‘We need 800 words on a memorial school trip by next Friday. And Taki’s already written one.’ As soon as I agreed to this commission, I started to worry. What if Taki’s childhood involved countless trips to Penscynor Wildlife Park, St Fagans Museum of Welsh Things or Wookey Hole? There would be a risk of repetition. After some reflection, I decided this was unlikely.
I had even gingerly lowered the rear step of the minibus to maximise the resulting damage
Unlike Longstanton Spice Museum, which is an Alan Partridge invention, Penscynor Wildlife Park, though now defunct, actually existed. It is surprising that it failed financially, since it must have made several million pounds a year from the sale of car stickers alone. For a decade or more in the 1970s and 1980s, it was basically a DVLA mandate that every car in south Wales carry a sticker in the rear window confirming the owner had been there. All south Welsh schoolchildren were required to visit at least once, the same way that all German schoolchildren must visit a concentration camp.
The park failed in 1998, and is now in such a state of disrepair that it would be useable only as the setting for a future episode of Scooby-Doo. Looking at the photographs of dilapidation on WalesOnline made me strangely sad. I almost bought a T-shirt featuring its oddly brilliant logo as a dog-whistle way of identifying myself to other south Walian boomers when overseas, in the same way that Bristolians can buy T-shirts reading ‘Theyz me daps, mind’, a phrase entirely incomprehensible to non-Bristolians. (I once advised a French colleague in our Paris office who had a Bristolian boyfriend to try dropping the word ‘daps’ – meaning plimsolls – into casual conversation. I think they got married soon afterwards.)
As schoolboys we affected to think that Penscynor was a bit rubbish, but in fact we enjoyed it. There were monkeys, after all, which held out the promise of amusing antics involving faeces or masturbation. But as a schoolboy of that age, you affect to be jaded about everything. We complained about the Bryn Morgan coach and the packed lunch (a strangely moist sandwich, a packet of crisps and a Wagon Wheel, washed down with something in a pouch with a straw, possibly Kia-Ora).
But without fully realising it, we were insanely, blissfully happy. In fact there is a kind of carefree happiness on a school trip which it is impossible to recreate in later life. When you travel as an adult, you are always worried about things going wrong: missing a flight or train, getting a parking or speeding fine, your car breaking down. It’s your problem. But on a school trip you are in the glorious position of collectively devolved responsibility. Anything that goes wrong that does not involve the actual death of a human being is a bonus. Coach broken down? Brilliant! Venue closed? Fabulous! Boy goes missing? Bliss! It’s the teachers’ job to solve the problem, while your job is merely to look on in amused disdain.
While I was at university a Mancunian contemporary of mine had arranged to meet a coach party of Manchester Grammar School sixth-formers who were considering applying. They never made it. Within 20 minutes of setting off in a brand-new £100,000 coach, smoke appeared beneath the dashboard. When this persisted, they pulled on to the hard shoulder and evacuated. Five minutes later the coach was a fireball, and before the emergency services arrived it was a burnt-out shell. My friend and I both agreed: ‘The lucky bastards – that was one of the best days of their lives.’
That unalloyed enjoyment of total mayhem tragically disappears once you reach adulthood.
Some years earlier I had been setting out from school on some jaunt in a minibus driven by a master with one eye. Given his compromised peripheral vision and spatial judgment, I surmised, correctly as it turned out, that he was quite likely to reverse into another master’s car parked behind. I had even gingerly lowered the rear step of the minibus to maximise the resulting damage. Sure enough, the master started reversing: we were within two seconds of impact.
‘Sir, there’s a car behind.’ This was from the mouth of the quisling Christian Moon, who I am naming and shaming here. I have been friends with him for 45 years, but I still have not forgiven him for this betrayal. Christian went on to Oxford and became head of policy for the Liberal Democrats. Make of that what you will.
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