The shit blog of Paul Chris Jones

One of my favourite films is 12 Years a Slave. It's about Solomon Northup, a black man who gets kidnapped and sold into slavery in the Deep South. He's forced to work as a slave for twelve years until finally, he's set free. I really enjoyed that film. I'd even rate it as one of my top ten favourite films. Maybe they could make a sequel to 12 Years a Slave called 24 Years a Slave, where he gets captured again but this time for twice as long, and also put some explosions in it and a scene where he has to crawl through a ventilation shaft armed with an assault rifle. (Contact me, Hollywood.)

Maybe the reason I enjoyed 12 Years a Slave is that I was a slave, albeit a slave of Bishop Vesey's Grammar School instead of a cotton plantation. But it's the same thing. That's because Bishop Vesey's Grammar School and the cotton plantations of the Deep South have a lot in common. They both make you get up wretchedly early every morning (the cotton slaves to reap cotton, the Vesey students to get the bus to school), they both force you to work against your will (reaping cotton or doing schoolwork), and they both have a sadistic man with a whip called Edwin, although thinking about it, I don't remember anyone called Edwin at Vesey, or anyone armed with a whip for that matter, so maybe that was just in the film.

In many ways, being an actual slave is preferable to being a student at Bishop Vesey. Because at least slaves do a useful job like collecting cotton. The students at Vesey just do pointless schoolwork that benefits no one.

Something Solomon Northup in 12 Years a Slave and I had in common is that we both were freed in the end. Though it took Solomon twelve years to gain his freedom, and it only took me seven years, so what does that tell you about me and him. (That obviously I'm better.)

I remember the final day of school. There was an undercurrent of joy and rebellion that day. We knew we were almost home free. Some of the kids (though we were technically adults at that point, as we were all 18 years old, something that still boggles my mind) brought in flour and eggs to throw around the school. The head of sixth form, Dominic Robson, put a stop to it by threatening to expel people. "Even though it's your last day, I can still expel you!" he said. It worked: the fear of expulsion made everyone put their eggs and flour away. They could always go home and make a cake, I suppose.

I can't actually remember what we did on the final day. I can't remember a single thing. There's just the memory of me walking down some steps outside the lunch hall, and some kids with eggs and flour, and Mr Robson threatening to expel them.

I know there were no students throwing caps into the air. There were no parents, crying. In that sense, our last day at school was a weird anticlimax.

Two kids, Joe and Ken, played a prank where they went down to the school reception and, when the receptionist wasn't looking, snuck the following letter into every attendence register:

Please bring your class to Big School at 9:10 am today for a special assembly.

Mr Oldham, Deputy Head

They even forged the deputy head's signature and everything.

At 9:10 am, it was chaos: everyone was down at Big School and no one knew what was going on.

Anyway, when home time came, I left school for the last time. You'd expect shouts of "See ya around Paul!" or "Take care buddy!" from fellow students, but somehow I left a little earlier or later than everyone else and so I walked to the bus stop alone. I got on the bus and rode it home.

I felt (just a little bit) sad, lost, and scared, to be honest. Now I was officially an adult and I had no idea what the future had in store for me. In the seven years I spent at the school, studying arcane and useless subjects like Latin, Vesey had wholely unprepared me for real life.

But I also felt joy that I'd never have to go to school again. I was free! I WAS FREE!

After that, I had a couple of months free before I started university. I used those two months playing computer games.

By the way, that wasn't the last time we'd all see each other. There was also the school prom (which I got kicked out of) and then, finally, the leavers' ceremony, at which we all had to wear school uniform again, even though we were adults at university by this point and some of us had beards.

In conclusion: thank fuck I'm not still at that school.