Mr. Portleven's Electricity Class

It was a lucky day for Mr. Portleven during the first electricity class of the second year term. The electricity lab was a large high-ceilinged box filled with teak topped work benches with one wall consisting entirely of enormous Art-Deco panelled windows stretching from about a metre from the floor to the roof. A cold harsh uncomfortable echoing expanse which amplified Portleven’s cold harsh Cornish dialect voice. The kind of voice you’d expect from the psychotic bastard that he was. 

The day was typical of early September mornings - crisp sunny bright, but lacking summer heat  reminding us autumn had arrived. The sunshine outside never seemed to penetrate the atmosphere of the electricity lab which always seemed dull and cool even on hot June days. I hated the electricity lab, I hated electricity lessons and I hated the reason why I hated them — Mr. Portleven. He was probably why I became a chemist rather than an electrician or IT guy.

Portleven was a thin wiry dark haired Celt with sarcasm on his lips and revenge in his heart; notorious for handing out punishment of never less than 200 very long lines to be delivered the very next day on the threat of a visit to the Head for a slippering. You never crossed Mr Portleven. On that morning I suppose I was lucky too because I broke Mr Portleven’s rule.

Our school was famous in the area as an Art-Deco gem built between the two World wars. The building was best known for it’s impressive façade of a wide half circle of square windows three stories high encasing the main staircase: locally known a “The Glass School.” 

For a shit-scared eleven year-old on his first day at secondary school it was a sight you never forgot. Unfortunalely for me, I remembered that sight on the first day back at school on year two. Looking out from the massive window-wall of the electricity lab I could see the right side of the famous façade, its many windows reflecting the sunshine that never dared enter the electricity lab. It caught my eye.  

A nudge and a whispered, ‘Ginge!’ 

Snapping back to reality, I looked up and saw a four-inch cast dome-bell from an old fire alarm heading for a point somwhere between my eyes. An instinctive duck caused the incoming weapon to skim my head and crash land into the door of the bench behind me.

‘Perhaps you’ll pay attention now, boy. Portleven’s cold request filled to shocked silence in the room, ’bring it to me.’

Demounting my stool the first thing I saw was a gaping wound about two-by-one inch wide and a good half-inch deep carved into solid oak. Picking up the missile I carried through the silent room and placed it on the teacher’s desk. Nothing more was said as I returned to my stool pretty shaken up.

To this day I can still see that murdering chunk of iron flying through the air rotating end over end in slow motion and still wonder what damage it would have done to my twelve-year old noggin if it found it’s target. Looking back I think Portleven himself was a little worried since he never dished out his usual 500 long lines and threat of a slippering.

Back then we didn’t snitch stuff like that to out parents for fear of getting another telling off. However, knowing now what my mother’s reaction would have been if I had -- when I returned the bell to Mr Portleven I was holding his teaching career in my hands;