SSW001.adventures.indd 63 20/07/2018 18:16 S S 1 8 : 1 6 SS 18:16 063 063 NEBOCENE Misspent youth, deformed thumb joint. ThenIboughtaDeadShotcatapult. The excitement and Joy Of Possession was intense. I practised in my dad’s garage with airgun darts and a dartboard until I ruined the bull in the middle and made some odd perforations in the steel garage door, upsetting my dad. I collected small round stones and sometimes used marbles. Marbles and a bullet hole in a window were what caused a policeman to come to the house one day but that’s another story. And one day, I did finally get my quarry and in later years I got better at it. I upgraded to a Goliath with the pouch-only bindings and each pheasant I smote in the head with a pebble and took, got its own tiny notch filed into the edge of the frame. Then, I got a Wham-O POWER MASTER and boom, I was silicone-powered. New rubber! On a Friday, we finished school early and either did Combined Cadet Force Army/Navy/RAF marching and stuff (not me..) or something ‘worthy’ called SSU. I was part of the terrible ‘hospital radio’ group that sent godawful tapes to the local places - to get them to go home early, I think. Then, after a term on the newspaper-fund paper-baling detail, I managed to persuade the teachers that I wanted to run a ‘Natural History Recording Group’. This was my cover. That and the fact that the teacher in charge (A ‘miss’, about to marry the head of Physics after getting physical, we all reckoned) was distracted and bored and I could blither endlessly about my idea. My geography teachers disliked me. The head of geography was in charge of SSU (Social Services Unit) and I was vile in return by getting an A grade ‘A’ level, after being rude about their ‘science’ throughout my course. So nobody in charge ever suspected the gobby little fat boy, always muddy for some reason, would be a rascally poacher spending every single spare minute in the woods, clean off school property. Before school, after school, morning break and lunchtimes… always. And with 1,400 boys, nobody wondered where just one had gone. Plus the anonymity for when I did once get seen by the keeper, of one of so very many uniforms, was a disguise despite being fat! So we had a licence to poach. We were the Nebocene, a corruption of ‘never seen’. And mostly, nobody did see us. Gav took pheasants home for his mum. I took a brace to give to the butcher I worked with, inside Debenhams food hall as a Saturday boy deli assistant. And I took pheasant into General Studies cookery lessons in the girls’ school next door when I was in the 6th form. Mrs. Flashman told me I was gifted, as I told her the meat was rabbit. But all this came to a single joyous moment one ‘Field Day.’ Yes, for one whole day a term, your activity was ALL DAY. It was like Christmas to The Nebocene Tribe. I had come armed with my tiny Optimus 96L backpacker stove and cookware plus butter and spices and a plate, some bread and a knife and so forth. It was a golden sunny autumnal day and we had done well, hunting like ferals until we had pheasant flies inhabiting us from those leaving dying birds. (Found when disrobing, they don’t like people.) I had been into the school and washed the two breasts of freshly hunted, still warm pheasant and returned to the back field. I had fired up the stove, putting some butter in the billy frypan. The roarer burner purred, the fat spat and crackled in the pan, the afternoon sun shone. This was getting good, I’d waited a long time for this. At that moment, the recalcitrant idiot boys who volunteered for nothing and were put on litter detail, came out of the school woods, doing a full campus sweep. They looked hot and bored rotten. We were happy and I recall seeing the pink breasts turn a rapid white as they fried, before browning a tiny bit in the mild spice and butter. It smelled to heaven and as these idiots approached, I could see their jealousy of our happy encampment. Matey and I just started to chuckle, and then laugh, more and more until I nearly coughed myself to bits. We laughed not because it was funny but for the sheer and utter joy of life and winning at it, just then. It was down to a catapult and was the single best moment of my entire childhood. I cherish it. Quote of the Season: “I fuckin’ LOVE catapults…” John Jeffries, Boxing Day, 2017 SSW001.adventures.indd 63 20/07/2018 18:16