Front Line

Front Line - Chapter 7 - Year 5

Front Line

Chapter Seven – Year 5

  A whole new chapter opened up this year, I would be moving into the final unit of the school’s unit system. Years 5 & 6 shared what is known as ‘Green Unit’, and as with this unit the main room was no different except for this time there was laptops in which the whole school shared as no more than one unit got them at one time. They weren’t the most advanced laptops for the time, but that’ll come in again a bit later on. By now we all knew each other pretty well and we all prayed that in our final years at the school, we would be put with our friends again. I wasn’t.

  I didn’t particularly like the teacher for my fifth year, she had a sharp snap to her tongue when anyone did anything remotely out of order. She was clearly one to favour those who sucked up to her and not the quiet hard working ones such as myself, who was still afraid to have a remotely interesting character to get noticed. Her name was Miss Aspinal, her hair bounced each time she remotely moved, you could easily tell that it was permed and curled beyond comprehension.

  This year by far was THE most boring year that I could remember, there wasn’t anything in particular in this year that made it interesting in any sense. The first thing that they offered that I could remember was a course on ‘touch typing’, or for anyone to actually understand, learning how to type on a keyboard without looking at the keys, something I was able to master without having to be taught how to do it. Which would have made the whole course pointless should I have actually taken it. Thanks to the use of the laptops it helped work up to now when I don’t need to look at the keyboard, which speeds things up an awful lot.

  One time in math class, there was this guy who sat next to me called Max, chubby little kid he was, hair like his finger had gotten caught in a plug socket, told me that I had fleas in my hair because he ‘saw’ them jumping around. Of course feeling brave to speak during class I told him, rather quietly, that I didn’t have fleas in my hair and that they don’t jump. He was the one to speak first, didn’t get caught and yet me who whispered quietly got caught by Miss Aspinal for talking during class and got held behind. I told my parents about this and they weren’t happy, the fact that Max did the same thing as me and didn’t get punished for it was unfair.

  The same taunts and teases stayed with me throughout this year, getting worse as the bullies grew older. I hadn’t yet learned to live with and deal with the bullying but crying seemed to help most of the insecure feelings I felt just melt away, after all, there was only one more year to go until I would have no more of the same bullying from them, I would be free at a brand new school. There was one horrible day in this year that I would never forget, the day my brother almost lost his life. By this time a playground set up had been built on the nearest end of the field on our side, as well as a ‘garden’ for only years 3-5 to go in, year 6’s had their own private garden. The playground was fun and when it was your classes turn to use it, you made sure you had fun on it. My brother was coming up the flagstone pathway when he tripped on a piece that had been damaged and never repaired, he landed chest-on on a thick wooden pole which made up a stretch of the fence running the perimeter of the bigger garden.

  I was not aware of this at the time as I think I was either in the Year 6 garden, when I wasn’t supposed to be, or at home. My brother laid on the flagstone slabs not able to breathe as the landing on the wooden pole had knocked the breath right out of him. No one tried to help him get breathing but thankfully he was able to on his own, he was then taken immediately to the nurse at the school and my parents were informed. My mother was well and truly mad because the school blamed my brother for running when it was their fault for having an obvious piece of slab broken and not fixed, my brother thankfully recovered with minor bruising to his chest and ribs after being taken to hospital. With a brisk and frank letter to the school, my mother got the slab fixed and we were compensated by the school for the wrongdoing done against my brother.

  Around Christmastime which is still my favourite part of the whole year, we were required to volunteer for the ones to operate the CD box and projector for the Christmas sing along hour long assembly. So of course me and my best friend Kieran volunteered, we used to have a projector which used transparent sheets with song lyrics on them to project up to on a white screen. This was the time before machine projectors came around, I was on the projector at first then switched to the radio and we both handled the chaotic Christmas sing along assembly. It was more chaotic than usual because everything wasn’t where it would usually be, it was changed around for a change of situation to accommodate more in the room to sing along and have some fun. That was one of the best memories I could have had because me and Kieran had such fun doing such a simple thing, I’ll cherish that memory forever with him.

  By far the highlight of my year, which I’m pretty sure was this year, was when we went on a class trip to Kenilworth castle. Parents volunteered to assist the teachers in looking after us on the trip, as was the way back then. My parents could never do it as my dad was too busy with work and couldn’t take the time off, and my mum had to do various things around the house before we got home that she couldn’t do once we were there. So I remember on this trip that the Kieran who was in my class, his grandparents volunteered and me and a few other people on the trip were assigned to go with him and his wife as on trips you would explore around with the adult you were assigned to stay with. I remember going into the gift shop and buying a mood heart ring, I lost it not long after I got home which I was really upset about. I had the time of my life at the castle, as some of it was ruins, we could stand on it and look out at the grounds. One part had a maze I’m sure of it, I was with Kieran’s grandad when I saw people running in the maze, it was a great shame I didn’t get to but I got loads of pictures of the memories of my time there.

  My final year at the school soon fast approached, it didn’t really hit me until the last moments of the following year that I wouldn’t see my friends that I saw in this school in the same way again. Putting it to the back on my mind for now, it was head-forth into summer time.