Haywire – 25th July 1983

Beuagh, guts are lying everywhere
And my brains are going spare
Another physics lesson, I’m going to start a fire
Haywire, haywire, haywire, haywire

24th Apr 2023 – Mr Hayward was our Physics teacher and struggled to keep us nasty, disobedient kids under control. Naturally, we called him Haywire.
One time I was burning incense at the back of the class and when he saw the smoke he ran to us and threatened to take us to the headmaster for smoking marijuana in class. Scared at the prospect of going to the headmaster’s office we told him it was just incense and after a while, he calmed down, but that was his undoing. From then on we knew we could get away with anything in his classes.
For the Easter holiday in 1984, we (Rupes, Jez, Jim and Muz) stole a stroboscope out of the cupboard on the last day of school and had a party in my room where we made ourselves dizzy and broke the varispeed dial. Not to be disheartened we fixed it by shoving a matchstick into the shaft and got it going again. As we would only be at school intermittently for our exams from that time onwards we had no intention of returning this equipment but we ended up thinking it would be funnier if we could put it back without anyone noticing and so that’s what we did.
Needless to say, I failed my Physics exam and quite possibly most of our class did.
I found out a few years after leaving school Mr Hayward died of a heart attack whilst playing squash. Really, I had fond memories of him and though I hated physics I always enjoyed his class.