I'd like to think that I didn't waste all of my time at school, though I have to admit that work wasn't the most important thing in my life then. I did take a range of O level exams and even passed some of them. History had no appeal for me, I couldn't see the point in all the political shinanegans and might have been interested had the emphasis been on the social side- I failed that. I quite liked aspects of geography but hated shading coastlines on maps and failed to find any interest in the Canadian shield or the crops grown in Florida. I had a geography teacher who threw various objects at recalcitrant students. These included, chalk and wooden board rubbers, he was a great shot too and i was hit many times. I failed that too. I did better in Maths and the sciences and strangely my best result was in Physics. However my maths wasn't good enough to take that further and so I ended up taking Chemistry Botany and Zoology at A level. Oh that Ron had been the A level teacher!
Sixth form was much the same as lower school in many respects but we did have some freedoms, and of course we had the whole of the lower school to look down on. The uniform became more expensive and the work that I didn't do was much harder. Classes were mainly smaller and we were expected to be much more grown up. Oh I wish that I had met some of those expectations. Somehow I always managed to find myself in the wrong company, or maybe it was I that was the wrong company. Whenever there was a rebellion, I was there; whenever there was trouble, I was in there somewhere. Needless to say, I was not enormously popular with some of the old guard of the staff.
My Chemistry teacher was a total disaster. I won't name him as I am pretty sure that he is still alive, though thankfully no longer in a classroom. He was young and inexperienced though he would sweep into the classroom with a haughty air, sporting a long black gown, as was the trend for teachers in those days. I am sure that he knew his chemistry, but alas he didn't know a thing about students. His class control was missing completely.
Now in a chemistry lab, there has to be someone in charge and students should not have access to whatever chemicals they want. This was not the case and although learning of sorts did take place, anarchy probably described the state of things best.
There were so many incidents that I would find it impossible to record them all. Water fights were the norm. Wash bottles of distilled water are liberally distributed in a lab, and in those days so were their contents. Wash bottles even got customised to give a greater range and often while Mr X was writing some complex formulae on the board, water would be falling like rain on all and sundry. I even recall a swathe of water appearing aver his neatly written notes on the blackboard. He didn't even pause in what he was doing. I feel ashamed of my behaviour and that of my cohort. I would have hated to have had us in any class of mine.
One other memory was the discovery of Nitrogen Tri-Iodide. As I said - access to the chemical store was easy and ingredients for whatever our imaginations came up with were there for the sampling.
If iodine crystals are dissolved in ammonia solution, a black sludgy, insoluble material is made. This can be filtered off and the sludge can be applied to any surface. It is fine when wet but as the water evaporates, it leaves a very unstable material that explodes on touch. Painted on door catches or the edges of cupboard doors it makes a lovely noise when touched. Scattered on the floor, it simulates a world war two mine field, but when someone suggested painting it on a toilet seat, they had to be restrained. Not only would that be dangerous, it might also backfire on the perpetrator. One of the anarchists did make rather too much on one friday afternoon and decided to leave a beaker of this stuff in his desk over the weekend. When we came in on monday, the contents had dried and exploded in his desk, coating it and its contents in a beautiful patina of Iodine. Everything in there was purple and ruined.
So Chemistry was fun but alas I messed it up. That is something that I seem to do well.
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