As with last year, I spent my Christmas Eve evening in the Lamb with some old schoolfriends. It was a fine night and I was especially delighted to see one of my best friends from school,
Geoff Quigley (who has been mentioned a few times before, but this is the best story that involves us both). I hadn't seen him for a while, but with really good friends you slip back into the old relationship within seconds of seeing each other. We popped into the beer garden so he could have a cigarette and reminisced and caught up, under the clear Somerset night sky.
Back in the pub I was talking to Paula (who I mentioned last year, who is one of the people other than my family that I have known for the longest time - an incredible 30 years now). we got talking about inspirational teachers and she mentioned Mrs Harris-Bryant, who taught us English at middle school.
"Yes, you would say that Paula," I bitterly interjected, "Given that you won the Easter creative writing competition in her class."
This still sticks a bit in my craw. When we were about 10, Mrs Harris-Bryant had asked us all to write an Easter story or poem and the best one was going to win a big Easter egg. Now I loved writing stories and I loved chocolate, so I worked my heart out, writing a complicated and heart-rending tale about a boy whose mum is ill and possibly died (can't quite remember, I'm not that sad), but who plants a daffodil bulb on a patch of waste ground and at Easter the daffodil miraculously grows through the rubbish, signifying rebirth. It was fucking genius and so confident of victory was I, that I wrote it all up in my best handwriting (quite a feat as my usual writing was a terrible scrawl) and sat back waiting for my mawkish tale to pay for itself in chocolate. I was top in my class in English. No-one was going to get the trophy that was rightfully mine.
But come the day of the results and I came in second behind the unlikely figure of Paula Maunders who had come from nowhere to snatch the prize with a poem which started (and I can still remember this, which should you give you some idea of how scarred I was by this defeat) "Jesus died upon a cross, Upon a cross he died." (I can't remember the rest of it. I am not sad).
It was a disgrace. How could her mawkish poem beat my mawkish story? Obviously someone rated my tale as it was later read out by Mr Williams in Assembly, but I didn't want that kind of acknowledgement (in any case, he didn't say that I had written it) I wanted chocolate.
I took all this quite well, only really pondering on it seriously for the next eight years and then on any subsequent occasion when I saw Paula Maunders' satisfied chocolate filled face. Hence my outburst at the mention of Mrs Harris-Bryant tonight. It still hurts. My story was clearly best.
"Yes," said Paula, "I did win. With the poem that my mum had written and which I then just copied out in my own hand-writing."
Had I heard her rightly? She hadn't even written the rubbish poem that had seen me relegated from my top of the class perch. Her mum had. Surely this was the worst injustice that has ever been known in human history. I was tempted to ring up directory enquiries there and then and find out Mrs Harris-Bryant's phone number so I could ring her up and demand the prize that was rightfully mine. But I didn't want to look childish and stupid and spoil our nice drinks night. So I am going to do it now. Mrs Harris-Bryant, if you are reading this (and I am sure you are and that you still mark me on each entry and correct my spelling) Paula Maunders cheated. That Easter egg was mine. She got her mum to write her poem, whilst I wrote my whole story. After the subject adn plot had been suggested to me by my older brother. But apart from that. It was all my idea.
I hope justice will be done.
