Silly Bastards

The first thing I saw when I looked around after finishing my final CSE in 1986, was Carl Degnan trying to draw a pair of glasses on his face with a Biro. The second thing was two lads having a ruler fight the lad in front defending himself by randomly waving his ruler around behind his head without looking, his other hand frantically trying to finish the exam.

 Most of these lads I've lost touch with. I saw Carl D last in 1989, he'd started a bus driving YTS. Good going for a lad who'd been banned from driving as 15 year old after he swiped his dad's mk3 Cortina and piled it on Brierley Common.

One of the ruler lads now lives in Australia, and regularly voices dubious opinions on Facebook, all in block cap Barnsley dialect. He broke another lad's collar bone by sneaking up behind him, shouting WOMBAT! then jumping on his back.
His speciality though was making you laugh hysterically at the most inappropriate moments.

We all went to a funeral of a schoolmate in the early 90s. All very sad as the lad had been very popular, had a unbeatable dry humour and was only disliked by the jealous. He died in his house in a completely avoidable drunk chip pan fire incident. A tragedy.

At the funeral, a completely off the mark selection of the lad's 'favourite' music had been played, one particular track was some horrible soft rock bollocks that went on forever and had been really badly taped. 'Wombat' had been dropping 'funnies' throughout the service that we had managed to ignore, and he was getting desperate for a reaction.

"What's this, the fucking 12 inch extended remix?" He whispered. Skip (nicknamed after his dad, who in turn was nicknamed after his dad, who was on the last boat out if Dunkirk, called Skipper), one of our closest friends who had grown up as a next door neighbour of the deceased, burst into hysterics that he had to quickly disguise as a massive bout of deep and uncontrollable grief. We quickly led him out of the service and tried our best not to be heard in the tiny church as we almost joined the residents of the graveyard, trying to catch our breath between bouts of tearful, violent laughter.

Ironically Wombat is now a fireman, noted for his bravery and dedication, the daft twat.

This story is for you Hilly, miss you mate. : ,(

Ken B