My brother Nick and myself (Tim) decided not to go to school one day. It was a Wednesday. I was 14 and Nick was 12. He was into his second year at school while I was in the fourth year. We were both tired of school. If we weren't being bullied, we were being bored. My choices for the fourth and fifth year at school weren't going well. Except for Human Biology. I enjoyed that. But I wouldn't miss that lesson. That was on Mondays. Today was Maths, English, and Music. They were all subjects I detested. Nick was just fed up with school. He had Physical Education on Wednesday afternoons. Obligatory participation in sports, or worse cross country running. By his own admission he was crap at sports. I shared his dislike. If I didn't care about being picked last for the teams I would have been humiliated. We never played Rugby. I did like Rugby. Not watching it but playing it. Some of the other boys used it as an excuse to put the boot in. But I would try and give them some aggro back. The games teacher never saw any of that. Or if they did, they ignored it.
The walk to school went past a place known as Radford Dip. So called because the road dipped down and then rose up. We turned off the road there and went towards The Duckpond. The name wasn't true as there weren't any ducks. Maybe there was once and the name just stuck. It was quite a large pond though, much longer and wider than a football pitch. Once we had built rafts and floated them on it. Sometimes the rafts weren't very good and gradually sank. Then it was a race to the side to get off it. At one end of the pond was a waterwheel that didn't work.
Near the end of the path that we walked along was a very old round brick hut. It didn't have a door but it had a dirt floor and a fireplace. Someone had put two metal beds in there. They were surprisingly comfortable once you got onto them and they stopped creaking. Nick lay on one and I on the other. The way they were situated meant that you couldn't be seen from the outside, unless you went to come in. We just lay there and chatted about the school we were playing truant from. Our word for it was mitching but I've no idea why. We had been there for just over an hour when a car pulled up, and then another car. Car doors began slamming as the occupants all got out. From the sound of the voices, it must have been a school outing. They were here to explore the cave in the woods. We kept as quiet as mice while they laughed and joked while getting ready. So far no one came to investigate our hideaway. They seemed to take ages to don all their kit. I wondered what school they were from. I didn't recognise the teacher's voice. I wondered what would happen if they caught us. I'd give a false name of course. I even picked one out, Simon Dunkley, Nick had better be Stewart.
Finally, they appeared to have started off. The chatting got less and less. We waited until it was really quiet before we poked our heads out. Nick said 'you look,' I said 'no you look,' 'you look,' 'you look.' In the end we'd both looked. It was clear, they had all gone. I couldn't see them leaving anyone behind for some reason. The two cars were of course still there. The grass was well trodden. Once out we didn't hang about. We knew the road led on to a sewage works, no point going on that way. We crossed the road to where we knew a path led away. It ran around the Duckpond, and came out on a field. We found a corpse of a squirrel. It must have been there a while as it had maggots crawling all over it. Nick got a short stick and poked it. I wondered what had killed it. A dog, or a cat. There wasn't an awful lot left so some scavenging crows must have been at it. We walked past it. We continued onto another path which carried on around the pond and ended up at the waterwheel, which was on a long old stone road bordering the pond. We walked along it and ended up at the waterwheel. Apart from a couple of dog walkers we saw no one. We sat on the wall and just chatted about nothing important. It must have been about the time that someone from the school phoned my Mum and asked why myself and Nick weren't at school. We were for it when we got home. We ate our packed lunches. I was thirsty so was glad of the little bottle of squash.
After lunch we walked back along the path towards Radford Dip. There was a little hut and a large cowshed there. I noticed the window in the hut was open. Nick, being smaller, climbed in through the window. There was nothing in there apart from some bags of feed. He couldn't get the door open from the inside so he had to climb back out. Then we went into the woods. We selected a tree each and climbed them. I had a fir tree so when I got to the top I swayed it back and forth. Fir trees seem to have a lot of bendiness. We came down eventually. We then crossed the road to yet another wooded area. There was an electricity substation there with a big metal gate. We knew it would be highly dangerous but that didn't stop us. We got over the gate and wandered around in there. Various grey coloured machinery hummed to themselves. I crawled underneath one. Nick threw a stick at another but it just dropped to the ground. That was disappointing. We then climbed out. There was a much larger wood further on. We skirted around a new housing development and made our way up to it. We saw a man walking so we each hid behind a tree. He didn't see us.
The big woods, as we called them were quite big, they went along quite a way. About 2 miles long and half that as deep. We've been in them often. They were supposed to be haunted but I think that was just a rumour. Someone was coming. We dropped down onto our bellies until they passed. They didn't indicate that they had seen us. Lucky the undergrowth was high enough to hide us. We heard a rumour once that wild boar roam these woods. So we kept a wary eye out for them. We walked through the wood which went up a hill and came out onto a field. There were cows in the field so we kept to the edge and walked around them. At the far end there was a curious structure. It was basically just the four walls of concrete blocks. No doors or windows and no roof. Weird. We hung around it though. But then a cow wandered up to us so we got out of the field onto a lane. We went down the lane that was unofficially called Murder Hill. It was a very steep downhill road. We had a job to walk down it. It made us almost run down it. Despite its steepness cars do use it. We turned into the wood by the side of it when we heard a car coming up.
We found some sticks and had a play sword fight. Nick said he won. But I think I did. It was getting late in the afternoon so we made our way through the wood to a path that led out. We needed to time it so that we came home at the right time. We waited by the edge of the wood. It was nearly conker season and we saw a horse chestnut tree and threw our sticks up to dislodge the seeds. We scored a few hits but the conkers didn't fall. We gave that up. We were getting bored now and bickered. I was waiting for 4.30 when we can go home. A dog walker came from nowhere with her dog loose. The dog appeared first and was very friendly, jumping up at us. Then the woman called him and he went to her. It was 4.30 now so we left the woods and walked down the street towards home. We saw some kids walking home from school so crossed the road and joined them. Then we turned into our road.
We walked in our house and Mum immediately asked us where we had been. 'And don't say school because they phoned to tell me you weren't there.' I admitted we didn't go and spent the day in the woods. We both got the slipper for that. That hurt but I made the mistake of saying 'that didn't hurt' so I got a few more slaps. Mum was very angry. She said if we did it again, she would start to walk with us to school. That was an awful prospect. Our school was called Plymstock Comprehensive. The other week we were doing a survey at school and were at a bunch of shops called The Broadway. In the newsagents, kids were banned without an adult because they would go in and pinch the sweets. I never did that. But I knew another one of my brothers had lifted some black jacks. He was never caught though.
I think there was only one teacher I liked at school, a Mr Bentley, that was for Human Biology. One teacher everyone hated was Mr Rogerson, he did woodwork. He would throw bits of wood at you. He wasn't a nice man. And the History teacher didn't like boys at all. She'd lift you out of your seat by pinching the hair just above your ear. I doubt that goes on now. Nasty woman. My registration teacher was Mrs Markham. She was alright. As was our French teacher, Miss Turner. Ous was a big school, quite spread out with a lot of huts with teaching rooms. I think some 4000 kids went there. We only went there for the rest of the year as we moved house during the summer.
