Over the Moon Read Online Free
Author: David Essex
saw it. By the age of eleven, I was sure that my future lay as a professional player with a local team – West Ham United or, at the very worst, Leyton Orient. I couldn’t let this ambition be jeopardised by anything as daft as rugby. As I pondered my options, I hit on what Baldrick from
Blackadder
would doubtless characterise as a cunning plan.
My chance to put this plan into operation came in the Eleven Plus maths test. In the exam room, the maths teacher, Mr Milner, moved among us with the question paper then told us to turn it over and begin. I took a cursory glance at the detailed questions about long division and fractions, ignored them, and carefully drew a picture of that spinach-loving comic-book hero, Popeye. It wasn’t even a good picture. In fact, it was crap.
My Eleven Plus failure thus came as no surprise to me but was a major shock to my parents, who had been proud of my decent academic record to that point. Loyally, they blamed it on my teachers and the failures of the state education system. I never had the bottle to tell them what I had done.
I was sad to leave Star Lane but not nearly as sad as I was when I realised what awaited me. Shipman County Secondary School, where I was to waste the next four years of my life, was to prove the archetypal dead-end, no-hope secondary modern. Forget about getting an education – you were happy just to get through the day in one piece.
Shipman County didn’t have a uniform, unless you count the jeans, leather jackets and steel-toe-capped boots that all the boys wore. I was nervous on my first day, walking into school with an older lad, Mike Newell, who lived downstairs in Avondale Court. Mike abandoned me as soon as we got in the gate, to preserve his street cred. I can’t say I blamed him.
The school had a local reputation as a violent, under-achieving hellhole, and gazing around the playground, the first thing I noticed was how huge a lot of the boys were. To a pocket-sized nipper like me, they looked like fully grown men. A lot of the girls looked pretty well developed too, but that was another matter entirely.
I survived my first week making new friends and trying to stay out of the way of the playground bullies and apprentice tasty geezers. Shipman County, and West Ham as a whole, had produced a stream of boxing champions, and I didn’t fancy a future as a human punchbag. I also drew the short straw in the classroom seating plan, being stuck with a boy called Trevor who smelled of old biscuits and had a constant river of snot cascading from his nostrils.
After a few days, I was seriously questioning whether sketching Popeye was the best idea I had ever had, but at least one part of my plan worked out. We played football every Friday afternoon, and the sports teacher took note of my ball skills, honed night after night in the playground under Avondale Court. After our first kickabout he picked the team to represent the school. Number 6, the left half, was Dave Cook.
I couldn’t have felt more proud, and my dad was just as chuffed when I got home and told him the news. The first game was the following morning, and I headed off to our home ground, the romantically named Beckton Dump, my red-and-white-squares shirt and black shorts tucked under my arm. I knew most of our opponents, Pretoria: they had been at Star Lane with me.
Pretoria’s best player was Frank Lampard, who lived opposite Avondale Court and often joined in the after-school kick-about. Even at that age, Frank was special, and it was no surprise that he later went on to become an icon at West Ham, playing more than 550 games in an amazing eighteen-year career before becoming assistant manager to Harry Redknapp. (He is also, of course, the father of the Chelsea and England midfielder, Frank Lampard junior.)
Even with a future England international in the opposing team, Shipman still managed to edge the game 4–3, and thus began a period of my life when weekends were the be-all and end-all
Blackadder
would doubtless characterise as a cunning plan.
My chance to put this plan into operation came in the Eleven Plus maths test. In the exam room, the maths teacher, Mr Milner, moved among us with the question paper then told us to turn it over and begin. I took a cursory glance at the detailed questions about long division and fractions, ignored them, and carefully drew a picture of that spinach-loving comic-book hero, Popeye. It wasn’t even a good picture. In fact, it was crap.
My Eleven Plus failure thus came as no surprise to me but was a major shock to my parents, who had been proud of my decent academic record to that point. Loyally, they blamed it on my teachers and the failures of the state education system. I never had the bottle to tell them what I had done.
I was sad to leave Star Lane but not nearly as sad as I was when I realised what awaited me. Shipman County Secondary School, where I was to waste the next four years of my life, was to prove the archetypal dead-end, no-hope secondary modern. Forget about getting an education – you were happy just to get through the day in one piece.
Shipman County didn’t have a uniform, unless you count the jeans, leather jackets and steel-toe-capped boots that all the boys wore. I was nervous on my first day, walking into school with an older lad, Mike Newell, who lived downstairs in Avondale Court. Mike abandoned me as soon as we got in the gate, to preserve his street cred. I can’t say I blamed him.
The school had a local reputation as a violent, under-achieving hellhole, and gazing around the playground, the first thing I noticed was how huge a lot of the boys were. To a pocket-sized nipper like me, they looked like fully grown men. A lot of the girls looked pretty well developed too, but that was another matter entirely.
I survived my first week making new friends and trying to stay out of the way of the playground bullies and apprentice tasty geezers. Shipman County, and West Ham as a whole, had produced a stream of boxing champions, and I didn’t fancy a future as a human punchbag. I also drew the short straw in the classroom seating plan, being stuck with a boy called Trevor who smelled of old biscuits and had a constant river of snot cascading from his nostrils.
After a few days, I was seriously questioning whether sketching Popeye was the best idea I had ever had, but at least one part of my plan worked out. We played football every Friday afternoon, and the sports teacher took note of my ball skills, honed night after night in the playground under Avondale Court. After our first kickabout he picked the team to represent the school. Number 6, the left half, was Dave Cook.
I couldn’t have felt more proud, and my dad was just as chuffed when I got home and told him the news. The first game was the following morning, and I headed off to our home ground, the romantically named Beckton Dump, my red-and-white-squares shirt and black shorts tucked under my arm. I knew most of our opponents, Pretoria: they had been at Star Lane with me.
Pretoria’s best player was Frank Lampard, who lived opposite Avondale Court and often joined in the after-school kick-about. Even at that age, Frank was special, and it was no surprise that he later went on to become an icon at West Ham, playing more than 550 games in an amazing eighteen-year career before becoming assistant manager to Harry Redknapp. (He is also, of course, the father of the Chelsea and England midfielder, Frank Lampard junior.)
Even with a future England international in the opposing team, Shipman still managed to edge the game 4–3, and thus began a period of my life when weekends were the be-all and end-all
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