The Jimmy Hendrix Of Farting

1979 (14 YEARS OLD)1 week ago

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves; we’ll get to that in a minute.

Every Thursday morning, we’d have a school assembly. This would be the time for our Headmaster, Mr. O’Flynn, to take to the stage and give us a subtle blend of that old-time religion (the Catholic variety, of course) and the British version of a pep rally.

But it was England, so “pep” was usually along the lines of “chin up, it could be worse.”

And you don’t need cheerleaders with pom poms for that.

To be fair, most of us were just happy we were having assembly instead of mass or an extra Latin lesson.

And while Mr. O’Flynn bragged about how the school chess club came in fourth in a 5-school friendly, his enforcer, Brian Cousins (Major, Territorial Army), would march up and down the sides of the assembly hall, making sure all of the lines were perfectly straight.

Each year (1-5) had five forms, so there were 25 lines of boys on one half the room and 25 lines of girls on the other. The girls always lined up nicely without having to be shouted at.

I believe that it was Antonio Gramsci, Italian revolutionary, philosopher, and linguist, who said something along the lines of Catholics make either the best generals or the best revolutionaries.

Mr. Cousin’s was the general; we were the revolutionaries.

Scared revolutionaries, granted; ones who lined up and did as they were told. Nothing could interfere with Mr. Cousin’s immaculate line up.

Except for one of Alan O’Neill’s farts.

I had seen a documentary about the dry season in Africa. On BBC2, of course. There was an image of a disemboweled wildebeest rotting in the heat. Even the flies weren’t landing on it.

And I imagined even that didn’t smell as bad as one of Alan O’Neill’s contributions.

When Alan “let Polly out of prison” (a euphemism my mum insisted I used until I wouldn’t), a massive gap in the lines would form. We’d still be in our lines, but the lines were no longer straight, as everyone shuffled for their lives.

We’d still be shoulder to shoulder, but half of the fourth-year and all of the third-year lines would be pushing into the second year. The rest of the fourth-year lines had backed up into the fifth year lines.

You could see the massive empty fallout zone from the stage, but that didn’t interrupt Mr. O’Flynn’s enthusiasm.

The girls lines never moved. They were stronger and more disciplined than us. But you could see tears rolling down some of their cheeks.

And the size of the gap depended on what Alan O’Neill had been served for tea the previous evening.

We learned about Alan’s technique from his best friend, Sean McNutt, our school’s champion cross-country runner, one day after rugby practice.

Sean didn’t play rugby very often, as Arse-Picker Hornsby didn’t want to risk him getting injured. Sod the rest of us, apparently.

Cheers, Hornsby, you bastard.

Anyway, Sean told in great detail about Alan’s working his bum muscles to perfect the ability to fart on command.

But that didn’t explain the smell.

God knows what Alan’s mum was feeding him. Mrs. O’Neill obviously wasn’t a very good cook.

But Alan O’Neill never got in trouble for farting. Even Cousin’s would have had a hard time pulling that one off. But he did get in trouble for constantly walking up to girls and singing,

Nice legs/
Shame about the face

Something he had lifted off of the Monks:

Because of Alan’s second hobby, Cousin’s summoned Alan O’Neill to his office, and he spent a good hour there. But he didn’t get “six of the best,” Cousin’s typical tired old routine.

We all said it was because Cousins didn’t want to have to move offices…