When I started writing songs, one of my first efforts was a parody about school sports.

I was better at Gym, where you could sometimes get through on the basis of self-punishment rather than finesse. I used to like pressure training, because the alternatives, like trampolining or basketball, all showed off my lack of coordination, whereas pressure training just meant doing mindless exercises for an hour. The Gym was located at a different school called Marlcliffe. We used to have to walk the half-mile there and back as a kind of warm-up.  We had some other lessons at Marlcliffe too. It was there, for example, that our biology teacher made us all stick needles in our fingers to get blood to put under the microscope. I'd have been perfectly happy to look at someone else's blood. It was there that the contents of an overheated test tube shot through the air and landed in my ear. Ouch.

One day we were showering after gym, in preparation for the sweaty dash back up to Wisewood, when word came through that Mrs Cook, who was teaching a physics class at Marlcliffe, had entered the gym (to see Mr Hodgkinson). We were all very excited about the idea that she might glimpse us changing. Craig pointed out that she was married so wouldn't be interested. He was right: she wasn't. I mention this not only to show that 12 year old boys have some strange ideas, but also, tangentially, to mention that the Head of Physics at Wisewood was a woman. We didn't realize it, but that was unusual. It still is.