used to come out with some cracking phrases, in his strong Irish accent, and all of these were first emalgimated into a 'Larkin Dictionary' by myself, before a few of these phrases, caught on camera by a lad called Will, was remixed into a rhythmic and mesmorizing song. This "remix" was then switched on halfway through your bog-standard IT lesson, with no prior warning, to the howling laughter of the class and genuine shock of Larkin. He was that good a teacher, and a man, to laugh along with the rest of us and put it down to "interesting use of software". Another phrase, that along with "Macromedia Glue Flash" and "Ipipi", went into the dictionary!

Another story, again in the humming of the IT rooms, was a couple of years later, in the same classroom none the less, with a chap called Peter Clough and a supply teacher with an uncanny resemblence to Denise, who used to be, (or still is), in EastEnders. We were doing PowerPoint presentations on devices, and this teacher was clueless. How she had qualified as a teacher, I don't know, but after everyone had completed their presentations, Peter stood up and requested to present another piece about the development of the iPod. The teacher, Ms. Yinka, with genuine surprise that a student had put in extra work written across her face, obviously gave the go-ahead and sat down to enjoy what was going to be, in her eyes, an excellent piece of work. What she didn't know, and we all did, was that this presentation was COMPLETELY BLANK. Nothing on the screen at all, and as Peter went through his pre-prepared speech on the rise of the iPod, with all of us nodding in agreement, trying desperately not to laugh, Ms. Yinka, who must have thought she had lost it, decided to go along with it, and even said something along the lines of, "So that picture on the screen right now is a... 3rd generation?" It. Was. Too. Funny. I swear I broke a rib that day...

There are so many other little stories, including histories' Mr. Jardine disappearing out of the room, and returning wearing a metal hat, claiming to be Ned from the 1st World War. Mr. Masango, another supply teacher from IT, promising the whole class that he would take us on a field trip to Kenya and the many times we decided that it was indeed possible to get to Tesco's and back in the 15 minutes break we had before Ms.Samosa's IT lessons, and every time, failing, and walking into the Scouse shouting that burnt our ears, as we dragged our Tesco bags along the floor. Plus the Citizen teacher who was constantly pregnant, and her substitute, who was 3 foot tall, Mr Navarro's inability to speak English, the convicted peadophile that was Mr. Mushtaq, who allegedly didn't turn up to his first court appearance because, "His mother didn't give him the letter telling him of the date", the high Mr.Gowing's art room that smelt constantly of cannabis and the incredibly boring Fabio Capello lookalike, Mr.Burke, shouting at Sam McConville and telling him to "fuck off!", with the video appearing on YouTube that afternoon... So many memories, from a place that looks more like a prison from the outside than a school.

It was severely disappointing then, to hear what the school has become these days. A whole 3 years after I left, the Headteacher, Mr.Peacey is now 'Principal', (a ridiculous Americanism), with the square-jawed Mr.Millard now 'Head of School' and Ms.Samosa, despite being a terrible teacher, now 'Deputy Head'. Mr Nicholls, once the famed and absolutely incredible Head of 6th Form, is now a lowly Year 7 History teacher, being replaced by Mr.Morgan, (who was apparently "cool", but I wouldn't know, as I thought Geography was one of the worst subjects on the curriculum). Mr.Nicholls, apparently, suffered a double demotion from his job as 6th Form Head, because of his outspoken views on the new 6th form rules, which include banning jeans and any sort of writing on tops, which, in short, means you now have to wear a suit, (jacket optional). They seem to have banned any sort of social outing that includes drinking and being involved in what 50 year olds would call "anti-social behaviour", or any fun at all in that school, and seem to aiming more for the "private school" look, despite having the appearance of a state-run care home or a run down prison. It's really sad...

Long gone are the days of banter, in the 6th form common room or a Politics classroom, between the dry humour of Nicholls and the challenge of a student who tried, and most probably failed, to outwit him. Long gone are the days of final day pranks, (such as covering Nicholls' car in post-it notes), and long gone are the days of fun that I never really appreciated in that school. Just talking about memories and reminiscing about outrageous times spent in the parameters of the 4 walls of Mark Rutherford Upper School, and now it has been turned into a crap-looking, very poor excuse of a state school trying to be a private school by public sector workers who think they know better.