Thinking Back...

About three years ago I stood at the steps of MacRobert house, anxious to begin the year, but worried that I would somehow fail miserably and everyone would hate me. Now, three years later, things are exactly the same, except my voice is lower, I'm slightly taller and a few things have grown a bit bigger. These are not the only things that have changed, though: As we head into the New Year at St Alban's I can't help thinking how things have changed for better and worse since I was in Form 1. For example, in 2006 I was pretty scared about entering the school library, as if it were a concentration camp, or Mr Botha's accounting class. This was possibly because of the Librarian at the time, Mrs Alexander. She wasn't a bad person, not by a long shot, but she was, all in all, a Librarian. "Her library" was the sort of place you go to die: it was unnervingly quiet and sombre, and anyone who uttered the slightest sound, even the creaking of joints, would be kicked out immediately. These days, however, the new Librarian has totally reformed the place. Although noise is discouraged, it is not illegal. The library is now a friendly place, not a dreary room where you go when there is absolutely no alternative, like it used to be. I blame this on the new librarian who is not actually a librarian but just a fun guy who happens to work in a library. This is but one of the things that has changed around the college, and I am writing this to remind everybody of how "them good ol' days" used to be...

For instance, do you remember the days when you would get up and absolutely dread what was going to be for breakfast? And how that dread was then mixed with a mild curiosity as you got to breakfast and attempted to guess what was on your plate?. And then how the mild curiosity turned into complete horror as you figured it out... Breakfast back then tasted like some sort of nuclear experiment that went horribly wrong. I think that was the reason they started giving us plastic cutlery - the metal was reacting badly with the food. However, gone are the days when depleted uranium tank shells substituted for a light nutritious snack. Gone are the days when you could use the fried eggs in the morning as bullet-resistant armour. And gone are the days when the bacon contained more oil than George Bush could fight for (I feel safe saying this because old Georgey is no longer in presidency and therefore America won't declare war on me... or blame me for hiding nuclear weapons). Nowadays, K.K.S is actually doing an okay job of things. No longer do the breakfasts remind me of what my dog did in the back yard. Nor do the lunches remind me of the breakfasts. And I like the fact that there is usually enough cutlery. The problem comes in when you mix this refinement with St Alban's College. Come on, guys, lets be honest; we like complaining. The more to complain about and blame the school for, the better. So it's quite a shock to us all when suddenly we are listened to, things are changed and then we are left with nothing to complain about. By listening to us the school is destroying all that we know and love, and that is just not right. Someone should complain...

Also, has anyone noticed how the College has turned into a sort of soft-core boot camp? When in Form 1, there was a balance between the school discipline, the house discipline and the amount of fun one was allowed to have. For example, if you talked a bit in class while the teacher wasn't teaching it was okay, but stuff around too much and it was a straight detention, and then when you got back to the house you could expect a light-hearted beating from the Matrics and then go on to an evening of flipping and general boyish enjoyment. It created a sort of harmony, and you didn't mind the beatings because you knew that you would want to do it when you reached Matric. But now the balance has been disrupted, and all energy is focused on school discipline. There are no more beatings, no more flipping, no more general boyish enjoyment. It seems like all the vibe, atmosphere and fun has been taken out of boarding and indeed College life and focused into school punishment. Put one toe out of line and there will be immediate punishment. And what happened to detentions? If you mess around in class a bit you can't look forward to an hour on Friday afternoon relaxing and reading in a quiet environment. No, now the teachers seem to enjoy inventing interesting and creative ways for you to serve your sentence. Sanding desks, break detentions and tons of extra homework are just some of the things that you can expect for indulging in criminal activities such as asking a friend for an eraser during class. There is no escaping it; if your shoelace is undone, for example, you shall be damned to an eternity in hell, and if your hair isn't perfectly aligned you'll probably be shot and quartered. Soon the only way to escape this discipline onslaught will be to actually behave well and do your work. But as this is College we're talking about, this is less likely to happen than Robert Mugabe proclaiming that he is indeed a stingy power-hungry b*****d and that he's sorry for what he's done, and then giving each Zimbabwean 200 billion Zim dollars (about 2 RSA cents)

I wanted to end this passage off in a fancy manner, but I couldn't think of how, so instead here's something for you to think about:
Exactly 34 minutes after Princess Diana died in a car crash, there was a small mayfly that hit a wall somewhere in northern Puket. Coincidence? I think not.

James Hosken