With award ceremonies in full swing, I’m reminded of the occasions I picked up my own awards.
My early childhood was largely uneventful, certainly not a tale that could be converted into a Hollywood blockbuster to win any screenplay Oscars. Although, if there was an award for truancy, I would have received it.
Maybe it was awarded to me and I just didn’t show up to collect it?
At the end of each summer term, my school would virtually give up on teaching anyone anything and instead resorted to turning the school into an indoor Olympic sports arena but without the emphasis on anyone being remotely athletic or even fit.
I weirdly achieved a modicum of success in these mini tournaments.
I was a runner up in the carpet bowls competition, losing in the final to my headmaster. Insert an eye rolling emoji here.
I was runner up in the snooker final – losing on a re-spotted black.
I won the chess tournament and was awarded a chessboard medal on a blue ribbon to hang around my neck on no occasions whatsoever.
And I won the table tennis tournament, where the prize was… A book on how to play table tennis!
Clearly, I knew how to play, I had beaten the whole school. Well. Maybe eight of them? This wasn’t to be my only disappointing book award. More on that later…
It appeared that I could win at any sport with the aid of some props. A bowling ball, a snooker cue, chess pieces or a table tennis bat. I’m pretty sure I would have excelled as a rhythmic gymnast – or been a triathlete, if it involved largely standing or sitting still.
At the age of fourteen, I had been admitted to hospital in the calendar year on three occasions. Twice for bronchitis and, on the third occasion, when it had developed into pneumonia.
I was unconscious and put onto Life Support. It was there that I “temporarily died” and had my O.B.E. (Out of Body Experience, not Officer of the Order of the British Empire). There was no visit to the palace for me, just the usual upward journey towards the ceiling and blinding white light, whilst also watching below as the doctors and nurses tried frantically hard to resuscitate me.
Whilst on Life Support, my dad told the doctor that if I was not responding and there was no improvement in my condition after a few days, that he had his permission to switch the breathing machine off and plug in the Hoover instead. True.
There’s an irony that many years later, I went on to become his carer. My dad’s, not the doctor’s.
When I came out of the ICU, I was discharged onto a men’s ward, where I remember there being some mild concern, given my young age.
Whilst there, some of my classmates visited me. Some I was on first name terms with and others, I didn’t recognise, given my shocking attendance record. I was told that the headmaster – and sometimes David Bryant impersonator – was hoping to bring in a tv for me to watch.
I had visions of him walking into the ward, wheeling in a big tv on a high stand and calling for the caretaker to plug it in, open the folding screens and set it up because that seemed to be the protocol for when anyone wanted to watch tv at school.
Instead, he arrived with a small black and white portable tv with a wire loop aerial. Even though I was on the third floor, it was difficult to get a good reception. After three weeks of hospitalisation, I made a full recovery and was released from the hospital – sans tv – in time for Christmas.
Fast forward seven months and my school had its end of term presentation ceremony.
Apart from sporting achievements, awards were given for things like best attendance – never in the running – tidiest pencil case, hair with the fewest nits and owner of the most amusing lunchbox. To be honest, I can’t remember.
‘We now come to the person who has made the “Best Achievement in Work Award.” It goes to a pupil who, despite an attendance record blighted with problems (honestly, most of them self-inflicted), we believe has overcome these setbacks and difficulties to go on and create some outstanding pieces of academic work’ (and some absolute drivel, probably?)
‘And that person is… (you’re ahead of me, aren’t you?) Russ O’Connor!’
To be honest, I totally deserved it because I had partially died to get this.
But to say I was still shocked was an understatement. I didn’t even know the category existed, let alone the 8-inch-high silver cup that I was now clutching to my chest in front of the entire school.
I wasn’t one for showboating. I was a quiet, sensitive child and was overwhelmed with emotion and went full Gwyneth Paltrow, blubbing and bawling my eyes out.
If there was a speech, it probably consisted of uncontrollable gibbering and gurgling sounds. I was a tear-sodden quivering wreck and definitely not used to receiving any praise. Until this day, my only outstanding achievement was that I looked like the personification of a Spacehopper and could be seen from space with the naked eye. I’m relieved this was in the days before camera-phones became pervasive into everyone’s lives.
Along with the silver cup, I was given some books. Tolkien’s, The Lord of the Rings Trilogy, Ben Bova’s Colony and James Herbert’s Lair. All of them ruined for any potential sell-on value because the headmaster had scrawled “Congratulations and best wishes” into all of them. I only read the James Herbert.
The following February, I had to return the cup. My parents had decided to wreck my academic studies by moving house into another area and therefore, me into another school.
Before I left, I was discreetly asked by a teacher if I had a favourite author?
I replied “James Herbert,” in part because I was a teenage boy and The Lair – a story about large killer rats – had contained a couple of sex scenes that no adult, definitely not my parents, seemed to know about and I figured it was a way that I could sneakily read some graphic erotica without being found out.
So, imagine my own literal “shock and horror” and dismay when I discovered, as a leaving present, I was presented with the entire Dune collection written by Frank Herbert.
Honestly, they had one job to do. They won’t be getting any awards from me. They’re a bunch of losers!
Categories:Christmas, Dad, Film, Food, Health, School, Sport, Television
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