To the zoo
We had all kinds of maniacs,
three kinds of bedspread,
nine to a table
for meals every day.
Smoking and drinking
were extracurricular,
punishments quakerly,
easy to play.
Away from the brochure,
caged teenagers
moping and sniping
and staring at Fame.
Hungry for anything,
thirsty for everything,
angry and dirty
and tricky to tame.
Squeezing through bars,
chased by the saddest pack,
grumpy spent teachers,
a ring of bad breath.
Drama aplenty,
listening optional,
iced winter waters
for catching your death.
RF 2021
Video/audio for this one here.
For various reasons, all but one of my siblings went to a quaker boarding school in the north of England for their secondary education (not all to the same one but you don’t need all the details). Both Mum’s husbands were quakers (one converted, one was from a quaker family) and though Mum never joined the Society of Friends (that’s the official term, so much terminology in religion) she was very interested in their beliefs and philosophies. She liked the kindness and sense of social duty but was less keen on the absolute pacifism.
My turn for going away to school came when I was 11. I went to the same school in the very Northern tip of North Yorkshire that three of my five older siblings had already attended (two had enjoyed it, one had not). Having been ‘left behind’ at home for years, I was very excited at the chance to see what all the fuss was about and to live with lots of other kids my age, to go to school with boys as well as girls (I went to an all girls primary), to have the kind of freedom and social life my nearest sibling obviously enjoyed when he went there (he was the sociable type). Quaker schools, in particular the one he and I went to, were, by ’70s standards, very lowkey when it came to punishment (pacifists, you see, no canes, belts etc.) and this, for those of us wanting to ... express ourselves, was great news. We probably couldn’t really afford private school by this point but (a) my Mum was adamant that I wouldn’t lose out because our Dad had died, (b) after her own hard knocks my Mum was a bit … socially ambitious and loved the idea of ‘interesting’ schools so she would do anything she could to keep us there and (c) I got a scholarship.
There were very few people from quaker backgrounds at this or really any quaker schools in England at this point so we were the exception. Before school I had been to our local quaker meeting house a handful of times (mainly to play games, memories of eating as many cream crackers as you can in a minute) but I didn’t really know anything about the religious side. At school we had two or three long quaker meetings a week (basically silence unless someone feels moved to speak – but never fear the chemistry teacher was always moved). There was also a shorter assembly meeting every weekday morning. Back then meetings were mainly times to realise how hungry you were (the school food was not great, peer pressure to starve yourself far greater) and to squirm uncomfortably on a wooden bench just as kids do in church. Much of the rest of the time we (or the crowd I ran with anyway) were, in our very early teens, smoking, drinking, skiving, being really mean to each other, and to the teachers, and making sure we explored sexual activity as fully as possible. It was a time of extremes.
The school had never been anything like the stereotypical image of a private school (no top hats, no rugby, no gentry, no tories) but this was particularly true by the time I got there. There were kids from all over the world (which was very exciting – in our class alone there were girls from Nigeria, Spain and Italy). I think on the whole these were kids whose parents wanted an ‘idyllic’ English country education for their children but this school, by the late 1970s, was not offering anything like that (and was it ever anything but a fictional concept?). Quite a lot of the pupils were local but their parents, due to lack of work in the north of England at the time, were earning big money being electricians in places like Bahrain, Liberia and Thailand. There was a handful of military/forces kids too and, because the school needed money (as numbers were low due to a pretty major drugs scandal a few years previously), there were also quite a few kids that the local authority just couldn’t place anywhere else. There was of course very little special care for anyone (or none that I noticed) even though some of us had special educational needs and some were coping with trauma and mental health issues. Instead we were all just chucked into giant dormitories together and left to our own devices much of the time. It felt boring, especially at weekends (imagine, modern teens, no internet, no phones, barely any TV). We were crap at sports by this point (the school was too small to have any good teams) and there were bursts of artistic activity now and then but nothing continuous. We did quite a lot of festering.
A lot of my friends were eventually expelled for one ‘crime’ or another (some actual crimes, some just school rule-breaking) but no matter what I did I seemed to be unexpellable. It was not an academic school at all by the time I got there (lots of very tired teachers just hiding from the world, very poor results) and I was, despite all the bad behaviour, one of the few remaining students expected to get good grades (I was just good at school work, it never came to anything). I suppose it’s possible the school felt sorry for me and my tragic parent story as well. It was actually at that school that I found out that my Dad had killed himself and not died of natural causes. A girl in the next bed in the first term just said ‘oh, my Gran lived near you, your Dad’s the one who killed himself, isn’t he?’ I had to ring my Mum (from the one school payphone downstairs) and ask if it were true (I was 11). As an adult I can understand how my Mum didn’t share this with me (when I was 6) but as an adolescent it probably did add to my confusion and anger and I became a very good delinquent. At 14 I was suspended for one week for crazy heavy drinking and associated bad behaviour but in the end I did stay at this school till the age of 16. At one stage I really wanted to leave (and go to ‘normal school’) but my Mum consulted a psychiatrist (she liked experts) and they told her I’d be better off to staying where I was, that my behaviour would settle down. Maybe they were right but as an adult I really hate the idea of private schools, the imbalance they exaggerate between people. Ours wasn’t exactly Eton but that’s not how others see it and with good reason – it was still privilege, even if it didn’t always feel like it all the time. Most of my friends and close associates these days did not go to private school and it is something that often makes me feel a bit different (and not in a good way). I suppose I could have not mentioned it in this project but I did live at the school more than ‘at home’ for 5 years so I would have been hiding it if I hadn’t covered it (which would feel odd). It was a very particular experience.
The setting for this chaotic phase was a really bonny village surrounded by hills and fields (though not that far from an industrial town). As part of the smoking/drinking/sexual exploring crowd I spent quite a lot of time outside but I can’t say I was really paying much attention to the flora and fauna at the time (though we did get thrown in the beck/stream on our birthdays and mine is in January). There was a walking group but it was organised by one of the maths teachers and he really gave me the creeps (the leaning, the eyes, the breath – I can still smell it). The school closed down for good in the 1990s. I believe other quaker schools are still available.
This poem is part of the annual Fun A Day Dundee project where participants try to do something creative every day for the month of January. You don't have to be in Dundee to take part and there are other Fun A Day projects around the world. People post as much of their work online as they want to (largely on Instagram but it can be elsewhere too). This year I am posting a whole poem a day (one poem for each of the 31 addresses I have lived at, covering the period 1967-2021). Videos/photos of the poems show the places remembered in the poems but were mostly taken from recent Google Street View. The videos are on my Instagram, maybe elsewhere too. Use the hashtag #fadd2021 on social media to see other people's online contributions.
