Читать книгу Radio Boy - Christian O’Connell - Страница 11

These are my two favourite things to do at school:

1. Closing my eyes and imagining what it would be like to throw Martin Harris into a pit of snakes.

The snakes won’t have eaten for a year and will have been told that Martin killed their Snake Dad. Martin Harris is officially my School Enemy Number One. Most of us have a nemesis. Someone who was put on this planet to make your life a misery. You’ve done nothing to them, and leave them alone, but they somehow find you and it’s as if you’ve stolen everything they’ve ever owned. Dad tells me you also get them when you’re a grown-up. The supermarket area manager is his. Though I doubt his nemesis once tried to shove his head down the toilet.

Martin Harris is Mr Perfect. Captain of the school football, rugby, cricket and swim teams. He’s also the son of the headmaster, Mr Harris, who I think created Martin in the science lab.Worse than him constantly trying to ruin my life at school is the fact that Katherine Hamilton (the girl I want to marry) thinks he’s great. This is only because she hasn’t really spent much time with me since primary school, when we used to be friends and play at each other’s houses.

2. Going home.

‘Your school years are the best years of your life, son.’

My dad told me this once, just before I stepped out of his car and into a steaming pile of dog poo, right outside the school gates.

My school is St Brenda’s. Named after one of the lesser-known saints, ‘Brenda’, who, judging from this place, must be the patron saint of boring kids to death. I walk around like I’m invisible. Sure, I’ve got my gang of Artie and Holly, but at St Brenda’s, if you aren’t great at sport, you’re about as cool as a boy caught dancing with his mum at the school disco.

All week, I’d been getting used to living in a world of being sacked. On the TV news I’d seen a football manager being fired, and now I felt an instant bond with him. Luckily for me, my sacking hadn’t involved fans waving big banners saying ‘SACK THE CLOWN’ and ‘YOU SUCK’.

Normally, I looked forward to the weekend and to that one hour on a Saturday when I was king of the hospital radio airwaves. Now all that was waiting for me at the end of the week was the dreaded karate lesson. I had been thinking about Dad’s idea of doing my own show, but two things kept coming up:

1 The sadness of doing it from my dad’s garden shed.

2 Mum never letting it happen due to various worries, like me being mauled by a wandering bear or struck by lightning.

But the reality was that it was possibly the only way I had of doing radio again. Unless the school did launch its own station, in which case I’d be the only one for the job. But I didn’t share Holly’s optimism about that. Headmaster Harris had been promising us a radio station for ages.

Right now, though, I didn’t have the energy to worry about getting back on the radio, because I was heading to my first ever karate lesson. After much initial moaning at Mum’s decision to make me go, I had to admit I was now a bit excited. This was down to two things.

Firstly, Holly had told me that Katherine Hamilton (the girl I was going to marry) would be there. This was the perfect opportunity to finally impress her.

Secondly, I LOVE fight scenes and action movies. I’ve often thought I could easily be a stuntman if prime-time radio doesn’t happen for me. Everyone should have a back-up plan: it’s just smart thinking. I have an Iron Man poster on my bedroom wall. I like to look at it and imagine being the stand-in who does all Robert Downey Jr’s amazing stunts.

One evening, I made the mistake of telling Mum about my dreams of Hollywood stardom. She looked at the poster and all she said was, ‘Well, you need to get your maths grades up.’ As a lifelong member of the bottom set in maths, I knew that would be hard work. And, anyway, why would a stuntman need pie charts and fractions?

Brave though Iron Man is, he never has to face my personal hell of the boys’ changing room. Sure, it’s a fun place if you are one of the boys who look like Olympic athletes, with the early signs of hairs on your chest. But for the rest of us it’s a nightmare, nervously trying to take our clothes off without the other, bigger apes seeing you.

While getting ready for the karate lesson, there was an early sign this was not going to go to plan when Martin Harris strutted in, chewing gum.

Soon as he saw me, he shouted over, ‘Girls’ changing room is over there, Spike!’ and his mutant ape mates all laughed.

After some warm-up star jumps, the karate class was ordered to line up. Sensei Terry walked out with his hands proudly resting on his black belt. Cooool! Like a cowboy with his belt and holsters, except this was a gym hall in a community centre, not the Wild West.

He bowed.

‘Welcome, Spike,’ he said. ‘To our class.’

‘Um, thanks, Terry.’

‘Call me Sensei!’ he said sternly. Almost barking at me.

You might remember that Sensei Terry was also our local Neighbourhood Watch leader and postman. (Dad had asked me to check with Sensei Terry after the class about a parcel he was waiting for.)

Sensei Terry proceeded to demonstrate a front kick. Or, as he described it, in his unique Japanese accent, ‘Mae Geri … MAE GERI.’

Hearing the Japanese word for this technique, I felt suddenly excited again, at the prospect of this ancient art being passed on from Master (Terry the postman) to promising young protégé (me). All in a sports hall that stank of cheesy feet, and that we had to vacate by 5pm, as that was when my mum’s Zumba class started.

I could do this. Sensei Terry called out for a volunteer. I shot my hand up. This was my moment to impress Katherine Hamilton (the girl I wanted to marry).

He picked me. Sensei Terry knew there was something about me. This promising newcomer who showed raw potential. Maybe just something in the way I had swaggered into the community hall. As if I belonged there. The Master had finally found his apprentice. Sadly, just walking out to the front of the class wasn’t easy due to my karate outfit.

About that. I’d asked my mum for a new karate uniform to wear to my first lesson. Dad agreed and looked online at one made in Japan, the home of karate.

‘This is the one, Spike,’ he said, ‘as worn by three-time World Champion Chuck Chuckerson.’ My dream of owning such a sacred garment was only one Dad click away. Sadly, this moment was to last less than 0.09 seconds as Mum stopped Dad mid-sentence to remind him that there was already a ‘perfectly good’ karate uniform in the house. My big sister’s.

‘YOU’VE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME, MUM!’ I pleaded.

‘If you actually stick to this class, then your dad will get you a new one,’ she said.

Dad may be many things, but in this house the real Sensei is Mum – with a black belt in cheapness. If Dad died, I think – rather than pay for a proper wooden coffin – she’d just put him in a shoebox and bury him in the garden, like we did my sister’s hamster, Mr Whiskers.

This karate outfit, or ‘gi’ as I later learned it was called from Terry the samurai postman, hardly fitted as it had shrunk after Dad put it in the tumble dryer for too long. It would have been uncomfortable on a small dog, let alone an eleven-year-old like me, who was about to become a highly trained fighting machine.

‘Spike here will show us how easy it is, won’t you?’ said Sensei Terry.

‘Yeah, Terry,’ I replied.

‘It’s Sensei!’ the samurai postman screamed back, his words almost punching the air.

‘Yes – sorry, Sensei,’ I replied meekly.

‘OK, so, Mae Geri front kick NOW!’

We were in a ‘front stance’. Which meant left foot forward and right leg behind. I was coiled like a cobra, ready to strike. As my rear leg came up like the mighty Sensei Terry had just demonstrated, I fired my foot into an imaginary attacker’s stomach (not really imaginary – Martin’s), and … there was a tremendous tearing noise.

Suddenly, I could feel fresh air around my backside. This wasn’t going to be my moment to impress Katherine Hamilton or become a Hollywood stuntman.

My karate trousers had split.

To be precise – my sister’s karate trousers had split.

In front of the whole class. But, worse, in front of Katherine Hamilton (the girl I wanted to marry).