Wednesday 13th March

Fatty arrived at Adventure Club with a whole folder full of photostatted pictures and articles about lightning strikes which he had dug out of the library and the archives. Mr Hall invited him to conduct a debriefing. Fatty passed around a series of grizzly photographs of dead bodies that had been struck by lightning. Every single victim had been blown out of their shoes and one old man’s scalp had frizzled up like bacon!

Fatty says that of the eleven schoolboys killed in the last fifty years, ten of them had died in the month of November. Even more strange was that all ten were struck between the 15th and the 26th of November with three of them dying on the 20th. (Fatty did admit that two of the three were hit by the same lightning bolt.) Mr Hall thanked Fatty for the lecture and sucked on his pipe. Then he nodded to us and said, ‘Boys, I think we’ve all learned an important lesson here today. Never go fishing in November.’

Thursday 14th March

There was a rumour flying around the dining hall that Simon is about to be chosen for the first cricket team. I ran up to The Guv as he was heading into the staff room and asked him if the rumour was true. The Guv threw his hands into the air and slammed the staff room door in my face.

14:30 Julian came galloping up to me at choir practice looking incredibly anxious. He slammed down a pile of hymn books and said, ‘Oh my God I heard you have stonies?’ We both looked down towards my nipples and I told him it was true. He then thumped me on the head with a hymn book and cried, ‘Don’t look so smug – you have a solo to sing on this tour and if you sound like a constipated donkey I’ll castrate you and keep your nuts in a jar beside my bed!’ I apologized and assured him that my balls wouldn’t drop in the next few weeks.

Friday 15th March

Simon is still our cricket captain. He reckons the talk about him playing for the first team is just a rumour. Tomorrow we play St Christopher’s.

In art Mr Lilly set us the task of painting a picture with the title Rhapsody in Blue. He then played a song called Rhapsody in Blue by George Gershwin on his old record player. I tried to create a moody seascape with massive waves crashing against some high rocks. Unfortunately, it ended up looking like pea soup crashing into a black hat. Lilly took Vern aside for the umpteenth time this term and asked him why his Rhapsody in Blue looked distinctly like Roger in Pink. Vern looked a little alarmed and pulled out a clump of hair making Mr Lilly jump with fright. Our poor art teacher stared at Roger in Pink, before giving Rain Man an emotional hug and swallowing half a jar of white pills.

Fatty had to go to the san after Boggo dared him to drink a cup of white paint.

23:30 NIGHT SWIMMING

Rambo told us the Crazy Eight was becoming lame and needed to do something illegal to get our street cred back. He said our severe lack of night swims this term was unacceptable and that we were setting a bad example to the first years.

Rambo and Mad Dog woke up the Normal Seven and told them to pad up for the mother of all night swims. One of the Darryls started crying and Thinny pretended that he’d died in his sleep. Fatty was outraged that Thinny was being so cowardly so he farted on his head. Thinny was instantly revived from the dead, but then threw up in the bin. He then tried to get out of the night swim by claiming he was ill. Rambo told Thinny to ‘raise his game’ and made him take the bin with him so that he could wash it in the dam.

Runt started sobbing and begged Boggo to let him stay in bed. Boggo considered his request while holding poor Runt out of the window by his feet. Runt screamed in terror and suddenly there was the sound of doors opening and slamming. Emberton and Anderson marched into the dormitory brandishing hockey sticks and sugar cane and demanded to know what was going on. Half the first years were hysterical and once again we were caught red handed. Anderson took one look at the dormitory and told the Crazy Eight to line up for a thrashing. Rambo refused and said that the first years had food poisoning and were vomiting everywhere. Emberton scoffed and thrashed a locker with his sugar cane which immediately started two of the Darryls sniffing again. JR Ewing stepped forward and said, ‘It’s true, Mr Anderson, I gave them dried fruit which must have been off.’ Rambo showed Anderson Thinny’s vomit in the bin, looked Anderson straight in the eye, and swore on his mother’s life that we had done nothing wrong. We got away with it. (Not sure about Rambo’s mom though.)

I must admit the night swim was one of our worst ever. The night was so cold that our teeth were chattering and my feet were completely numb by the time we reached The Glock’s lemon tree. Then Roger chased after a lizard and disappeared. Rambo said we had to find him now that Roger’s a full Crazy Eight member. Eventually, we discovered the crazy animal in a tree looking wild and hunted. Vern tried to coax him down with his stupid cat language but Roger ignored him and climbed higher into the tree. Fatty tried to lure him down with some biltong, but Roger seemed hell bent on staying up the tree and stuffing up our night swim. In the end Mad Dog hurled a rock at Roger that knocked him clean off his branch and sent him screeching down to earth. Vern dived on Roger to protect him from further cruelty but Roger hissed and lashed out at his master for the first time ever, before tearing off into the night. Rambo eventually let us move on without Roger but the atmosphere was gone and the dam was freezing.

About the only good thing I can say about last night was that we didn’t get bust or thrashed.

Date: 2015-12-17; view: 533