The 2016 Olympic games in Rio have ended and Team Great
Britain is going home with a record 67 medals, 27 gold, 23 silver and 17
bronze. This is an achievement that anyone from my generation would find
amazing. Early in my lifetime Great Britain, the United Kingdom, England and
Yorkshire struggled to win anything. Now that I’m on the back nine of the golf
course of my life I can enjoy the memories of victorious Ashes cricket
campaigns against Australia, a world cup in rugby and just recently the
Yorkshire cricket team has won the championship several times.
My first real memory of being interested in the Olympics
dates back to 1968, that year Mexico were the hosts and we took home 13 medals,
5 gold, 5 silver and 3 bronze. I’ll never forget David Hemery winning the 400m
hurdles, Chris Finnegan’s gold in the men’s middleweight boxing and Lillian
Boards silver in the women’s 400 m. It was the meeting where Dick Fosbury
flopped to a gold in the men’s high jump and Bob Beamon jumped to a new world
record that would last 22 years and 316 days.
Back in 1968 I was 11 years old and attending Nunthorpe
Grammar School in York. The BBC covered the Mexico Olympics via satellite and
broadcast a special lunch time show, at the time this was a huge deal well
before 24 hour television was available. The school made it’s only black and
white television available in the school gym for the pupils to watch the show
but only pupils allocated to the first sitting for lunch were allowed to watch.
Also for some reason 1st year students were banned. Unfortunately I
was a member of the second sitting lunch group and being a 1st year
student I wouldn’t be allowed to watch. Of course I didn’t quite see it that
way I decided to skip school lunch and join the smokers at the nearest fish and
chip shop and return to watch the show.
This plan worked well, if I ran in both directions I could
get back in good time to watch the show. I had to bluff my way into the room
because prefects had been posted on the door. Since I’ve always been tall it
wasn’t much of a problem to walk past the pimpled gate keepers and once inside
everyone was glued to the sporting events on the screen. Everything went well
for about 7 school days and then everything went wrong. The faculty decided to
start a campaign against the smokers and the fish and chip lunch guys, for some
reason leaving the school grounds for lunch was illegal. About twenty fellow
pupils were caught eating fish and chips, you didn’t have to be Sherlock Holmes
to spot the offenders because we were all in school uniform, the good news is
that I didn’t know the teacher and he didn’t know me so I identified myself as
Richard Kirby (my cousins name). I was given a detention form by the teacher and
despite the administrative delay I was able to run back to the gym in good time
for the start of the Olympics TV show.
I walked confidently past the gatekeepers only to hear my
name called, it turns out that one of the prefects lived a few doors down from
me and he knew that I didn’t belong in the room. The peperoni pizza faced
prefect was 4 years older than me, so he wasn’t really a friend and after he
handed me a detention form his chances of becoming a friend decreased
dramatically. This time my real name was on the form, there was no chance of me
escaping my punishment, at the end of the school day I dutifully reported to
the sixth form common room to serve my detention. My name was checked off the
list of about 30 boys that had been given detention, some were fish and chip
offenders, others were smokers, there was one other pupil who’d tried to get in
to see the Olympics which is probably a hanging offence these days.
When I looked down the list I could see that Richard Kirby
had failed to turn up, fortunately my cousin attended another school and wouldn’t
face any consequences from my deception. There was about 20 boys that had
reported for detention and after a short sharp lecture from a teacher we were
given the task of writing 200 lines before having to go to every classroom and
make certain that all chairs were on top of the desks. The detention would take
about one hour to complete, it was a pain to be held back after school but
rather than mess about I set about writing my lines and quickly moved on to the
next phase. I kept my head down and managed not to smirk at the teacher and
prefects as they discussed what to do about the pupils that hadn’t reported for
detention, my dear cousin was in for some serious detention time if they ever
caught up with him. It’s my sincere hope that there was lots of fictitious
names on that list.
At the time I couldn’t understand why anyone would ever want
to become a prefect and have to stay behind after school to run the detention program.
The only benefit was being able to wear an upgraded school tie and boss people
around, back then I didn’t understand the drug of power that can become an addiction
for a certain type of person. After my detention experience I decided that my
days of viewing the Olympic lunchtime show was over, I wasn’t going to lower
myself and join the other 1st years trying to watch the TV through
the gym windows!
Jobsonian
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