The Bad

"Satan" was his name. He was a PE teacher. Now don't get me wrong, I liked PE and Games. I was quite a sporty kid. I was reserve goalie for the school football team, making 5 appearances - mainly when the first choice goalie got tickets to watch Anytown Town. I captained my form's rugby team. I was 2nd XI captain at cricket and a mean leg spin bowler. But I couldn't swim.

And Satan took us for swimming. He was determined to make my life hell. Thankfully there was also T who couldn't swim. Last lesson on a Thursday used to be swimming and the before that English. It was 'squeaky bum time' during that lesson.

He used to goad me by saying - "What if your plane crashed in the sea and you couldn't swim - you'd be dead! Ha!". My reply under my breath was, "Statistically, if your plane hits water you die on impact anyway." He used to push me and T into the deep end of the pool and then stand there holding the pole just too far away from us so we had to splutter and splash until we either nearly drowned and he took pity on us or we 'swam' to the pole. I suppose I was quite brave or stupid, some may say. My mum could see how much it was upsetting me so she said she would write me a note to cover all the swimming lessons. I refused. I wouldn't let him win.

I only skived one swimming lesson. When it was raining during games I was faced with the possibility of double swimming. I had a master plan. I went to the teacher in charge of our footy team and told him that I had a cold and that if he wanted me to be on the bench on Saturday that I shouldn't do Games. When I went to see Satan with my excuse he refused to believe me. So I got Footy teacher to come down who said to him. "Look unless you can magic me a goalkeeper for saturday, Dre has to miss Games."

T and I won in the end. T's father went to see the Head and pointed out the Satan was bullying us. He got bollocked and never went near us again. Although I did hear him once trying to bribe P into pushing me in.