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1982 (17 YEARS OLD)
Of Course Somebody Clogged Hatherine’s Toilet…

Of Course Somebody Clogged Hatherine’s Toilet…

1982 (17 YEARS OLD)2 weeks ago

1982 - 17 Years Old

As I have mentioned in my post As A Pink Flamingo, once you had a nickname bestowed upon you, it was yours for life.

No exceptions.

Unless, apparently, Caroline Smith gave you a bollocking about it.

And giving us a bollocking she was.

She stood in front of about 5 of us in the sixth-form common area, wagging her finger aggressively, setting us straight. And although we were twice her size, we couldn’t do anything but stare at our shuffling feet and mumble apologies.

It was about the nickname we had started to use for her best friend, Catherine Hunt.

The one someone had come up with it after learning about Spoonerisms (the swapping of the first letters of two words).

We had started to call her Hatherine. No need for the second name.

We weren’t savages.

But it had been making her cry.

And the thing was that Catherine was nice. She was pretty. She was a bit posh. And she was quiet and a bit shy. And she always laughed at my jokes. Which meant she had good taste, too. Alright, maybe not. But she was nice.

She also had a boyfriend of two years. While the rest of us bounced haphazardly between fortnightly flings (both real and imagined).

If Rita Reynolds had been named Catherine Hunt, we wouldn’t have budged. But we relented.

Maybe Catherine was the best of us. And the fact that she was having a house party made her even more sympathetic.

It wasn’t often that people had house parties.

Perhaps Caroline should have led with that.

Catherine lived in a massive 200-year old house in Chipping Norton (Chippy), a village far enough away that we needed to take a bus. And because most of the attendees lived in Banbury, we occupied the top floor.

My dad had brought me home a 24-can case of Budweiser. I wanted to show up at the party like the 4th Wise Man, who Protestants later scrubbed from the Nativity.

And on the trip, we sang.

But of course.

It was one of those parties where all of the girls were from our sixth form, so we didn’t expect a getting-it-off party. It would be a getting-legless party instead.

One best summed up by a song we sang endlessly:

We sang other songs, too, but we sang that one many, many times.

Somebody shouted from downstairs, Shut your Gobs.

But it just made us sing louder.

As we got off the bus, the driver advised us not to pack in our day jobs.

He had bushy sideburns and a few strands of hair that he tried to brush back into a DA. He looked like he used the same optimistic barber as our English teacher, Mr. Ward.

Thanks for the career advice, Elvis, someone shouted as they jumped off the bus.

Bugger Off, he shouted back.

But in a friendly way.

The girls had complete control of the music at the party, which meant that it was very organized.

But crap.

No Bowie. No Japan. No Echo and the Bunnymen. Just what seemed like an inordinate amount of Haircut 100 being played.

But the party was enjoyed by everybody, nonetheless.

Except for Mr. and Mrs. Hunt.

Word got round on Monday that Catherine wouldn’t be having more parties anytime soon, partly because of the mess.

But mostly because of the gift that somebody left in her parent’s avocado-green ensuite loo:

A giant, unflushable poo.

The sixth form was rife with speculation and rumours: Who did it? What did it look like? How was it dealt with?

Names were thrown around. One girl, in a particularly bitchy move, had the audacity to try to blame Cathy Hughes, but was immediately shot down by the boys involved in that gossip situation.

Cathy Hughes didn’t poo; she was too gorgeous.

So after a morning of intense debate, it was decided the culprit was Chris Bolger. He ate a lot of cheese, and none of the girls fancied him, anyway. So that was that sorted.

Bolger’s desperate pleas of innocence were ignored.

As for size, the estimates ranged from 30cm to the absurd, fantastical length of a full metre. Regardless, its size was well beyond the comprehension of 18^th Century plumbers.

And the final question was about the method Mr. Hunt used to get it to go down. Hedge clippers, the Sunday roast carving knife, and a framed photo of his mother-in-law were all offered up as possibilities.

Besides the fact that it happened, the details we settled on were tenuous at best. Catherine wasn’t at school on Monday to confirm, and when she turned up on Tuesday, we didn’t want to rub salt in the wounds.

Or make her cry.

So Bolger did a load that was so big, Mr. Hunt had to cut it up with a wire coat hanger before it would flush.

It’s about 21 km (13 miles) from Chippy to Banbury. It was late morning on a Sunday, and 5 of us set off on the walk home in the misty drizzle. We’d had a few hours of sleep on the cold stone floors.

There were no busses and few cars on the road. Everybody was preparing for Sunday dinner.

Nobody was talking very much, hungry and nursing our hangovers.

But about 5 miles into our journey, a Roller pulled up, and a well dressed man rolled down the window and asked,

Need a lift, chaps?

He would be best described as orchidaceous, but we didn’t care about such things, especially when we were 8 miles away from Sunday dinner.

We piled into the back seat.

It was luxurious.

I was surprised he picked us up. We looked rough. But I suppose we looked spent-the-night-at-a-uni-party rough. Not Manchester United supporter rough.

There was a difference.

He made small talk, and out of the gratitude that comes with obligation, we answered.

Then Kieran proclaimed that the driver probably wants to bum one of us. A little too loudly.

But we all laughed, anyway.

Except for Singhy.

The prettiest of us.