"Who likes The Orange Bicycle?" said the teacher. No hands went up.
A Scottish Education aspires to a state of mutual incomprehension between teacher and taught, and other psychedelic whimsies
I found my school report from Primary 7. It is, perhaps, a little late for this reaction, but I’m miffed. I was in P7A at North Berwick Primary. It was the final year of that school, an old building troubled by rats. The following term, the primary kids decanted to a new building. Law Primary was new fangled. It was open plan. There were no doors between the classrooms. I don’t know how that worked.
My school experience was not open plan. I was not unhappy, but my memories fall in a strange configuration. Perhaps we can start in Primary One. On day one, another boy in the class distinguished himself by leaving a small puddle beneath his chair. (That was summer. By autumn, in a game of conkers, I would win a cow’s tooth from that unfortunate boy.)
Primary One was a shock. I was four years old and the teacher, Mrs McAllister, was not my mum. She was fierce. She was no fun. Happiness was not part of the curriculum. It could not be learned by rote.
There are a couple of things I do remember. There was a toilet block. Children who swore were sent to wash their mouths out with carbolic soap. This did not affect me. I did not swear until I got to High School.
There was football in the back playground. A lot of the time, the game was played with a tennis ball. Somewhere around Primary 6, the training shoe was invented. One of the newer boys arrived wearing a pair of Adidas Somethings. It was the beginning of aspiration.
Let’s jump back to Primary 7. The report is signed by Mr King, who was also the Head Teacher. I remember a few things about him, though not what he looked like. I’m going to give him a combover. Now I can see him as the old sports commentator, David Coleman. That’s a false memory, but it will have to do.
Things to know about Mr King. He liked the Jacobites. I can’t remember what he said, but I remember that he said it. He was a disciplinarian. One of the things he liked to do was punish anyone who forgot their activity money. Activity money was a weekly donation towards school trips. I’m going to guess that the suggested amount was around 10p. Sometimes, whether through poverty or mishap, some of us would arrive at school with no activity money. Children who forgot their activity money were invited to stand by the blackboard. The rest of us lined up and took turns to belt them with the tawse. The classes were big. You could get belted 37 times for forgetting your 10p.
Another thing about Mr King. He wasn’t Mr Marshall. Mr Marshall - popularly known as Percy - was a younger man. He had long hair. He wore brown corduroy. He was frequently compared to Jimmy Savile, when that was an acceptable thing to say. I’m going to imagine him looking like Bobby Moore. Sometimes I was in Mr Marshall’s glass for handwork. We made wickerwork baskets. We decorated flowerpots with cement and seashells. I had no skill. My flower pot was a mess. I took it home and put it in the bin. My mum found it and assured me it was beautiful. She put a spider plant in it. The spider plant died.
And now we come to The Orange Bicycle. This was the early 1970s, the era of glam. Pop music was everything. We loved it all. Slade, The Sweet, Mud, Wizzard, Bowie, T Rex, Chicory Tip, Popcorn by Hot Butter. At the Gullane Under-14s FC annual disco, I came third in the Gary Glitter impersonation contest, when that was an acceptable thing to do.
And here is Mr King, taunting us with tales of The Orange Bicycle.
“Hands up who has heard of The Orange Bicycle?”
No hands go up. Mr King’s Jacobite face curls into an expression of exquisite contempt.
For years I believed The Orange Bicycle was an imaginary band, invented to taunt us. There was no evidence that they ever existed. They were not in the charts. Their records were not in the shops. Not in Woolworth’s, not in the Melody Centre. The Melody Centre’s slogan was: “If it exists, we can get it.” The Orange Bicycle were not got.
And yet: in 2024, here they are. Mr King has dissolved into a black mist of cruelty and contempt, but the album Let’s Take A Trip On An Orange Bicycle is on Apple Music. Wikipedia tells me that the group began life as Robb Storme and the Whispers, a skiffle outfit in Crouch End, touring behind the Iron Curtain with Helen Shapiro, before morphing into a psychedelic hippie band. Their most popular tune was Hyacinth Threads, a spiralling collage of Beach Boys harmonies and harpsichord which reached Number One in France.
And this was Mr King? The old disciplinarian was secretly psychedelic? Or maybe he was just making a joke about the teacher-pupil relationship, and how a Scottish Education aspired to dutiful reticence and a blissful state of mutual incomprehension between the teacher and the taught. Certainly, Mr King doesn’t seem to have made much headway in understanding me. He writes: “Does not say much, but it is always to the point!”
And that is where we are.
I have heard The Orange Bicycle, Mr King. What was your point?