Fanny Hilton – the most nervous man in the universe, ever.
No-one in our school knew where each Master’s nickname came from, they just did, they were absorbed as if by osmosis from one year of pupil to the next, by the second day of September term every new starter knew every Masters nickname, it was just so.
So we never named Mr Hilton “Fanny”, it was just so, a name that had stuck with him for the whole of his career and we were often given to pondering on whether any of the Masters knew what moniker we had given them, did they discuss such things in the staff room, did they use the monikers behind their colleagues backs, did the other Masters call Fanny Hilton “Fanny Hilton” when he wasn’t around – we may never know.
Still, he was the most nervous man in the universe – ever.
Notwithstanding the frequent and extended periods of sick leave when yet another nervous breakdown came upon him Fanny Hilton was our Physics Master for the whole of our school career. For five years he taught us the laws of Physics and demonstrated with various levels of competency and confidence just how those laws of Physics affected our everyday lives, and then right at the end of those five years, at the age of 16 years, we were supposed to take a national exam entitled “the O level” upon which our future career, indeed whole life, would be judged.
So was Fanny Hilton any good at teaching Physics ?
I can only proffer my own experience, and my own experience is that at the end of five years of being taught by Fanny Hilton I was adjudged to be incompetent at Physics, indeed so incompetent was I at the subject that the school did not even enter me for the O level exam, preferring instead to let me sit for the CSE version, a much lesser qualification and one that an imbecile could have passed given just a crayon and the ability to write most of their own name – I got a grade C in the CSE exam which was equivalent to a fail at O level, so that was five years of my life that I will never get back then.
In fanny Hiltons defence it wasn’t totally his fault that I did not learn a single Physics thing during his five year tenure in my life, in fact most of the fault is probably mine for not listening at all, in fact most of the fault is Patrick Stewart’s for I sat next to Patrick Stewart in the Physics lab during all of those five years and for all of those five years Patrick Stewart’s sole aim was to disrupt Fanny Hilton’s class as often and in as ingenious a way as was possible.
Not for Patrick Stewart was it sufficient to just do the normal messing about stuff that kids do, stealing things from other pupils, throwing things around the class, oh no, that was far too simple, far below the inventive mind of the schools best disruptor of classrooms, Patrick Stewart rose above the ordinary and became a legend at disrupting lessons, especially Fanny Hiltons lessons.
“Experiment Time” was always a favourite target for more of Patrick Stewarts mischief, those times during a lesson when the class would be invited to bring their stool forward and gather around the large masters desk at the front of the room where Fanny Hilton would proceed with a convoluted experiment to demonstrate one of Newtons Laws of Physics.
It took me several months to understand why on earth Patrick Stewart always picked up his stool and dashed to the front of the classroom at these times for Patrick Stewarts interest in the subject was even less than mine, and it puzzled me further as to why, given that he was always the first to arrive at the front of the class clutching his stool, he always chose the place to sit where you got the worst view of the experiment in hand – right at the far side of the desk, at the furthest limit of the semi-circle of pupils around the desk, so far away that he was actually sat behind Fanny Hilton watching the experiment over his shoulder.
It took several months to work out why he did that.
He did it so that he could sit next to the hook on the wall where Fanny Hilton hung his jacket every time he walked into the classroom, and inside the jacket would always be a plentiful supply of John Player Special cigarettes, in fact so nervous was Fanny Hilton that he bought his John Player Specials in tubs of fifty rather than packs of twenty, fifty a day being his normal smoking intake, I’m sure there was probably a Physics experiment going on there somewhere, but anyway…
Fanny Hilton never worked out why it was that at the break time after every one of our Physics lessons he’d go to the staff room for a well deserved smoke to find that his tub of John Player Specials was gone and he never looked out of the window at times like these to see a plume of blue smoke coming from the ceiling vents of the boys toilet across the yard where Patrick Stewart puffed away on what remained of Fanny Hiltons cigarette stash – I wouldn’t mind if Patrick Stewart was a keen smoker, he wasn’t , he actually hated smoking and it made him ill, but he’d stay in the boys toilet until he’d smoked every single one of Fanny Hiltons fags just because he could.
It was on one of our “experiments around the front desk” sessions that Patrick Stewart finally tipped Fanny Hilton over the edge into outright barking madness though, on the day in question we were supposed to be learning all about surface tension on fluids, I remember little of the subject but it involved a clear plastic bowl filled to the brim with water and then a layer of light powder added to better see the surface, and finally Fanny Hilton bent low over the bowl to carefully add the last few vital millilitres of water so as to make it actually rise above the top of the bowl and be held there by surface tension -see I must have learned something after all.
We collectively held our breath and the semi circle around the desk all leaned forward as Fanny Hilton ever-so-carefully added drop by drop into the bowl, silence pervaded the classroom, we all stared at the bowl…
There was a huge explosion from right next to my seat and Patrick Stewart disappeared in a cloud of white powder…
…and everyone in the room shat themselves.
As the dust settled in the corner we couldn’t help but notice that Patrick Stewart had turned white, not because he was scared, but because he had just emptied the contents of a fire extinguisher all over himself, “I leaned on it Sir” was his only explanation.
The explanation fell on deaf ears for Fanny Hilton stood rock-solid at his desk, a wide eyed stare fixed to his face, body trembling so badly that someone had to step forward and take the jug of water from his hands to stop him dropping it, he stood there for what seemed an eternity then slowly and deliberately picked up his jacket and walked from the room.
And that was the last time that Fanny Hilton ever took us for Physics, indeed, that was the last time we ever saw him.
Rumours abounded that he was still in the employ of the school and that he was taking some of the more junior boys for Physics lessons, but he declined to teach us any further and was replaced by a student teacher who inspired my desire in the subject even less than Fanny Hilton had done.
Which was a great shame really for on the first day that I started Technical College the very first question they asked me was “Have you got your Physics O level certificate with you ?”, but my Technical College days are for another time…
