Has William Died?

Oh, come with old Khayyam,
and leave the wise
To talk;
one thing is certain, that life flies;
One thing is certain, and the rest is lies;
The flower that once hath blown for ever dies.

I recently encountered this quote fromthe Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Beingof mature years I tend to look ʻback onthingsʼ in general and in particular, thereasons behind why, just why, youngfolks in Vancouver and the U.K. have inrecent months acted the way they did: trashing property and vehicles, looting and creating major mayhem. We oldies look back when we should be looking forward; but young or old, what the hell is going on with todayʼs youth?

I donʼt intend to answer that one.

All of which however, has had me reminiscing about what today is as dead as the dodo bird – yesteryearʼs schoolboy ʻpranksʼ- although admittedly, the current hooligans are probably a decade older than I was in this narrative of rural England.

The mischief-making of my day was portrayed so succinctly in the writings of Richmal Crompton. Some of you will recall her delightful accounts, over 40 novels, of one William Brown, a school boy with whose persona I tried assiduously to assume. In his adventures, all of which I devoured, a tousled William personified contemporary young ladsʼ penchant to challenge authority, engage in a variety of scrapes and on a mere whim, initiate and inflict mini-disasters upon parents, teachers and anyone who happened to be within striking distance. It was de rigeur for most of us and it was all so bloody harmless.

With school cap and tie suitably askew, blazer collar turned up and none-tooclean socks rolled halfway below battered knees, I was William; furthermore, I was proud to share with him, my middle name. Cromptonʼs William had two loyal compatriots, so I enlisted my two minions, John and Geoffrey. As neighbours in the small East Anglian town, our lives mainly collided during what our collective parents considered agonizing, interminable summer school holidays when to them, time stood still.

This view of course, was not shared by myself aka William, and John and Geoffrey. We worked on local farms to secure much needed supplemental pocket money but we also climbed trees in search of birds eggs, raided nearby farmersʼ orchards and placed fire crackers in widowed old ladies mailboxes. Standard schoolboy fare for the day.

As leader of my cabal, I constantly sought the Big One, a lark which would transcend the gourmet delight of scoffing stolen apples or strawberries (far preferable to those which were purchased) and delighting in the shrieks of Widow Smith as the firecracker resonated in her hallowed, tiled hallway. No, like Mallory we wanted to climb mythical mountains because they were there and presented bigger risks. It never occurred to any of us that it might be a giggle to trash a Norfolk constabulary car, or shoplift the local variety store.

The Big One presented itself when a large tract of open meadow, across from my parentsʼ home, was expropriated for the development of what then was a relatively new concept: Acouncil houses and flats; in fact, subsidized accommodation, still necessary after the ravages of World War II when countless citizens lost their homes.

From behind a large privet hedge, we watched with gleeful anticipation as land surveyors toiled, taking innumerable measurements related to building lots, utility installation and access roads. This entailed eight-foot long poles with a pointed, encased spike at one end, enabling them to be speared securely in the earth as reference points for their theodolites. To enable them to be clearly spotted in the fog and sea mist common to the Norfolk coast, they were painted in a series of horizontal stripes of red, green, yellow and blue.

My project would do credit to the Masai and was duly approved by my lieutenants: quietly acquire a half-dozen of them at nightfall, camouflage them with green paint and have a spearthrowing contest.

Acquiring or borrowing the poles, soonto- be-spears, presented no problem: no one roamed that meadow at night. Our paint, cunningly selected dark green to make them inconspicuous on the lush sword we had designated for the East Anglian Spear Olympics, was similarly ʻborrowedʼ, this time from Johnʼs fatherʼs toolshed. It was applied with excessive schoolboy enthusiasm which meant our clothing and bodies acquired more paint than the poles. Inquisitorial parental questioning elicited the customary, evasive, but highly effective, responses on our part. “What will you imps get up to next?” my long-suffering mother muttered. We were elated: the household authorities had nary a clue as to what was on the horizon.

A few joyful, anticipatory days ground to a halt as our Spear Olympics were postponed indefinitely, in fact, terminated with the arrival at my parentsʼ front door of our local bobby, one Constable Cubitt, a ponderous practitioner of the local beat and no intellectual deep sea diver. Nonetheless, he was ʻthe law.ʼ The ruse was up and we all wondered how the surveyors, after detecting the errant poles were missing, somehow seconded him to appear at our door. Yes, just why our door? Had I already gained some modicum of notoriety?

Lying was clearly not an option and I had yet to attain the useful knowledge that one never admits guilt. And Iʼm sure my alter egoʼs bravado would have been as deflated as mine when my parents accompanied me to the local police station. I was less than confident; I was terrified. I had been reprimanded at school with incessant regularity which included the imposition of writing 50 or 100 lines, four-of- the-best caning in the headmasterʼs study and other tiresome measures. But to William, and me and other malcontents, they represented nothing more than occupational hazards; but this was the real world. Grown-up stuff.

In our narrow scholastic, boysʼ only cloisters, even the odd caning, although painful, had a positive side as after each chastisement, I was acclaimed by my peers as a hero. A gladiator. So yes, this was far more serious. I was venturing into an alien adult bastion of unchartered waters and my heart sank to the bottom of the nearby North Sea. Would the welts on a tender behind be replaced by a juvenile detention centre, a training ground for Newgate Gaol which we had covered briefly in our history classes?

The gloom deepened. I was convinced that Her Majestyʼs Interior Designer for Prisons and Related Outstations (I was certain there was one) had applied his skill to the room in which I was interviewed. It was stark. Bare. No Gainsboroughs or Turners on the hospital green walls and the sole, naked, overhead light bulb had clearly been purloined from a Hollywood film set featuring the “5th Precinct”. The battered oak chairs had cane seats and the backs were a punitive 90 degrees vertical, obliging me to sit up straight. Matters were deteriorating.

The presiding local Inspector had pale, smooth skin. His hands, unlike those of a Norfolk farmer, had clearly never done a hard days work. He did not look promising and depressingly, he had the authority to pass the matter up the judicial line, or handle it himself. I feared the worst and was not heartened by the fact that everyone, particularly my family, appeared to treat the matter as serious. This was no mere, inconsequential schoolboy prank. Mother was distraught; father stern, pipe puffing and unyielding; Cubitt, smug, pompous with a ʻgot ʻimʼ look; and the Inspector, officious and exuding what I imagined was a hangmanʼs air.

I was lucky.

The Inspector, as lawyers recite and I learned with maturity, did indeed ʻhave carriage of the actionʼ: he decided to let the matter rest and not propel me to juvenile court. After a mandatory, dutifully worded combination of stinging reprimand and veiled threat, the matter was resolved with astonishing rapidity. Perhaps the fact he and my father were members of the same golf club had some influence; I will never know. Compensation for the spears was made and my obligatory financial contribution meant that pocket money was frozen for what at the time, seemed an eternity.

I instigated no pranks in the months following this incident and shortly thereafter, I found new adventures and outlets in senior school, none of which involved any assault on public property. I remain interested in who blew the whistle on me but its perpetrator would be long gone, hopefully to heaven, perhaps to join William as Ms. Crompton died in 1969. As a selfprofessed cynic I ask myself if the pranks of those days have been replaced by the carnage we all witnessed a few months ago.

I canʼt answer that one, either.

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