Collections of this Kind

The Giant

At 17, I was in single sex school, and, oh boys and girls, did I detest it. It was a bulk standard comprehensive, but it really gave itself airs. Mostly Tory; positively encouraged mental bullying of the poor, queer, minority, and disabled; and if you weren't in one of the school's A-Teams in sport, you were less than dirt on the Head's shoes1. There were four of us that were left wing in a world of be-shoulder-padded Yuppies. We used to flirt our way into Young Conservative parties and then dial premium priced sex lines on their parents' phones. The one redeeming point of the school was that it was in the grounds of an old manor house and had a walled garden where they taught Rural Studies to "the rems", an unpleasant term, much bandied around by staff and students in a way that suggested it was synonymous in their minds with the local council estate kids. Rural Studies was a subject that chiefly centring on getting weak and bullied first years to feed the enormous and vicious sow, which, by legend, had once bitten a kid's finger off. It was our refuge.

Anyhow, as we approached the end of our years at this abysmal school, we decided on our revenge. We convinced the school we wanted to build an eco-pond in the half of the walled garden they didn't use. And, in a sense, as young ecologists, we did want to. But we also had another plan. That plan involved cutting the pond in the shape of a huge 50ft erect penis, complete with massive pendulous balls and the kind of glans best prevented from locking into anyone. Optimistically we might have claimed inspiration from that old and proudly impudent stalwart the Cerne Abbas giant, at worst, well... we were young, with an excess of moxie.

Now, you may have thought that the school would pay attention to a bunch of kids cutting into its landscape, but, as I say, we were dirt on their shoes. The only reason they let us do it at all was that it cut the educational space for the non-academic kids in the only middle-class manner they could get away with. So cut it we did. It was magnificent. We were careful enough to design it on multiple levels, one ball for deep water plants, the other marsh, which gave it some disguise from the ground, but from the top of a nearby beech, it looked fantastic. We were so clever. One of us even applied for, and got, a green Blue Peter badge for it.

The morning we finished the pond, we were sat in assembly, chuckling to ourselves and feeling pretty smug, when the Head announced that, that very morning, the local news would be flying over the school in a helicopter filming for a piece on the city, and we were all to be on our best behaviour – on pain of expulsion. Now, it was more than clear to us that academic achievement was the only thing that would rescue anyone from our city, so I don't think you can imagine the paradoxical combination of terror and amusement that we all suffered that long long long day. A day when I think all of us, at one point or another, woke mid-lesson and giggled to ourselves, only to feel the next second a terrible clarity as the prospect of being discovered while still at the school rushed over us.

At the end of the day, on running home and turning on the news, we did, indeed, see the school in flyover. The news helicopter flew over the carpark, across the building, commentary spooling from the window, and swooped gracefully over the playing fields towards the walled garden. As we held our breath, certain doom was upon us, the view went over the wall, clipped the very edge of one gigantic gonad, and then swerved neatly on a pin, traversed the adjacent canal, and away.

I hope to live long enough that one day I shall meet that generous helicopter pilot and their camera crew, and shake them firmly by the hand. I can only assume that they too were once pupils of this egregious establishment, and decided, with a smile, to leave it for posterity to discover our whimsey. Of those of us still alive, one is now an environmental consultant, one runs a green energy company, and one runs a major ecological charity. I'm pretty sure, were we put in the same position, we'd do it all again, only, dare I say it, with even bigger balls.

20 Jun 1988