Friday 21 July 2017

HEYWOOD JABLOME Obituary

‘Sup, wankstains, what’s good?

Hello again. Make yourself at home, grab a cup of tea or coffee, take a pew, and read some words. This obituary has been on my to-do list for some time, but being over the age of 18 and having left Hampstead, I have much better things to do with my spare time. OK that’s a lie, but I should at least make it out like I’m cool, yeah?

To be honest, to anyone who’s relatively new to Hampstead, or the Trash, this obituary will make no sense. I’ve been away from the beauties of the quad and the pond… wait, didn’t they build the New New Block over those? I’m showing my age.

As is becoming more and more obvious by the word that I’m out of touch with the modern Hampstead, just like while I was when I was still there, the powers that be were out of touch with the modern world (I’ll take it for granted that is still the case).

No doubt the vast majority of readers will remember the Sludge obituary. Lots of angry paragraphs, great jokes, and spot on criticism of the SLT and the Head. However, because the idiot genius put a photo of his ugly mug himself on it, and all the fallout that followed (and gave us 15 minutes of fame), the rest of us writers decided to delay our obituaries until we were safely secure in whatever we decided to do after Hampstead.

However, this means that any criticisms of the s**t I had to put up with that I can write here and now are irrelevant to the student who puts up with s**t in the modern day. So, if anyone can remember the article Sludge wrote a year on from his obituary, this will read more like that.

I’m now a student at University. I sit around all day doing nothing, and writing all my coursework essays at the last minute – so no change from what I did at Hampstead. But the lecturers and seminar teachers sit off a lot, and don’t get involved, don’t check up on you. That’s a big change from Hampstead, and that’s something I’ll miss. We all moan about teachers, about wanting them to leave you alone. And I notice I’m starting to sound like a crap end-of-year assembly, but they have you in their best interests: don’t give them a hard time like I did.

Those who do deserve a hard time, are the SLT. From afar, it sounds like it continues to be a revolving door, where SLT members go on from being a deputy head at Hampstead to getting the number one job at a better school than ours, while ours regresses in the exam statistics year by year under the same leadership. Sounds like Wenger at Arsenal – no wonder that mural by the water fountains remains there 12 years on from that FA Cup penalty shootout win in Cardiff (actually, it might not still be there, because of the new block. Christ, I feel old). Maybe you’ll have to start marches with banners reading “Jacques, thanks for the 5-year-trend but it’s time to say goodbye” and “Szmexit”.

No doubt with the new block there are new stupid rules. Blazers must remain on at all times, no taking it off in the summer and no coats in the winter. Anyone not wearing a tie will be hung with one found in lost property, then drawn and quartered with a CaterLink plastic knife. Gimmicks like ‘No Pens Day’ and ‘Drop Everything And Read’ are joined by something even more ridiculous like ‘Tweet Your Revision’: to combine the idea of simplifying things for revision so you remember it, and being Down Wiv Da Kidz (© 2004). Or creating an app for Year 9s for when they have to choose their GCSE subjects, and Year 11s with A Levels, that recreates the Tinder swiping but with subjects. At least until departments use the photos of their hottest teacher to entice students to pick their subject (I’m torn between which department is most likely to catfish, but then all the good teachers, and probably the hot ones too, from my time will have no doubt left by now).

Being at uni, I’m too busy in a haze of drinking, hangovers, and all-nighters writing essays at the last minute to even consider what it must be like at Hampstead now. Not only have I not been there since I left, I’ve not even gone past it on the C11 on the way to Brent Cross or anything (189 crewe 4 lyf boi). Europeans in 1350 would have avoided the Plague less gravely than I have Hampstead.

And, as Sludge wrote in his anniversary article, Uni is just as bad as Hampstead. The powers that be at Unis are just as obsessed with statistics as the SLT at Hampstead. Student Unions are even more cancerous than School Councils: imagine the jumped up twats that think they can make a difference in school – the jumped up twats at Uni are like them on every performance enhancing steroid under the sun. Both think they can make a difference, but they can’t and won’t, when most students at both institutions are too interested drinking (especially those bloody alcoholic Year 7s getting waved on half a WKD). At the end of the day, it just becomes another thing to list off on CVs as they go on to become a politician or political journalist. You know how much criticism of the school council we’ve written, it’s no wonder that MPs make so many howlers when it’s the same idiots in both situations.

So, as I end this long, meaningless ramble before I drink myself paralytic once again, I have a quick read through my old articles, and it’s stunning how much crap I had written. Cookie Cartels, pre-empting Narcos by a couple years; about 5 articles slagging off Buzzfeed (some of my favourite stuff), articles slagging off both the Buzz and ETC (including one that implies a student-teacher relationship, Jesus Christ), and further crap jokes about football, betting companies, then-contemporary political issues and rewriting various TV shows as at Hampstead. If you haven’t read them, please do, as they’re probably better than anything I’ll ever write since, and I’m a student doing an essay-based degree who wants to go into journalism of one kind or another.

So, as politics becomes even more mental than the satire we dream up while tripping after licking toads dissected in science; with The Donald, the unbarrageable Farage, Jez We Can Corbyn, Theresa May, Blair’s return, Big Vlad Putin fighting topless in Syria instead of with Bears… Continue to enjoy school for what it is: a massive doss and a big pisstake for three years, then suddenly massively important for your life destiny for the next four. Enjoy Hampstead for what it is, a middle-of-the-road inner London comp, where working class and middle class; white, black, and brown; Christian, Jew, and Muslim; all mingle together (this sounds like prospective brochure guff), all sell cookies to one another, all take the piss out of one another, and all get pissed off with the mess that is the school management.


Sludge signed off with a reference to American Psycho. My reference will be a bit more naff. Morrissey once sung that “belligerent ghouls run Manchester schools.” He’s not too far off the mark for North West London schools too.

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