Tuesday 22 May 2018

The age of innocence


Every day now, there is a party of school children like this one going to visit the gallery. I loved school visits - my favourite was one to Hampton Court - and we never had to wear fluorescent Hi-Viz. I suppose that there were some areas where children could play in the streets in those days, or at least I heard rumours of those places. They were probably in the North, when nobody could afford cars.

There is a sticker on the windscreen of that car saying 'Fucking Classy'.  What, I wonder, is classy about it? In the days when kids could roam safely in the streets, anyone using that language in public would have been arrested and fined.

I went on a school trip to Switzerland once. On it, my friend and I absconded from the main party, bought a large bottle of beer and a large bar of chocolate, then sat by the lake at Interlaken to polish them off. I would say that this was the beginning of a life-long romance with beer, but I had already brewed some of my own years earlier.

I also bought a flick-knife and a bundle of crude cigars. Obviously the Swiss would sell anything to children if it meant making some money. The banks were stuffed with Nazi gold in those days - and probably still are.

As I stood by the lake, fondling my flick-knife, a British policeman on holiday approached me and commanded me to throw it in the water. I refused. He insisted and again I refused. He gave up. He was on holiday and his warrant card did not work in neutral Switzerland.

The night before we boarded the coach to go home, a teacher quietly said that I looked like a sensible boy and asked me to smuggle a gold watch back for him. I felt proud and agreed, so hid it in my luggage alongside the flick-knife.

At the border, customs officers opened the luggage hold and I began quietly shitting myself.

They didn't search my bag, but the experience marked the beginning and end of my career as a smuggler.

30 comments:

  1. My school trips were never that exciting! I was the kind of child that would happily have agreed to smuggle to smuggle a watch for a teacher. That would have been exciting. The most nefarious thing I ever did for a teacher was leave cigarettes for my high school art teacher hidden in the supply closet. She was supposed to be quitting but couldn't resist asking me and my other friends who smoked for the occasional cigarette.

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    1. Cigarettes? That must have been some time ago.

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  2. I am always so worried of the rubber glove search that I never knowingly bring anything that I shouldn’t back into the country and when I walk down the green channel, I always look so guilty even though I haven’t got anything untoward !!! XXXX

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    1. I don't think they look up your bum for bottles of whisky.

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  3. My best school trip was a farm visit. We went around on the back of a hay cart to see the sights. No risk assessments or seatbelts. We all survived the day with a good dose of sunburn. How days have changed. I don’t remember any alcohol incidents. Yours sounds much more exciting and memorable.

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  4. I had to embiggen your photo to see the Fucking Classy sticker and there's a guy sitting in the driver's seat watching those kids troop by! Is that guy a father?? And the car is just an ordinary sedan so the sticker is ironic, maybe? and a bit hostile to the rest of the world?

    I will have to remember that phrase -- "quietly shitting myself". I hear it spoken, in my head, in an English accent and it is hilarious. I once smuggled a Georgian diamond necklace out of Brazil by wearing it under my turtleneck.

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    1. That was a carful of foreign men. A Georgian diamond necklace. That's what I call fucking classy.

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  5. Once after having driven up to Blighty, I was shocked to discover that I had a handgun in my glove-box. Later I had to take it back to France again; and was shit scared of being caught. Luckily I wasn't, and all became legal again.

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    1. That's a mandatory 5 year prison sentence here.

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    2. That's what I was worried about!

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  6. Oh Tom, I must say your life has been a colourful one if nothing else.

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    1. No, nothing else worth talking about here.

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  7. I've done nothing so daring.

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  8. Look at all those little innocents, two by two, hand in hand, following all the rules, and stuffed into fucking, ugly fluorescent orange vests. "Oh, I remember, we went to the museum, and you had your green jumper, I think, under the high viz vest." I'm quite coming to hate us.

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    1. Everyone is protecting everyone else as well as themselves. There are good and bad aspects. I must say that I would find it hard to forgive any teacher who allowed my child to get run down in the street.

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  9. I coming to hate people who are too scared to break the fucking rules.

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    1. Yes, but you also hate people who break the rules.

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    2. You've told the story here before.

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    3. I know. I think I have told every story worth telling (and some that aren't) at least once, so to avoid ranting about things like Trump and Palestine, I am forced to repeat myself. Anyway, most of the people who read this shite have very short-term memories.

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  10. Memory of returning to Hurn Airport after a family holiday in Jersey and the Customs man poked his finger around the inside of my mother's tin of Andrews Liver Salts.

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    1. I wonder what he could have been looking for - from Jersey!

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  11. The only school trip I can ever remember is going to the Ideal Home Exhibition once....wtf was that all about..obviously a teachers jolly.

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    1. We went to the Ideal Home Exhibition every year for years. I liked the miniature Hovis loaves.

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  12. You're a tough nut
    Refusing a policeman in those days was a rarity

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    1. I was quite stroppy as a kid. I suppose I still am.

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  13. Ah, a teacher with a healthy disregard for the rules - I hope you got a favour in return.

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