Published 'End Of The Millenium' 1997
It was intended to be the bash to end all bashes. Every school had at least one bully, some a lot more - nasty pieces of work in the main. Their only pleasure in life was dealing out physical and mental torment to those younger or smaller or prettier than themselves, taking the minor authority granted to them by teachers (who should have known better) and magnifying it beyond all recognition - until they thought they could tweak even the big red drinker's nose of the headmaster himself. They stood in a row upon the stage, during morning assembly, arms folded, long canes angled outwards, ensuring the lessons were read ... and then damn well learned! Every bully worth his salt and pepper had arrived at their Convention which was being held in a four star hotel near Kidderminster. They didn't want to cause a shortage of ordeals during school time, so they had arranged the event for half-term and this must have been the only time they did anything by half measures. The Convention was not going to be a doddle. There were seminars and tutorials to be attended on such topics as THE TENDEREST SPOT AND HOW TO FIND IT and SIX OF THE BEST, ARE THEY GOOD ENOUGH? The latter was sparsely attended, because bullies couldn't count more than the fingers on one hand, in any event. There were also sessions of INTER-BULLYING where macho masochism was even more the flavour of the week than the school canteen's left-over banana splodge. The actual lectures were given by some bullies who were pretty long in the tooth, having continued in the school Remove under the guise of needing remedial attention to their scholarly activities, but, in truth, retained for their "leadership" qualities ... with a payment of a fee from the tuck-shop profits, of course, plus a free sherbet dip every third Thursday. One particularly hard-nosed Cabal had been in session for most of the night, laying down seed-beds of potential fag bashing ... such as toasting their boy-slaves' bums on roaring study fires and then debating the pro's and con's of spreading butter over them. "Butter'll only serve to ease the pain." "Yes, but salted butter makes them smart." "Blimey, that's the teachers' job to make them smart." "Well, we need to give those kids a kickstart in life..." "Yes, I get my slave to ride in front on my tandem bike - each jackboot jab on his tender arse makes him pedal a good deal harder." The bullies all ended up speaking at once, as ideas fell over each other in the rush to evacuate the nasty minds that housed them. At the official Convention dinner, the head prefect at the top table was the finest example of Bullyship that made even the other bullies quake in their hob-nailed hush-puppies. This was the aged Flashman himself, still thriving on the excesses of the original Tom Brown's Schooldays japes. He left scorch-marks on you by simply staring. Even in the late tewentieth century, he cut such a fine figure, some thought he must keep an oil painting of a shrivelled-up monster in his loft. The toast-master banged a sledge-hammer on the voodoo doll of a snotty-nosed fresher and prayed silence for Grace. Flashman's voice then boomed across the mock refectory, as the other bullies rattled their tin plates on the special wooden trestle-tables which the hotel management had seen fit to import as a mishumoured gimmick. Suddenly, he stopped short amid a deathly hush, since one of the lesser bullies had approached him, platter and ladle in hand. There was hardened treacle and yellow-manker custard around his mouth like impetigo scabs. The others oohed and aahed at his cheek - they, too, had not particularly relished the bogies in batter starter but, even so, they wouldn't've dared cross a Billy Bunter with an Oliver Twist... "I want posh hotel grub, Flashman", the yob whined. Flashman passed through various stages of rage, not chronologically, but all in one go, ranging from minor irritation of a flea-bite to the mindless fury of a bloated Hitler faltering at the last hurdle of world domination. He sprouted long black springy hairs from his eyebrows and false teeth from his nostrils - the feet flattened out, became plates of seething butcher's rubble - his arms swung like huge timeless pendula and then flailed wildly as the temper reached the parts ordinary anger couldn't reach - and the painting in the loft turned back to the handsome epitome of history's heroism. The horrendous mind that had lived like a white-nippled slug inside the fine golden shell of manly skin poked out its scummy head, mouthing the vilest obscenities made incarnate. The other bullies didn't finish their annual dinner (the lumpy custard had turned a violent shade of snot green, in any event) and went back to their aristocratic parents on their sad wobbling tandems, each with one narrow saddle prizing open the bullies' buttocks and the other in front empty of anything but unrequited love. Back in the darkened school, the headmaster wept into his gin, losing his nose in the process amid the clunking ice cubes.
