Minus One

I was delighted to learn - genuinely delighted, like grinning-inside-delighted - to learn that a short story I have written won second prize in the 2025 Southland Arts Creative Writing Competition, which attracted entries from across the UK and possibly beyond. 

The theme was ‘Penning the Elements’. Here is my entry.

Minus One

One boy.

Two sets of goalposts.

Thirteen hours into the day.

I had left the house five hours earlier in t-shirt and shorts; a rare Northern morning. The type where clear blue skies teased out the growth of a June sun which wrapped its strength in the disguise of a warm breeze. T-shirt and shorts; Mr. Nuttall was experimenting with the idea of voluntary school uniform, knowing that there would be no catwalk fashion parade amongst his charge of under-11s. Not in this village, where poverty knocked on most doors. Eight o’clock, eight years old, and already I was walking the half mile into the village unattended by adults. In the sunlight, the pond by the old mill on the left hand side of the road, just after the railway bridge, glistened cliches in abundance. The long reeds in front swayed in hushed morning singalong to an old crowd favourite they shared with only themselves. Four cows, heifers all, grazed nonchalantly as I meandered schoolwards.

Those were the days. Just as we had sung along to Miss Reeves’ wonky piano playing in the morning assembly, those were the days. We thought they’d never end as well, just as the next line of that old Russian folk song anticipated. The summer holidays loomed ever closer. Six weeks of unadulterated joy lay ahead. These might, perhaps, be punctuated by a week by the seaside; adulterated joy that remained unconfirmed beyond snatches of hushed parental voices - “booked the week off”, “careful with money” and “train tickets” amongst phrases that wafted upstairs past bedtime on the tobacco smoke from dad’s pipe. 

The second half of the summer term was when we were allowed to play on the school fields at dinner time. Unless it rained, of course, in which case we spent the time gazing out of the window mournfully whilst Shirley Jenkins, Kevin Fitzpatrick and Carl Norris fought over half-ripped copies of ‘The Beano’ and ‘Dandy’ (or, if they were really unlucky, ‘Whizzer and Chips’) stored in a cardboard box underneath the Art Cupboard for occasions such as these. There was no need for comics today. Not yet, at any rate. Instead, we sprang out of the dining hall full of excitement, joy and cold tapioca pudding, then bounded onto the school field through the cultivated gap in the hawthorn bushes that separated the lush green grass from the cold grey tarmac of the playground.

Twenty eight degrees centigrade.

Fifty minutes of play.

One hundred and fifty eight children.

This was the field on which, four months ago on a soggy Saturday morning, I had let the boys from Sacred Heart kick the ball beyond the desperate reaches of my muddy hands and into the goal on five separate occasions. Cause for celebration; the previous week Craig Runciman had conceded double figures against the same team. I didn’t bother cleaning my boots after the game, letting the mud crust deep around studs and leather to superstitiously carry the good fortune into the next game. The next game was lost 8-1. At least we scored, noted Mr. Nuttall in the Monday assembly. Whether he knew it had been an own-goal was never revealed.

Just past the entrance to the field, three dinner ladies sat in hard grey plastic chairs borrowed from Mrs Robert’s classroom, their tabards forming scant protection against the unforgiving curves of the seats. To their right, the goalposts that so often had provided a lonely frame for a goalkeeper bemoaning his much-breached defence. To their left, a clutch of girls excitedly foraging little white flowers with which to make garlands. Three dinner ladies, whose sole purpose appeared to be idly tying daisy chain headbands on demand whilst chatting about … oh, I don’t know; we never knew. We didn’t care either. Whatever the cause of their raised eyebrows and gasps of disbelief, it was nothing on the excitement of chasing a football between two pairs of jumpers or avoiding the outstretched arms of the person trying to pass on the curse of being ‘It’. 

The sun dissolved quickly, via first breezy haze and then soft grey overcoat of cloud. Nobody noticed. Nobody cared. Grey skies were our bread and butter, up here in the industrial north west. We played on. The wind dropped. The air sucked moisture from the ground and hung it heavy around us. Christopher Thomas and Robert Francis pulled my attention away from the kickabout; we began to explore our own feats of strength. Christopher Thomas could do a handstand, and then walk on his hands. Robert Francis didn’t believe him. Neither did I. Christopher Thomas demonstrated, walking on his hands towards a small circle of girls playing pat-a-cake, before tumbling over, and catching Victoria Mullins in the back in the process. She ran to the dinner ladies, tears in full flow, whilst Robert Francis led a sprint away towards the goalposts at the top of the field.

The wind had now picked up, gusting wildly in sporadic intervals. A cool chill against the bare limbs of a boy dressed only in t-shirt and shorts. T-shirt and shorts, the only clothes fit for such a rare morning. That was five hours ago. Now, bare limbs sweated in humidity. An intermittent smattering of heavy rain drops, carried with them the unspoken understanding that proceedings may soon be interrupted by the call of the dinner ladies to head inside. The sky was a deeper shade of grey now, not that we were looking up. My eyes were fixed on Robert Francis; his on the white flaked-paint-covered steel goalposts. I don’t know where Christopher Thomas was looking as Robert Francis leaped up and grabbed hold of the crossbar, swinging.

Bang.

I didn’t know where Christopher Thomas was looking. I knew where he was standing. The light was so intense, brighter than any optician’s torch since shone at my retina. The heat seared, scorched, singed. My ears suddenly numb, then ringing. I knew where Christopher Thomas was standing. Only where he was standing he now lay, motionless bar the odd neural twitch. Through the whine in my ears pierced the screams of children. The strong arms of an adult scooped me up, carried me at pace, horizontal and confused. Everybody ran. The rain pummelled skin, clothing, grass and tarmac. I looked beyond my shoulder. Everybody running, except Christopher Thomas.

Volts: Three hundred million.

Odds: One in thirty three million.

Population: Minus one.

 Text and image copyright John Hartley 2025.

All Paths

All Paths

All paths lead me here:

Where endless horizons

Meet tracks so well-trodden,

And questions abound ...

To ebb or to flow?

To wave or to drown?

To sink or to swim?

Dilemmas unfaced.

All paths lead me here: 

Where walking books bring me,

A holey-souled pilgrim

All sea breeze-slapped face

And saline-spray tears.

Futures less certain

Than those which have passed

Wash out on the tide.

All paths lead me here:

Where storm-weathered bridge 

Meets saltwater dreams,

Beach-pebbled nightmares,

White horseback escapes,

Deep contemplation,

Fleet-footed endings

And fresh-faced new starts.

All paths lead me here.

All paths lead me here.

This poem of mine recently won the Watford Writers' Poetry Competition. We were invited to submit poems that were inspired by an image. The image inspiring the poem was one I took between Worthing and the Sea Lane Cafe at Goring-by-Sea, although the poem could have been written on any beach, anywhere.

I grew up in an industrial town where the nearest 'seaside' was Southport where, on a good day, you could walk a mile out on the beach and still not be actually able to see the sea. Perhaps the draw of the coast instead from the mariners and shipbuilders of my mum's ancestry. 

Image and text copyright John Hartley 2025

FIVE

 

This August marks the fifth anniversary for the Watford Writers Kids Lit group, a group I’ve recently joined. For our last meeting before the summer break we tasked ourselves with writing something for 5 year olds. This was my contribution:

Things I Learned by the Age of Five 

You can’t hide from thunder under the stairs.

Don’t go to school without underwear.

Don’t eat worms. They wriggle and writhe,

Taste quite horrific and won’t help you survive.

Burps from the mouth should be covered by hand.

Burps from the bottom: don’t blame them on Gran.

Washing your hands when you’ve been to the loo

Means Jennifer Barton won’t say “I smell poo!”

Snoodles and bogies are not what mum means

When she makes a big deal about eating your greens.

This much I knew by the time I turned five.

It’s done me no harm and I’m still alive.

Words and photograph copyright John Hartley 2025

The Rail's Tale

“Mummy, look: cute!”

“No, sweetheart, that’s a moorhen.”

I’m a water rail actually, and that’s the sort of nonsense I have to put up with every day.

Not yesterday, though; yesterday was a whole different canal of carp. It’s never good when the boy from the barge is around. What was it last week? Oh yes: Hans casting a net for froglets and sticklebacks. A bird’s gonna starve at this rate. Anyway, yesterday he’d found an old tyre, tied it round the branch of the oak and was swinging from it. 

“An accident waiting to happen,” I said to Mr. Rail. He wasn’t listening; too busy watching Mrs Mallard squabbling with other Mrs. Mallard.

Eventually, Hans got bored, started throwing the tyre around, and that’s when it happened. Out of nowhere this great big rubber ring looped through the air.

“Duck!” he shouted. Old Mallard, floating around aimlessly, did just that: head straight under water, missing all the action. The tyre flew across the reeds and crashed into Mrs. Swan’s nest. Well, you can imagine the kerfuffle; feathers, reeds, rushes. Mr. Swan got a right cob on and chased the boy off, while Mrs. Swan tried to save what she could. It was all in vain. I’ve never seen anyone look quite so distraught. The Swans flew off towards, er … well, that way. They’ve not been back since.

This morning, I found one of their eggs, still warm in the morning sun. I didn’t know what to do; it was too big for me to sit on. Mr. Rail help me scoop it up the bank into Mrs. Mallard’s nest. She’s always talking about fostering community spirit, so it makes sense. She’s not the brightest bird around here either, so she probably won’t even notice.

A prequel to The Ugly Duckling, written for the Watford Writers group May 2025.

Image and text Copyright 2025.

The Book of Apologies: The Heartbreaker

 

The Heartbreaker

I had my first crush at the tender age of four. Laura Barton was the privileged one. She didn’t know. And who would have expected that anyway? Girls just didn’t fancy girls at the time, apparently. We used to walk home from school together. Well, from the playground to the school gates together, because once we got to the school gates we were inevitably absorbed into the melee of mothers waiting to collect their little darlings. I don’t really know if my feelings were reciprocated - subsequent history suggests this highly unlikely - but I seem to remember that we held hands along the way. I didn’t carry her bag for her, though; that would have just been weird. But then, I could only just manage to carry mine, so maybe the thought didn’t enter either of our heads. It didn’t enter mine, and maybe that’s where I’ve been going wrong since. 

I don’t know how long this crush lasted, but it can’t have been that long because by the age of five I had discovered football and by the age of seven was getting distraught at the fact that Stacey Ashton was moving to Nottingham. All the boys loved Stacey Ashton, it must be pointed out, and my distress was never going to be noticed. But her leaving left a hole in my life that could only be replaced by thinking about somebody else.

I used to think about somebody else on a regular basis; not ever having a definite somebody else made it easier. I discovered my mum and dad’s record collection at an early age, and quickly learned the words to all the Beatles’ songs. We didn’t have a car, and with the railway station five minutes walk away we made ample use of the train. We travelled to stay with my cousins in various parts of the country taking full advantage of British Rail’s remaining network, and I spent a fair proportion of these journeys stood by the doors singing Beatles songs, engrossed in my own little daydream and waking out of it only to allow puzzled-looking grown ups to get into the toilet. My mum had made the mistake of telling me that the Beatles had sung a song on a train in the film ‘A Hard Day’s Night’. Given that by now I was the fifth Beatle, I had to act out the role I would have assumed in the film had I been around at the time. I spent the whole trip to Leamington Spa singing similarly. And all the time I was singing, it was for the benefit of that somebody else.

Now somewhere along the family history line I missed out on the ‘talking to people you fancy is easy’ gene. Maybe it is this missing gene in science-minded people that has prompted research into genetic engineering. In artistic people I suppose it has just given rise to thousands of songs about unrequited love. The lack of the gene in my own peculiar genetic makeup was evident before I had reached the age of ten. It should have been easy, on the face of it, because what would be suspicious about two girls having a conversation. Nobody would bat an eyelid or cast an aspersion. But heaven help me if the truth got out; the horror, the public shaming, the stigma; I couldn’t risk it. So I didn’t.

Unfortunately Daisy Elphick did not comprehend the rather obvious implications of my tying her ponytail to the back of her chair. Neither did the teacher. It was the oldest trick in the book, and she should have known that the act represented not a desire to hurt or injure, but an indication that I was completely smitten. I didn’t see the funny side when I spent the next playtime stuck in the classroom. And neither did Sarah Lyons realise the exact intentions behind my gift of five rubber pencil-tops; the bendy character things you stick on the top of your pencil to stop you chewing the wood. Such a gift was supposed to be the pinnacle of romance (well, it was the best I could come up with at the time). Still, lucky for me she didn’t tell her boyfriend, who was the most influential boy in the school and I was hoping he might take me to watch Villa play one day. [Incidentally, being a coward has its advantages: the ability to run very quickly helped my cross-country running career at big school a short time later].

It wasn’t all doom and gloom, though: to suggest that would be misleading. I plucked up enough courage at Sunday School to ask Simone if I could kiss her hand and she duly obliged. And I remember a quite lengthy game of kiss-chase with Paula who lived across the road when the house next-door-but-one was still a building site. And, as clear as the day is long, the crestfallen face of Shirley Wilson when I told her I didn’t want to go to the pictures with her remains firmly lodged in my childhood recollections. She and Kathleen Shaw were standing by the sinks in the cloakroom, washing out the paint pots and brushes we’d been using. I was drying my hands having just rinsed out the glue pots. Maybe it was the vapours from the glue that did it, but out of the blue came Shirley’s rather clumsy and vague suggestion that I may want to go out somewhere with her. We were only eight or nine so I can see now how brave a move this must have been. However her socks were a greyish white instead of proper white, so the snobby reply (“No.”) was delivered with the sensitivity you could expect from an eight year old not used to being propositioned. This wasn’t to be the last proposition I would receive, either. 

Many years later, after a number of awkward advances towards the apples of my eye had been thwarted with implications of bargepoles thrown in for good measure, it happened again. This time I was older and wiser, if not a little merry with festive spirits purchased at the pub down the road. ‘Twas a Christmas holiday evening, the air crisp and chilly, and two

mid-teenage girls sat on the wall at the corner of our street awaiting the last bus home. It being a leap year, one of the pair leapt down from the wall, kissed me on the cheek and asked me to marry her. Instantly thrown by such an intimate advance, I lied, said sorry but I had a girlfriend already and made my way home. Being in my late teens, such assertiveness from women was what I was banking on: why should I have to take all the risks? But I suppose it was inevitable that the familiar yellow streak in me should reappear, and the next evening when I walked past at exactly the same time there were no women in sight.

The first proper girlfriend I had was Jennifer Oldham. We got together after several ‘chance’ meetings, conjured up by one or the other of us without the other ever guessing the intent behind the coincidences. In the end it was down to a mutual friend to grasp the nettle and tell it like it was. Eventually we met under agreed circumstances. From the start I wasn’t convinced our mutual friend had got the right lass, but I went with the flow regardless. I was sixteen at the time. We walked round the school grounds. We walked into town. We walked through the park. On Valentine’s Day I had a family ‘do’ and she was working, so we went out the next night: I booked us tickets for the theatre (Shakespeare’s ‘A Comedy of Errors’). Whilst I waited for her outside the market hall I was groped by one of a drunken group of men who then slapped me hard across the cheek, bloodying my nose in the process. 

When Jennifer arrived she thanked me for the card I had sent. I then gave her the card I had bought her, which I hadn’t sent because I didn’t know her address. One of my closer friends confessed a week later. One week and a day later Jennifer asked if we could just be friends, and … well, you can guess what happened next. I concluded that our mutual friend must indeed have got the wrong lass, because Jennifer and Fiona lasted months rather than the two and a half weeks that we had lasted. I didn’t even hold her hand, you know: I didn’t have the confidence to try. Pathetic, really, but such is life.

I was single for quite a long time after that. Ten years, to be precise. I learned to shrug off the nudging neighbours and the gossip-hungry aunts of the family who were all desperate for me to find someone to settle down with. I thought this might be Serena. We met at a conference for social workers and she admired my Housemartins pin badge. Serena wasn’t a social worker.  She was in a much better job, with much better prospects, was well-educated and seemed to come from a good family. Appearances aren’t everything though. After we’d been going out for six months she got kicked out of her flat. She had been defaulting on the rent, it transpired - God knows where the money went, but it certainly wasn’t on me. Obviously there was more to it than just that, though I never properly worked out what. We lived together for a month while I helped her find a place of her own. I had flatmates and exams to think about, and she needed independence and to keep her job. 

Eventually Serena found a room in a shared house down by the river, an old townhouse that had three floors, an attic and a converted basement. She quickly developed new friendships, but also  developed a drinking problem that took us as far as the local casualty unit. Serena found new pleasure in the attentions of men old enough to be her dad, in the joys of red wine, and in having nothing much to do during the day other than drink, be merry, think dark thoughts, and sleep. 

After one binge Serena locked herself in the bathroom with a bunch of razor blades, a bottle of Paul Masson and a couple of packets of Paracetamol, screaming for her long lost mother. She screamed for five hours until four in the morning when I eventually realised that no matter what I said no difference was being made, that she might now have swallowed her stash, and I called the ambulance. When we got to Casualty she got out of the ambulance, threw up on the paramedic, punched a nurse, said she thought I was on her side, and then swore at me as I followed her all the way home. When she eventually woke up in the late morning, I suggested things may not be working out. Not the best of timing, but I didn’t want to go the same way. Serena swore at me, again and started throwing every single bit of furniture in her room at me. I beat my retreat, with further missiles raining down from the third storey window out of which she was leaning. It went quiet for a day or two. Then the malicious and threatening phone calls. The blokes she was hanging out with knew people (apparently) and she knew where I lived (definitely). Fearing GBH I phoned in sick, posted my resignation to the council, and left town for good. 

Six weeks later I bumped into one of the men she had befriended. I had to do a double-take - why would he be in the village after all? - and thought I might have been able to duck out of sight. I crossed the road but it was too late; he’d seen me. We talked, and it wasn’t as bad as I thought it might be. He even gave me a fiver to pay for the carafe of wine Serena had downed that night. It came in useful; not for wine, because I haven’t had a drink since that evening, but there was a new record out that I wanted to buy. He told me that Serena was pregnant, which came as something of a surprise, the sort of surprise that feels like a ten-ton-truck hitting you (I would imagine). He also told me that he thought the only reason Serena had ended up pregnant was because I had broken her heart. I’d had to do it for my own sanity of course, but for this, Serena, I am sorry.

Text and images copyright John Hartley 2025

The Book of Apologies: The Hair Puller

The playground was fun. At first it was just a great big square of tarmac, with a grass edge. At the opposite end of the playground to the classroom were grass mountains, which backed onto one of the old farms. Another farm provided the right hand border. We weren’t allowed on the grass mountains; not until the summer when we were then given permission to move from the knee-shredding gravel and onto the softer, more natural surface. Of course, by the time summer arrived we were older. Even a matter of a few months helped us realise that these grass mountains were nothing more than landscaped bumps. Not that we knew the word ‘landscape’ at that age. We did know the word ‘bump’ though; every time one of us poor young souls tripped over the shoelaces we could not yet tie, we would be treated to tea and sympathy (but without the tea) from the teacher on duty.

“Oh,” they would sigh, “have you bumped your knee?” or whichever part of our tiny anatomies it was. Of course we had: how else would you account for the blood and grit mound on the offending body part. We hadn’t learned sarcasm at that age, either, so would make do with a tearful grunt to the affirmative. These injuries led us towards the first meaningful play I can remember. Richard and myself would hurtle up to the far end of the playground from the classroom as fast as we could. Louise, who was in the year above us, wore her coat undone, with her arms out of the sleeves, and just the hood over her head to keep the garment in place. She wanted to be a nurse. Richard and I would take it in turns to invent an injury, which the young nurse could then treat. This was play at its most innocent. We were treated to concern and affection from Louise. Louise made playtimes something to look forward to: forward beyond the packet of potato puffs that would come with a free football card inside, the quarter pint bottle of milk that was always too warm to enjoy and the promise of ten minutes away from learning. I didn't want to learn. I wanted to play.

Within two years though we were moved up the school, into what was known as the middle building, being as it was the middle of three buildings. The middle building had its own playground. This was called the middle playground, being as it was the middle of three playgrounds. Here we were faced with older boys and girls who were inevitably bigger, stronger, louder and in charge of the playground. Playing football on the netball courts at playtime was the only way to mix. In the summer we were allowed to go onto the playing fields if it hadn’t been raining. Despite geography, it never seemed to be raining in those early summers.

It was on these playing fields that I made the fastest sprint of 100 yards possibly ever witnessed. Being June, the weather had been rather warm, and as we merrily played at lunchtime we were too engrossed to notice the storm brewing ahead. Nobody noticed the first flash of lightning. No one except me. It wasn’t even a flash: it lasted too long. I saw it from the far end of the field and immediately raced to the school end, where the dinner ladies were sitting on deckchairs making sure nobody maimed themselves on the goalposts. At this stage I still wasn’t completely at ease with the concept of thunder and lightning. I was only eight. By the time I had made it to the school end, the flash was still decorating the slate grey sky behind me. In a state of complete panic I pointed to the fork, which must have spread out across at least three miles on the horizon, and urged the dinner ladies to get us all inside, quick. Even at that tender age I

was worried that someone would get killed. Amazingly, the dinner ladies laughed off my concerns and told me not to be silly. (It wasn’t raining, so why go to all the effort of packing everything up?) After what had seemed like an age, the air was filled with the most tremendous rumble. Everyone bar no one - except the dinner ladies of course - screamed like they had never screamed before. That was nearly two hundred school children, a noise great enough to drown out the thunder. Only the threat of mass panic (as opposed to my solitary panic) prompted the dinnerladies into action, and we were immediately invited to return to our classrooms to read old copies of the ‘Beano’ and ‘Whizzer and Chips’, or to “draw a nice picture”. The storm lasted the whole afternoon and people not far away from the school were killed by the lightning. I hoped that had taught the dinnerladies a lesson in doubting my storm-spotting credentials. It certainly rained that afternoon too; it rained so hard the old mill a mile away disappeared, prompting some of us with more active imaginations to suggest it was a ghost mill. 

After a few years we again moved, this time to the upper playground. Here we had much more space for football. At the far end of the playground was a narrow blue iron gate, which was padlocked. Through the rails of the gate we could see the outside world. The outside world looked like a good place to be; the view from the wrong side of the walls (the school side) was of the village cricket pitch and the Rec; a slide, a roundabout and three swings. This was accompanied by a mass of lush, green grass and the vicarage wall, daubed with the message “Sex Pistols Rule U.K.” along with a letter ‘A’ in a circle. It was by these gates that we used to wait for the coach to take us for the weekly trip to the swimming pool (except for those with verrucas on their feet).

It was by these gates that I let slip my best friend Richard’s biggest secret: he fancied Sarah. He divulged his information whilst we were on the school trip to the Isle of Man. I swore myself to secrecy, but in the heat of a petty disagreement I chose to forget the concept of loyalty. For this I would apologise, but he got exact and immediate revenge by letting slip my biggest ‘secret’ (he’d been teasing me that I fancied Kevin at the time, though the truth of the matter was I’d only let it be known that my crush’s name began with a ‘K’) and the complete and utter embarrassment I endured was, I believe, punishment enough. At least he came out of the incident with dignity, and admitted his feelings. I backtracked instantly, denied all knowledge of the revelations, and wished I had never opened my big mouth. Never again would I divulge the deepest thoughts of a fragile heart. Well, not until the next time…

It was in the middle playground, however, that I faced my biggest shame. This was even an even bigger shaming than when I was pulled out of assembly for talking. I was only telling someone in front of me to shut up, because they were talking when they shouldn’t have been. Unfortunately, by being such a goody-goody, I too was talking when I shouldn’t have been, and it was me who got spotted. I was hauled to the front of the hall and given two great wallops by our corporal-punishment-favouring headmaster. I wet myself and pleaded to go to the toilet. I had only been trying to help. I wouldn’t ever learn. 

No, the biggest shame stemmed from the middle playground, at morning playtime. Fresh from that warm quarter pint of milk and the packet of crisps (although by now we had moved away from those packets with free football trading cards in them), a group of us played by the red brick wall that stood five feet tall and separated the playground from the classrooms. There must have been about ten of us, boys and girls, and we were playing tag. Darting around and weaving through each other’s random routes, avoiding whoever was ‘it’. By the law of averages, it ultimately became my turn to be ‘it’, and I leaped around trying to make enough contact with someone else to be free again. I got Paul. Which was fine, except that when Paul left the moment of contact, a wadge of his hair remained entangled in my fingers. I don’t know how it got there. Well, I do: I worked it out eventually. Obviously Paul was in a bit of pain, and I didn’t know what to do apart from say ‘I didn’t do it on purpose’; I didn’t. The game continued. Paul disappeared.

A few minutes later I found myself being pulled from the playground by my own hair, which was in the firm grip of the deputy head, Mr. Whelan. The new hall (which was the assembly hall, the gym and the dinner hall all in one) through which I was marched seemed much longer than usual and the corridor to the staff room much quieter. I think I panicked; I felt nauseous, as though I had just swallowed the contents of the stagnant pond into which I had fallen two years previously. When I fell into the pond (not deep, but very cold on account of it being covered in ice) I just got told I had been stupid and not to expect any sympathy. This time my protestations of innocence fell on deaf ears, and I was sentenced to a whole month’s ban from the playground. Technically, I suppose I wasn’t innocent: that I pulled out that hair was beyond all doubt. I did feel a little aggrieved, however, that the intent (or lack of it) was never brought into Mr. Whelan’s kangaroo court.

Despite my punishment (and it was some punishment: four weeks solitary confinement, nothing to do but write lines and complete extra maths work), I still feel a sense of injustice. However, that cannot compete with the pain that Paul must have felt when his follicles parted company with his scalp. For this pain, Paul,  I am sorry.

Text and images copyright John Hartley 2025