Fagging

Written a while ago and as I have written nothing for today, more on vices.

There is a dead end lane near my workplace. It has high fences both sides and rear. Err, I guess that is what is dead end lane is.

It is where bad boys gather, that is where students from the local Catholic private school gather to smoke. It really is a blast from the past, the secretive smoking of schoolboys, yet in spite of them knowing full well how bad smoking is for their health, and bad for pocket money generous allowances too, it is kind of nice to see boys behaving badly. When I was a teen, such a thing was the norm by the majority. Now it seems that all that an expensive private school can produce is half a dozen bad boys who smoke but are not planning to bring down the establishment.  I am not killjoy for whatever kiddie youf choose to do, so long as it doesn't effect others, so if I happen to see a teacher stalking the boys from a distance, I will alert them. I was once one of them.

I'd be very disappointed to learn that teachers no longer try to find smoking schoolboys. It was a mark of pride for the smoke sniffing teacher to smell smoke on you but never be able to catch you. 'Sir, why have the ends of two fingers of Bill Barry's hand turned yellow?'. That was a joke from a fellow smoker of the clan.

Sadder but true, the real smoking dobber in the class was the The Professor. He was very intelligent, very short and very stout and I learnt a couple of years ago that he suicided when in his twenties. Maybe a bit of fagging on a ciggie might have helped him. Back then, had he have joined us to smoke, he might have felt more accepted and that is what smoking school boys or even later drinking school boys were all about. It was acceptance for many, myself included.

If you had gay inclinations, even if you did not really understand at that age, and no sporting prowess, it was pretty well the only way to gain acceptance, as long as you did not hold your cigarette in a girlie manner. Being clever and studious would never cut the mustard. Later, being pro Mao Tse Tung and a reader of Mao's Little Red Book might have earnt some respect, but you would have been seen as exotically weird. This should go into a piece about the ten weird things about myself, but I once sat on top of my wardrobe chanting Hari Rama. I was very impressionable and lucky no nutter got hold of me.