A Life More Ordinary

My first year at Devonport High School (where all first-year students were affectionately and more often than not less-than-affectionately known as ‘scruffs’) was arguably my most productive in terms of output and behaviour. I was keen to get on and experience what would be my first taste of prolonged stability in an educational establishment. I had planned to keep my head down as much as possible and try my best in all subjects and I more or less succeeded in this aim, save for a few ‘minor’ incidents. At the same time, this determination was coupled with a desire to avoid the treatment that I regularly saw meted out to other ‘scruffs’ in bustling corridors or less well-populated toilet cubicles.

I was quick to work out which subjects interested me. English (no surprises there), Biology, French, History and P.E. all produced varying degrees of success in that first year, but Chemistry, Physics, Latin, Maths, Geography, Music and Religious Studies were tedious and in some cases entirely unnecessary in my opinion. During that first year, we were ‘treated’ to an extra lesson, once a week, where we would read classic Greek tales aloud while overseen by the school headmaster, the hour-long experience imaginatively named ‘Headmaster’s lesson’. The head at DHS at the time, Mr. Peck, was a stern, upstanding citizen of a very definite type of moral fibre while not possessing a particularly puerile sense of humour (which he had no reason to, being an adult over the age of 50!) nor an understanding that most 11 and 12-year-old boys would inevitably find something amusing among the classics. Unfortunately, I would be the one to discover this absence of compassion.

I’ve always been a quick reader with the ability to skim ahead while taking in information as I’m going along. On this particular afternoon, early in my secondary school life, Mr Peck came gliding into the classroom, as was often his way, long, black robes trailing behind him, his silver hair following suit, catching the light of the early autumn sunshine that was shining in through the large ground-floor windows of C Block. Peck, whose quiet authority hid beneath fearsome eyebrows and an imposing stare, was not big on emotions and was clearly a believer in discipline being an effective form of communication and as such, interactions with him and instructions from him were often few and far between. A handful of us were convinced that he was a robot, put in place by the powers that be to cover up his entirely fictional classified death from perhaps a freak boating accident. But I digress.

Sadly, time prevents me from recalling exactly what we were reading aloud from, but I was already dreading my turn, not exactly brimming with confidence in my new environment, but as sure as eggs is eggs, as the saying goes, the finger of fate finally pointed in my direction.

I began to read, timidly, my voice laden with uncertainty, my eyes following the steady progress of my finger across the page while I also scanned what was to come. At this point, I feel it necessary to remind you that we were a class of 11-and-12-year-old boys, the reason for which will become apparent when I tell you that halfway down the page that I had recently begun reading from, the word ‘bosom’ leapt out at me. Next to me, on my right shoulder, Patrick Pollard, full of mischief and barely suppressed joy, had already clocked the impending embarrassment and mirth, attempting to hide his glee at what was inevitably going to descend into disaster. My heart sank to my stomach as Patrick, his mouth hidden behind his hand, began to excitedly whisper ‘bosom’ over and over again. By the time I reached the damn word, I had no chance, and ‘hilarity’ ensued as I lost what little control I possessed and began to giggle.

That giggle gradually descended into chaos and spread around the classroom like a Mexican wave as I tried repeatedly to complete the sentence. Carnage ensued as everyone took full advantage of the opportunity to misbehave on the watch of the most senior figure in the school and Mr Peck decided I was ultimately responsible for it. With tears now streaming down my face, struggling to contain hysterical laughter that I was powerless to hold back, I was sent on my way to wait outside Peck’s office for the subsequent bollocking, which in hindsight probably wasn’t much of a bollocking at all, but when you’re 12 years old and feel like a tiny fish in an enormous pond, things can often seem very different. And let’s face it, ‘I’m sorry, sir, I just found the word ‘bosom’ extremely funny,’ isn’t really much of a defence, is it?

While that should have been the end of it, a one-off, unfortunate mistake, the following week I was picked out to read again (first up at the start of the lesson and directed to read the exact same passage that had previously troubled me, which shouldn’t have been a surprise) and, seated next to Patrick once more, I discovered how exceptionally adept he was at whispering the word ‘bosom’ and remaining undiscovered as the perpetrator of my distraction and subsequent humour. I didn’t even get anywhere near the troublesome paragraph as I struggled from the off, thanks to my peer’s sly shenanigans and the almost electric air of anticipation inside the room. In years to come, I would liken these moments to the scene from the Life of Brian, where Pilate and the Centurion are discussing ‘Biggus Dickus’ and the guards are slowly losing their battle to contain their obvious mirth. This particular scene of mine would replay for a further two weeks before I finally managed to get to the end of the section I was reading without interruption and aching ribs, aided by the absence of one Patrick Pollard.

Physics was fun, said no one, ever. We had a teacher, Mr Gibson, who was absolutely off his trolley and terrifyingly unpredictable. If in later years he’d been arrested for mass murder, I wouldn’t have batted an eyelid. He clearly loved his chosen subject (well, you’d have to, wouldn’t you?) and would randomly become over-enthused about many of the finer points in and around the physics world while his hair would mirror the wildness in his eyes. In our first lesson, he decided in his wisdom that the ‘p’ in my surname was in fact a ‘b’ and called me ‘Hebburn’. I unwisely decided to correct him and he disputed my claim that I knew my own surname better than he did and subsequently spent weeks calling me by my newfound moniker and nurturing an unhealthy aversion to me. Until, that is, I took to calling him Mr Gibbon, at which point we undertook an uneasy truce. You get my name right and I’ll do the same for you, you strangely excitable madman.

The following year, in the same subject, I would inherit the giant of a man who was Mr Harrington, who would despise me in a similar manner while breathing coffee fumes over me and plotting my demise. Always dressed in a brown suit with a nose that would glow in varying shades of red and purple, we took an instant dislike to each other that would have two years to develop into a substantial loathing. My grasp of the finer points of Physics was feeble to say the least, but it always felt as though he would save the most difficult questions for me and then savour my struggle, feeding off my pathetic as I attempts to explain whatever it was that I clearly didn’t understand. If I asked for help, it was never forthcoming and eventually I just gave up. At the end of Year 3, I could hardly drop Physics fast enough.

Of the three sciences, Biology was the one that appealed most to me, but even that interest was sporadic. After that relatively successful first year, I discovered that I possessed an exceptional talent for not being able to keep my gob shut and pissing off teachers with uncanny ease. Some teachers were more patient and thick-skinned than others and on the odd occasion, my attempts at humour raised a smile and an eyebrow or two. Looking back, I think that was one of my biggest issues, the fact that I loved to make people laugh and if I thought of something ‘funny’ to say, it was more of a struggle not to let it escape from my cavernous maw. Essentially, I was probably a nightmare to teach and I think I can say with relative certainty that if ever my name was mentioned in the staff room, it would have been followed by the words ‘little’ and ‘shit’. I do regret my inability to apply myself in certain situations and I’m certainly anything but proud of how I behaved at school. I was by no means the worst, but I could have been so much better and maybe if I had been, it wouldn’t have taken me forever to work out what I wanted to do.

On reflection, and there has been a fair bit of that over time, I think that I was looking for positive interactions and by making people laugh, I was certainly getting that. The problem was that it was at the cost of my own education and reputation. I can remember hearing Geordie comedian Ross Noble, saying that if you thought of something funny to say but didn’t say it, it was the equivalent of committing a terrible crime. I imagine that I was subconsciously having that internal struggle without the social skills to determine when it was the right time to chip in with my observations and opinions. The surge of pleasure that I would get from making others laugh essentially outweighed any potential punishment.

Back on topic, Chemistry bored the living daylights out of me, despite the use of Bunsen burners and various chemicals. For three years, I ‘enjoyed’ a fractious relationship with Mr Sanders, a bespectacled disciplinarian with a neat combover, who didn’t suffer fools gladly. He was swift to mete out punishment to anyone who would misbehave and his favoured method of retribution was to demand the production of ‘two sides’ of lines upon the subject of one’s transgression by the start of the next lesson. The call of ‘two sides, four sides, double it, double it,’ was often heard during our lessons and even more often mimicked as we scurried away from the chemistry lab after the bell had signalled blissful release from our temporary incarceration. If the aforementioned ‘two sides’ weren’t produced by the villainous scum of 3S (if my memory hasn’t failed me), then the punishment would be doubled and demanded by the start of the next lesson and so on.

And so it went:

‘Hepburn, have you done your two sides?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Four sides, then. Double it, double it!’

I had no desire to ‘take on’ or beat the system and realistically, this should have been the point where I accepted my punishment, however unfair or ridiculous it might have felt at the time. For some reason, however, I made a different choice. Looking back, and knowing what I now know about parenting children and young adults with autism, I wonder if there was a degree of PDA around many of the choices I made (and in some cases deliberately avoided making) during my time at DHS. I’m not sure whether or not a diagnosis would have made a rat’s arse of a difference, but it was not something that was ever discussed.

The following week would once again see the tediously repetitive exchange take place once more, Mr Sanders slowly cranking up his levels of frustration and displeasure to the point where I thought he genuinely may have considered setting fire to my blazer while I was in it.

‘Hepburn, have you done your four sides?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Eight sides, then. Double it, double it!’

It took until the point where I reached 128 sides that were by now horrendously overdue, along with several threats of missing break times, lunch times and anything else that mattered to me, before the following exchange took place at the end of a lesson once everyone else had vacated the lab.

‘Hepburn, have you done your 128 sides?’

‘No, sir.’

A pause and a long, drawn-out sigh from Mr Sanders, who looked very much to me as though he was questioning many of his life choices. Primarily, teaching.

‘You’re not going to do them, are you?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because I don’t want to, sir.’

Strangely, after that, we wordlessly agreed to a truce. I’d keep my mouth shut during Chemistry lessons and he’d leave me alone. I suspect that we were both relieved when my options came around and I chose Biology as my science.

Copyright Alec Hepburn, 2026.