The Great Escape

My childhood is familiar to many in my part of the world. The west of Scotland Catholic upbringing, the council scheme on the hill and the early 70’s primary education in a wee red sandstone Victorian school by the sea; a hand-me-down with not a single blade of grass within its four implacable sandstone walls, so high we likened them to Colditz. 

    For those who’ve never seen the series, Colditz was huge in its day, the most watched programme in the U.K. It’s tales of daring escapes and subterfuge were manna from heaven to ten year old boys and coupled with the ennui of lunchtimes wandering the tarmac desert of St Peter’s Primary playgrounds there was perhaps an inevitability to what followed.

    A dining hall had been built around that time. A large white harled box that contained kitchens, a hall and a stage. It was particularly unimpressive even by the austere standards of St Peter’s, but one thing it did offer was a new found blind spot from the prying eyes of teachers at the very back of the school where the wall abutted the Glasgow to Largs line, and adjacent to the wall separating us from the large grounds of the episcopalian church next door. 

    Ever seen the Shawshank Redemption? The bit after Andy escapes and in flashbacks it’s revealed the moment that led him to pick at his cell wall? 

    See a group of wee boys in grey school trousers and jumpers with a maroon piping at their collars, leaning at a wall, bored, talking about Kenny Dalglish and Jimmy Johnstone. Watch them pick indolently at the friable cement that binds the large sandstone blocks together and find it falling in loose clumps to the ground…

    There may have been a pause, a day might have passed, but as is often the case, art imitates life and within short order spoons were being smuggled from school dinners. Beef olives were never eaten so fast. 

    It took a few days. There was seldom more than fifteen minutes until the end of lunch break and it’s hard work digging through cement and sandstone armed with an Ayr County Council standard issue spoon, but we had time on our hands and there’s no greater motivation in acting out the lives of your World War Two heroes. 

    No need to shake debris onto the prison yard, it all went over the wall until the fateful day the first block was jiggled free and falling with a load thump to the ground, we saw the world beyond. Well, the overgrown grounds of scarcely attended church, but that didn’t matter. We had removed a block. So we dug a little more, removing enough blocks for a ten year old to easily climb through and soon came the day when the six of us crammed around the beast we had created and wondered what to do next. Well, it’s obvious isn’t it?

    Escape.

    Who was first? It might’ve been Joe T. Or Robbie. Or Kenny. It doesn’t matter really, once one was through the others followed and having gotten over the giddy excitement of being beyond The Great Wall the question soon followed. Where next?

    Wide as the Clyde we arrived at the wooden door that led to the railway line and soon after were across and into the grassy expanse of Holms Plantation where we ran about, laughing our heads off before one by one realising that we hadn’t thought it through. Where next? South America? A life on the high seas? Journeying incognito to our homes, strangers among friends, leading double lives, under aliases, forever looking over our shoulders for the authorities constant hunting us down? We’d failed to forge identity papers, had no network to spirit us away through enemy territory. We were just six wee boys who’d broke out of school and crossed a busy railway line. 

    We were in big trouble.

    The journey back was done quietly and in double quick time. Crawling back through the hole we dusted ourselves down and went to class hoping no one had noticed…

    The reckoning came the next day. A special assembly was called and with that block of sandstone in your gut feeling, listened to the headmistress outline the news she’d been given of our dastardly exploits. We’d been grassed in by girls from the year above. Cows.

    Four of our number were identified, or owned up. I dear reader did not. I’d been belted quite enough that year thank you and didnae fancy six of the best and possible expulsion. 

    The four trooped off to certain death, the whole school watching in stunned silence when the only adult male, Mr McNeil, who I later learned had been a cop before being a teacher, intervened and in a loud authoritarian voice announced he’d deal with these boys himself. Off they went heads bowed, white faced, not even the opportunity of a last beef olive.

     I felt like shit for my lack of solidarity but bolstered by the presence of another who’d chosen the same course we headed to class and awaited the grim news of our fellow escapees demise. 

    The first positive was their appearance back in class a short time later, looking remarkably unmarked about the hands despite the glum faces. It was only at the break when the news was disclosed in hushed tones that McNeil had merely given a fatherly lecture and after repeatedly banging on a school desk for several minutes, told the boys ‘not a word right?’ before showing them the door with a undertaking to keep a secret.

    And so it all ended. Felt cheated that I hadn’t owned up after all, but workmen plugged up the hole next day and it all blended into the background hum of lives accelerating ever forwards and passed into fond memory.

     Fifty years ago. Half a century. Sometimes you wonder if you remembered it correctly, but so vivid are the emotions and feelings of pre-pubescence some things never ever leave you. 

    Today, on a grey rainswept Ayrshire day, on the former site of a wee red sandstone Victorian school by the sea, long demolished after a suspicious fire, I walked through the jgrass, weeds, pampas grass and trees to the back wall where a dining hall used to be and there, beside a crab apple tree stunted by the wind, the fifty year legacy of workmen instructed to plug a hole made by romantic wee boys acting out their war fantasies in a bleak hand-me-down school. 

   I’m still smiling.