A few schooldays that weren't pure hell ...

Achmore School, Isle of Lewis

My schooldays were like Tom's - rather brown. I hated, loathed, despised, regretted and begrudged almost every second of every minute of every hour of every day of every week of every month of every year of every decade of every century of every millennia that I spent in school - almost. I co-operated to the extent that I am certain that my many teachers also regretted, begrudged, loathed and despised my time in their "tender care". Little sod, I was. "No" and "There's nothing you can do to make me" were my weapons. I used them decisively and often. If you have a punishment, Sir or Miss, then bring it on was the attitude - and (except on Lewis) the teachers always gave up easily and gave up first.

Achmore Village School was ever so slightly different. The twenty-three inmates shown here was about the average size of the prison school population and the whole place was run by one teacher - Mrs McNeil. I was the only sasanach in the place and about twelve of my cellmates classmates were Campbells, from the same family. That's me top right in the dashing white shorts and cosmic stripe fashion statement and dodgy buckle shoes. I'm on my way from being sickly English weed to seasoned porker.

Mrs McNeil taught all of us whatever our age and I seem to remember there being a variety of desk sizes so that our little legs would touch the floor. Before Miss Crichton of the Nicolson Institute in Stornoway (which was pure hell) and Mrs McNeil got hold of me I couldn't so much as read.

Tests at these schools were usually announced by the tawse being taken out of its drawer and laid at the front of the teacher's desk. The tawse, for those of you who didn't have the luxury of a Scottish school education during this period, is a leather strap, used for the percussive encouragement of reluctant young academics.

Oddly, I remember only fun at Achmore. The memory of every other school I went to is couched in terms of brimstone, agonised screams and the roar of volcanic fires. On the second day of my sentence tenure I had the inevitable punch-up that follows any young Englishman's appearance in a foreign school - the Campbell child roughly my size and age ended up hanging by his shirt collar from one of the huge brass clothes hooks in the cloakroom and I was never bothered again by anyone there. Deed done. Mrs McNeil witessed the fight and later told my parents that she checked I was holding my own (I was actually holding the other kid's gizzards) and left us to it, the better to get the inevitable over more quickly. My parents approved. In retrospect, so do I.

When it snowed - and, oh boy, does it snow on Lewis when it bothers, snow like you've probably never seen before (Canadians and anyone from Siberia excepted) - we rolled snowballs about until they were five or six feet in diameter. We occasionally started them off by rolling one of the younger children around until covered. We padded down snow into ice-slides and slid on our backsides for fifty or sixty downhill yards at high velocity until the stone wall stopped us just before the roadway. I can't remember anyone breaking bones, although the wall occasionally needed repair. Mrs McNeil was always delivered to school in a Vauxhall Victor driven by her husband - driving on the only road through Lochganvich where we lived, the next village along. To avoid the terrible fate of being given a lift to school by teacher I used to walk in the JCB cut drains alongside the roadway - a six foot deep one-scoop cut through the peat where I could walk upright and not be seen. It never actually collapsed on me, tempting though it must have been. Nor was I ever washed away in a flash-flood that I can remember (there were only a few places where the sides were shallow enough to get in or out of the drain).

School meals were a revelation at Achmore. A chap in a blue Morris Minor van used to deliver them in big churns and sealed trays half an hour or so before Mrs McNeil used to serve the food at our desks. Standard fare was something like herring and boiled potatoes - pure poison to an Englishman - so my lunches kindly consisted of several puddings with custard. Psoriasis tart (something in pastry made with cornflakes and jam), chocolate concrete, strawberry shortbread, custard chocolate, custard vanilla, custard strawberry, buttescotch tart with chewing-cream.... all magnificent stuff to power our days of running around like nutters. Days when it was semolina and jam were a disappointment, naturally. I'm sure that I must have eaten some savoury courses (that weren't herring related) but I just can't remember any!

The "Usual Offices" were the brick outhouse at the back - one side for girls, one side for boys. Woe betide you if you needed them other than at break times. They were somewhat open to the air too so "going" in winter meant being very quick indeed while still getting snowed on and blasted by the gales of Lewis & Harris. It was probably a very sanitary arrangement, given the proclivities of schoolchildren overfed on chocolate concrete, salt herring and custard.

Achmore is the only school I can reminisce about without reaching for my pills and the laudanum decanter.

Miss Crichton and Mrs McNeil are two of the maybe four of my many, many, past teachers who are not on my little list of people who surely won't be missed (and at that at my earliest and most violent opportunity). Brilliant people - and, belatedly, THANK YOU BOTH!

Sadly, when we left Lewis I had a few short terms in some hippie-run dump of a Junior school (the one the nice RAF Pilot saved by sacrificing his own life and having his spectacular crash a few yards away from instead of on top of) - followed by a couple of years in a 2,200 pupil comprehensive serving a London overspill estate... culture shock, much. From salt herring to uncut heroin in about five hundred miles and three terms. The place was rough as a badger's arse and all associated with it are on my little list, including the inventor of "comprehensives" and all of the dealers.

Achmore is closed now of course, but not, I hope, because of anything I did. Almost "Happy days"!

Achmore School, Isle of Lewis