Stoning Crows and Traffic Policemen

Watching rugby with Old Boy Fritz Bing

I was sitting under one of the trees watching rugby at our recent festival, when one of our Grade 8’s came up to me and started chatting.  Obviously I must have looked in need of company.  After the usual discussion on how the year was going, he came up with the comment: ‘You must have seen some really cool funny things since you have been at Wynberg.’

Well, most of the really funny things in teaching happen in the staff room and it would probably have ruined his respect for teachers if I had breached the code of silence on this one.  However, I did tell him of some other amusing incidents which had happened some years ago.

The first incident concerned the matrics.  Every now and again we have to stress the litter problem to the school and remind the boys that showing a lack of respect to the environment and the ground staff was unbecoming of a Wynberg Man.  If this is followed by a blitz from the school leadership, then the situation invariably improves.  I have always maintained that considering there are over 800 boys at the school, then there is a remarkably small amount of litter – but I never tell the boys that.  One chip packet blowing around the fields always jars the senses – and is one piece of litter too many.

However, on one occasion, the matric quad was covered in litter after every break.  Sandwich wrappers dotted the grass and the area looked like a rubbish tip.  I called the whole matric class together and expressed my extreme displeasure about the situation in THEIR quad.  It was no good pointing fingers at anyone else, I told them, as they were the only Grade allowed in the area.  What message did this send to the rest of the school about them as role models, I asked.  As I went on, I warmed to my theme and became steadily more indignant.  Did they deserve to have a quad of their own?  What sort of spoilt brats left others to pick up after them? How dare they call themselves leaders of the school if they displayed such anti-social traits?

And so I ranted on for some time.  They sat in stony silence, taking it on their collective chin.

‘From now on, I want the Prefect in charge of Grade 12, to come to me at the end of every break before he goes back to class and to tell me that there is not one stitch of litter anywhere in sight.’

With that as my grand finale, I swung on my heel and stalked back to my office.  ‘There will be no more problems with that matric quad,’ I boasted triumphantly to any teacher who walked past me.  I should have known better.

The all-clear was duly given after the next break by the Matric Prefect and it seemed that my gala performance had done the trick.  Not half an hour later, Larry Moser came into my office. ‘I thought that you had spoken to the Matrics?’ he said to me. ‘Have you seen the state of the Matric Quad?’

I went cold.  Surely not?  Was I losing my touch?  This was becoming personal.  The two of us went to the windows overlooking the quad.  I shook my head in disbelief. There was litter everywhere.  It was a disaster scene.

I almost ran to the intercom to summon the matrics to the hall.  I was going to have every one of them on their hands and knees picking up every crumb, every scrap of anything that should not be there.

Fortunately, Larry pulled me back before I was able to spew forth my frustration over the school intercom.  ‘Look at this,’ he said.

Sitting on one of the bins, were two crows pulling packets out of the bin with their beaks and throwing them to the winds.  Another crow was up in the branches of the pine tree above the quad pecking away at a polystyrene container which was under its claws.  When it finished, it let the container float to the ground like a bloated snowflake.

There were amazing scenes in the matric quad in the next few minutes.  Fortunately, only Larry (I hope) saw the Headmaster of Wynberg running into the quad, waving his arms, yelling like a banshee, hurling anything which came to hand at the crows.  ‘I now know what is meant by the expression ‘Stone the Crows,’ said Larry caustically as I collapsed on the sofa of my office a few minutes later.

I was man enough to give an apology to the matrics at the next school assembly.  To this day I have the feeling that they never really accepted it.  They got their own back though.  For the rest of that year, whenever I mentioned anything going wrong in some aspect of school life, I would soon hear the chorus: ‘It’s the crows, Sir.’

‘Wow,’ said my Grade 8 boy on the bench next to me. ‘We must use that excuse.  Do you think that I could say that the crows stole my tablet and I couldn’t do my homework?’

I told him that I certainly could not blame the crows for the multiple traffic fines which I once received on campus.  One of the perks of running a school is to have one’s own parking spot in front of my office.  However, it was invariably taken on a Saturday by a (presumably visiting) rugby spectator.  This was in the era before the Headmaster’s House was made available and I was living in Hout Bay.  So I decreed that a red line would be painted on the road behind the Bill Bowden across the indented section at the lower end of Aletta Walk – near the Labia back gate.  This was duly done and a notice board erected proclaiming that this space was reserved for Headmasters’ Parking.

The next Saturday Rondebosch were our visitors and I was proudly able to invite Martin Barker, as our visiting Headmaster, to park his car next to mine in this new special area reserved for the two of us.  All worked swimmingly well and I was well satisfied with our new parking arrangements.

After the match, we retired to the Bill Bowden Pavilion for the customary post-match festivities and was told to ‘look at my car’.  I went outside to find a traffic officer writing out a ticket surrounded by a number of grinning Wynberg boys, who quite clearly had lost their sense of fear and were determined to savour the upcoming spectacle of my response.

Little did they know that they were in for a treat.

With arms waving, reminiscent of chasing crows, I raced to my car. ‘What do you think you are doing?’  This must go down as one of the more patently absurd questions I have asked in my life  - seeing that a uniformed traffic officer was holding a notepad,  pen and was standing next to my driver’s window.

Clearly engrossed in what he was doing, he didn’t even look up as he answered:  ‘You have parked on a red line.’

I was spluttering with indignation and struggled to be polite. ‘Listen,’ I said through clenched teeth. ‘I-had-that-line-painted-myself-during-the-week.’

He still didn’t look up and after firmly pressing the ticket on the window, he started writing out another one – to the appreciative chorus of the surrounding crowd.

‘What are you doing now?’ I spat out.

‘It is illegal to paint a line on a public road.’

‘What?  It is not a public road!  On one side is our rugby field and on the other side are our tennis courts.  How can it be a public road?  In any event, we put a gate at the end of the road which clearly shows it is ours.’

There was no answer as he affixed Ticket Number Two to the window and started writing Number Three.  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Martin Barker rapidly reversing out of his designated area of my new parking lot and rev off scot free.

I turned my attention to the scribbling traffic official. ‘This is becoming a circus.  What is this one for?’

‘Putting a gate on a public road is an offence according to Ordinance number….’   He proceeded to reel off some numbers which I was in no condition to recollect.

I am not proud of my subsequent Basil Faulty-like response but I know it went along the lines that he should rather be catching taxi drivers, hijackers and stolen cars and spending his waking hours in more productive pursuits than antagonising innocent Headmasters.

He barely paused after slapping on Number Three  before starting on Number Four.  By this time, I was emotionally exhausted and asked what item of fiction he was coming up with now.  I was becoming acutely aware that the crowd in the area was growing and that there was only one winner possible in this standoff.

‘The area you have parked in is designated as a turning area.  Motorists may not park in turning areas.’   Up went Ticket Number Four.

I then took the most sensible action which I had taken since this contretemps had begun.  I buttoned my lips and went back to the Bill Bowden.

I was about twenty metres away, when he shouted at me.  ‘By the way, your car license has expired.’ To this day, I swear that he wrote out Ticket Number Five with even greater relish.

The rest of the weekend was a write-off.  When Monday morning arrived, I was phoning everyone from the MEC for Transport downwards.  At 8.30, I found myself in an office somewhere near Constantia Village.  I spilled out my tale of sorrow, distress and injustice.  Reticence and taciturnity are clearly characteristics needed in traffic officials and, chuckling, he merely held out his hand and asked for the tickets.  I gave him four – grudgingly accepting that I was at fault with Ticket Number Five.

I went back to school feeling somewhat mollified – and thankful in retrospect that, to my knowledge, no Facebook photos were ever taken of five pink tickets flapping stubbornly in the breeze on the car of the Headmaster of Wynberg in his own parking bay.

The mother of my Grade 8 confidant came up to bring him his lunch. ‘Mom, you will never guess what happened to Mr Richardson…..’

Oh, well.  I never had much of a reputation anyway.