Tag Archives: school

Yakayod

It earned me a cross in my primary school homework. Apparently, “yakayod” does not belong in a list of 4-wheeled vehicles.

I’d hand-sawn the wheels out of inch-thick plywood and attached them with thick metal bolts. The sawdust smelling of ancient trees and glue, piling up in yellow patches on the rough concrete floor.

As I attempted the back-road journey to Peebles under the sun’s heat, the wooden wheels creaked and the single dowel hand-pedal blistered my hand. In retrospect, this was a terrible design. I ate up the road inches uncomfortably.

I’m not sure my mother actually complained to the teacher about the incorrectly marked homework, but at least she consoled me that even teachers weren’t always right. I drifted on to future failing projects, like the black and silver DJ stall (with no music collection or electrical components) and the hang-glider built of bamboo poles and agricultural plastic sheeting.

Rag doll

L had a Humpty Dumpty stuffed toy, with a sad face on one side and happy on the other. Perhaps it was some kind of binary mechanism for our parents to understand her – a simplification of something too complex.

Punching the unhappy, passive resistant worn cloth. Holding tight to the smiley side that perhaps didn’t ring true, but comforted.

The musty, damp smell of old houses before the onset of a generation of excessive, synthesised, globalised, advertised household cleaning products. Simplicity. It’s a bit old, a bit damp, healthily neglected. You do not need to kill every bacterium individually. This is not a war on bugs.

At primary school, I used to suck my tie. I forget, but I think they were striped green and yellow. By half way through the morning, it would be a heavily-swinging, soggy tongue lolloping across my chest. This went well until I accidentally took a friend’s tie after gym, and induced much displeasure. The taste of wet cloth, and the indignant voice berating me.

There was a guy in high school who walked almost in a caper. I think we all found it strange, but I had no notion then of “special needs”. He was just a strange guy with an odd walk.