Kicking Around
Terry Taylor
Kicking Around by Terry Taylor follows the life of the protagonist through childhood to adolescence, in a series of hilariously comical vignettes, centred around playgrounds, classrooms and soccer and rugby pitches. The action takes place in the city of Southpool, a soubriquet for Blackpool, a name modification in the style of Thomas Hardy. At St John of The Cross Primary School (St John Vianney's), soccer is the preferred sport, while at St Michael's (Joe's), rugby is taught by Oliver Xavier O'Connell, known to the boys as Oxo, an amalgam character composed of features of several typical teachers at Joe's. This is the author's description of Oxo.
'In youth probably built like a mountain, by middle years Oxo's figure had suffered major landslides, resulting in a shape not unlike a gargantuan pear-drop. ........ On a rugby pitch, civilisation ceased at his hairline, above which nestled a full head of neatly coiffeured fleece greying to the perfect shade of leaden silver which can complement real looks and mature sophistication. Below Oxo's scalp squatted two hundred and fifty pounds of raging moo-cow. He was a large flabby animal with a film-star hairdo.'
Joe's is neatly summarised in this succinct passage.
'Like most grammar schools with pretensions, St Michael's had a small chip on its shoulder about not being a public school. So we had our prep school, and, though in a very small minority, boarders. And also a range of school traditions in the Tom Brown vein. some unique - the single sanctioned deviation from a strictly-enforced school uniform was the green cravat worn by the head boy. Some pious - fasting in lent and a week-long religious retreat prior to Easter. Some mundane - sports days, speech days, masters' gowns, a choir, an orchestra and a school song with a chorus in Latin. And some frankly eccentric - an unswervable insistence that Friday lunch consist of fish cake, chips and beans, considered nourishing, rather than peas, considered common.'
As you will see, the work has a style of its own rather than following in the pattern of Classical English comic writing. It owes more to Mark Twain than to Jerome K Jerome. I don't believe it is autobiographical although it does contain autobiographical material and it has the air of truth about it, despite some palpable exaggerations. But as Mark Twain himself says 'There was things what he stretched, but mainly he told the truth. ...That is nothing. I never seen anybody but lied, one time or another, without it was Aunt Polly or the widow.'