In a different class

In a different class

He was in my class at school,
Nothing special about him then,
Just another scrag-end
From the North London streets.
We all kicked a ball, good or bad,
The only playground game
Was scuffing the school shoes,
Muddying the uniform
In the name of football.

I just knew his surname then,
Registered in my head with thirty others
The same time every morning.
No sign in maths of the fortune to come,
No special grasp of the properties of spheroids
He added and subtracted with the rest of us,
Was praised and scolded in equal measure;
He consumed the same school food,
And scrawled his name on desks alongside ours.

But somewhere in those schooldays
The penny must have dropped;
When the report told him 'must try harder'
He applied it to his feet, not the teacher's intention,
Progressed beyond the tin can and the tennis ball
And started to play the beautiful game
In the name of the school,
Setting his own on the road to fame,
Engraved indelibly as captain on a board in the assembly hall.

A few years later he was on our TV screens,
An idol of our schoolboy successors
Who treat his graphic legacy
With more reverence than education.
Even new teachers are given the tour
Of the playground where we used to lay
Our goalpost bags and blazers,
Where we started out as equals
And he finished in a different class.