Harkness – MacGillivray Stories

I was never a ‘bad’ boy as such, but I was arrogant, independent, disrespectful, lazy, and so on; basically, I had all the ‘boyish’ characteristics hated by parents and teachers. My most heinous punishable crimes were ‘talking in class’ and ‘coming late to school’. Teachers hated pupils that ‘talked’. They also hated ‘latecomers’, as this posed a threat to their ‘rule of law’; how could you run a school, if pupils just turned up when they felt like it? 

In other words, schools were like imitations of factories, offices, and the army.

• First you had to wear a uniform.
• You had to sit at your desk and not move all day long: “Don’t fidget!”
• Keep your mouth shut: “Be quiet!”
• You weren’t allowed to speak unless asked to do so: “Don’t speak unless spoken to.” and “Children should be seen and not heard.”
• You had to be punctual.
• And the best: You had to do what you were told even if the command was stupid: “Do what you’re told!”

Picking Up Trash

One teacher asked me to pick up a piece of thrown-away paper on the floor. I replied, “I’m not the cleaning lady.” Of course, that was deemed as a severe act of subordination. As such, one is expected to receive the strictest punishment. So that teacher called me an “arrogant Nazi” and sent me down to the headmaster. 

The headmaster was Mr. Whitehead, a 6 foot six non-tea-drinking Quaker. He said I had to come to Saturday morning detention. I responded, “You must be silly, I’m not coming to Saturday morning detention for not doing the cleaning lady’s job.” He answered that if I didn’t come, then I needn’t come to school at all. In other words, he was threatening to expel me for minding my own business and not picking up other people’s trash. What happens next serves as a teaser for “Recollections 2” for now.

Better Late than Absent

One of my usual ‘crimes’ was arriving late to school. However, it was no easy matter for a 12-year old to get to school on time considering the long journey it involved.

Living in Culcheth and going to school in Bolton meant I had to take three buses. Actually, it would probably have been quicker to make the 16 mile journey on pushbike, which my elder brother Alistair did on some occasions.

When I got to Leigh, I took either a blue Leigh Corporation bus or a red Bolton Corporation bus. The blue Leigh Dennis buses were more modern than the red Bolton Leyland buses. The Dennis was faster and sometimes drove past the Leyland up steep inclines along the route between Leigh and Bolton.

My brother Alistair preferred the old Leyland; we would sometimes bet on which bus would come first to Bolton, even travelling by different buses even if we were travelling at the same time. These were some of the silly things we did to make the long commute to school less boring.

In addition, I came from a ‘sleepy’ family who weren’t always the most efficient at packing their children off to school. The end result was that I often came late. The rule at the Isis was that if you were late three times or more in one week, then you would be whacked. The fact that you were 12 years old, lived in another town, came from a ‘sleepy’ family, and had to take three buses, was neither here nor there. A rule is a rule!

An addendum:

I can remember it was around this time that ‘revolutionary’ buses with air suspension were introduced . I forgot which corporation and make it was, but I still remember the almost sea-sick like smooth suspension that used to ‘hiss’ at regular intervals. So although the 1960s is a long time ago – in some ways, auto production was more ‘advanced’ than today.  

The Class Whacking

I can still remember this one horrible occasion at the Isis School. The despicable bald midget of a man, Mr. Wackford, lost his temper with me. He went into a frenzy of shouting, telling me to find a gym slipper “dead quick”. Thinking on my feet, I went to the desk of the smallest boy in class, Sargent, who happened to be sick that day. I lifted up the lid of the desk and extracted his tiny gym shoes.

Mr. Wackford was in such hysterics that he orgasmically whacked me eight times with his puny arm. Of course, he was whacking my behind, while I faced the class.

I was in love with half the girls in the class, such as Jackie Bouchère and Ladrilla Carpenter. My best pal, Pip Disney, was also watching the ‘execution’. So, like Braveheart, I had to put on a brave face. I put on a smile, because to tell you the truth, it didn’t hurt much anyway.

Wackford was a puny effeminate individual; a pathetic human being. He whacked me eight times – which we all agreed afterwards was ‘illegal’. We had some silly notion that teachers were only allowed to whack you a maximum of six times. This idea probably originated from the phrase, ‘six of the best’; that meant six strokes of the cane, but the phrase is now used figuratively. 

Getting Whacked by the Headmaster

The teachers often took turns whacking. For some reason, Mr. Hoyle, the headmaster, was in charge of the whackings that particular week. For some misdemeanours, you could choose between 100 lines³³⁹ or a whacking with a gym slipper. 

The fact that Mr. Hoyle liked my eldest brother Sandy, didn’t save me from his whacking. It may have made things worse for me because Sandy had a ‘tough guy’ reputation; perhaps my brother ‘enjoyed’ the whackings – but this is another story. 

The Family Tradition

Mr. Hoyle asked me if I wanted lines or the slipper. Being a coward, I of course opted for the lines. 

I answered him, “I’ll take the lines, Sir.”

“I thought you were a Harkness!” Hoyle jokingly blurted out. “You can’t be bothered doing lines! Harknesses always choose the slipper!”

I was a bit hesitant about this business of ‘being a Harkness’, but thought I couldn’t betray the ‘family tradition’. 

I grudgingly acquiesced. “Okay,” I said, biting the bullet and bent over so he could whack me. It was almost as if the teachers used to ‘tease’ our bottoms with the slipper, because it rarely hurt that much. 

The Lesson I Finally Learned

The only time this was proved wrong was when  the gym teacher, Mr. Rais, a ‘strong-armed’ sadist, decided to ‘teach me a lesson’. He was assigned that day. When I went in to be slippered for coming late too often, he was waiting in the room designated for slippering. I turned up cheekily smiling and saying, “I’m here for the slipper, Sir!” – as if he was going to give me some chocolate cake. 

Not liking my ‘cheeky’ attitude, he put his whole strength into the whacking to ‘teach me a lesson’. It was quite considerable, given how he had been the middleweight boxing champion for the whole of Lancashire some years before. After the whacking, the tears were begging to pop out, so it was quite a strain for me to still smile and say, “Thank you Sir!”  

Rules of Hitting

In retrospect, it seems comical that we never even thought that teachers shouldn’t be hitting us at all. To us, they should simply follow certain rules when doing so. It was viewed as being part of a system.

It was only when I was a little older that I rebelled against physical punishment, especially if I thought the perpetrators were breaking the rules of the system. However, this is another story, which I will describe in the follow-up to this book, “Recollections – 2”.

Sources

³³⁹ Writing lines’ is a form of punishment handed out to misbehaving students by teachers. It is a long-standing form of school discipline. Writing lines involves copying a sentence on to a piece of paper as many times as the punishment-giver deems necessary. The actual sentence to be copied varies but usually bears some relation to the reason the lines are being given, such as, “I must not talk in class.” Edited from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Writing_lines Read: 31 March 2022.