Chapter 20

Mr. Kearns had been waiting for Andrew when he turned up at school at 7.25. Neither had any way of knowing whether the other would be there but both took the chance and it paid off. Andrew started his one stroke plan and enjoyed just swimming without having to count laps or worry about times. He swam until Mr. Kearns yelled that they had to stop so they could shower and change.

“No backstroke Andrew?”

They were heading into the changing rooms.

“I got spoiled swimming at the Commonwealth over 50m. With it only being 25m here I am going to just swim one stroke each morning and alternate them. Backstroke tomorrow. No need to count so I can just enjoy the swim. I do a lot of my thinking while I swim.”

“Makes sense.” Kearns paused before carrying on “I started doing this as a way to help you recover from the cancer. What I didn’t anticipate is; one how committed you are to your swimming; and two how much I have enjoyed it as well. When I saw you walking over the playground this morning I was pleased. I would have been gutted not to have swum this morning. I am sure you know that I am the coach of the school swim team. Normally the team is only fifth and sixth years, just because of ability. Occasionally there will be a strong fourth year who will make the team. Tomorrow once you are warmed up will you let me time you for 100 and 200 metres backstroke and then on Wednesday time you on 100, 200 and 400 metres front crawl? It will be a different style of swimming. I would like you to go as hard as possible and see how you do. I don’t know whether you will make the team or not but I would like to see how your times are.”

Once again, Andrew’s self-image was different than how others now saw him. He had not made any kind of school sports team ever. Never thought about it, never considered it.

“Sure, I would be intrigued to see what my times are both front and back.”

Andrew wasn’t over the top happy when he arrived at his form room but the day had started very well. Surprisingly the door to the classroom had been open even although there was no sign of Mrs. Hall. Andrew was standing chatting to Pete Thompson, catching up about what they had been doing over the summer when suddenly the room went completely silent, cathedral quiet. Mrs. Hall had come into the room leading five girls. There were going to be girls in their class. They all found seats and Andrew sat there watching them he remembered Leslie’s words from all those months ago. ‘Think how they will be feeling when they walk into the room’. They looked like Christians at the Coliseum and the rest of the class were the lions. Wow. The girls all sat together at one table, no surprise there, and Mrs. Hall did a quick attendance. Then she wanted to talk to them.

“As you can see five young ladies have joined this class. You will get the chance to meet them in your classes over the course of today. 153 girls joined the school today and there are ten in 3^rd year. Five here in 3A and five more in 3C. I know that you will treat them well. Don’t let me hear otherwise, right?”

Then they were off to assembly. The girls stayed as a pack so there was no chance to chat to any of them individually and there was no way Andrew was going to talk to them one on five. He might be working on his confidence but he was not crazy! It was not until after lunch that he actually spoke to one of new classmates. They were sitting in Chemistry Lab which was still assigned alphabetically. So Katherine Maxwell was sitting next to him. Channeling everything Leslie had talked about, Andrew smiled and introduced himself.

“Hi, I am Andrew, Andrew McLeod. How are you coping so far? Better or worse than you feared?”

He continued smiling at her trying to look non-threatening but probably coming off as a rabid fool, who knows.

“Hi I am Kate Maxwell. You are the first boy brave enough to talk to me. The guy sitting next to me in Maths looked like he was going to pass out. We all knew the first couple of days would be rough just from the novelty factor. Our year and the year below probably have it the worst.”

Andrew thought back to who she was sitting beside at Maths. Dougie Newsome. Andrew felt sorry for him as one year ago that would have been him. Terrified with no idea what to say.

“Don’t be too hard on Dougie. Remember this was an all-boys school up until four hours ago. A lot of us have very limited or no experience with girls.”

Andrew laughed and shook his head.

“Probably best not to talk to Dougie for the first couple of days. He really might faint.”

Kate laughed and then the class started and the conversation dropped. At the end of the class they headed off to a double period of English to finish the first day. Whoever thought that particular schedule up needed a smack!

“Andrew, right?”

Kate had turned back to him. He nodded.

“How come you haven’t pass out. In fact you initiated our chat.”

Andrew could see the rest of the girls waiting at the door for Kate so it was time to for him to escape.

“Who says I’m not about to?”

He nodded at the girls.

“Safety in numbers. Your group awaits.”

Andrew walked off his heart beating furiously in his chest. As he headed over to the old building Pete came up to him.

“What were you saying to that girl?”

Pete’s tone was jealous, amazed and accusatory all at once. Quite the trifecta to pull off. Andrew looked at him.

“I said hi, and introduced myself. Her name is Kate something. Hang on, Maxwell. Yes Kate Maxwell. She was laughing about how none of the boys were talking to the girls yet. She said Dougie looked like he was about to pass out in Maths.”

Pete laughed at this.

“Yeah, he still looks flustered.”

Andrew leaned forward.

“That might be his look all year!”

Pete laughed even louder and they wandered into the English class. Caldwell was still their teacher and it was good to see he was still being an arse, just not to Andrew this time.

“Good afternoon ladies. Welcome. I would like you to split up please and not all sit together. You two can sit in these empty seats here. McLeod, move to the back please. Urquhart move over here. Right then, grab a seat and we will start.”

Andrew ended up in the back row beside Pete, not very good planning from Caldwell. On the other side of Pete was one of the empty desks and another of the girls sat down. Now Pete might have wanted to know what Andrew said to Kate but he wasn’t exactly Mr. Chatty with the girl next to him. Caldwell got the girls to introduce themselves and the girl next to Pete was Hannah Adams.

They survived an hour and twenty minutes of English to finish the first day. After class Andrew headed over to the school library. The library at school stayed open until 5.00pm. He wanted to get back into the routine of studying but also wanted to put up a couple of flyers on the noticeboard.

Tutoring fellow students after school seemed to be the easiest way to make money. Andrew had no idea if it was possible or whether anyone would actually pay for the help but it was time to find out.

The flyer was simple and clear.

Tutoring Help £5/hr. Andrew McLeod 3A

The flyer also had his home phone number if people wanted to call him out of school.

The second flyer was more personal. Andrew wanted to find some fellow computer enthusiasts. Same simple flyer design.

Computer group - looking to find other micro-computer users Andrew McLeod 3A

Once he had them posted he sat down and started to review the day. They had escaped homework on the first day but he knew it was coming. Andrew read ahead on each of the textbooks for his classes the next day and at 5.00 headed home. There was no need to use the Physics Dept. computer this year now that he had his own so each afternoon Andrew was planning to go to the library and study. Wednesday after Sports he was going to study at the City Library where Nikki worked to read the latest magazines.

School felt very comfortable. One day back and Andrew was happy. Sometimes being a nerd is great!

Andrew met Mr. Kearns at the pool on Tuesday morning as normal. He started doing back stroke slowly to warm up then Kearns had him prepare to do a competition start. Andrew never normally bothered doing this when he was swimming although he was now doing flip turns. Kearns gave him a three two one start and Andrew was off. Kearns wanted him to do the eight lengths as hard as he could just to see what his time was. Andrew had no idea of the standards or times for any distance so he just followed Kearns’ instructions. He pushed himself much more than he ever normally did. By the second 100m Andrew could feel it in both his arms and legs. When he completed the eight lengths he was breathing heavily. Andrew’s normal swimming was coasting compared to this. He looked up as Kearns checked his stop watch.

“Good Andrew. I saw you dig deep there in the second 100. How are you feeling?”

“Can definitely feel it in my arms and my legs. I was pushing myself way more than when I am just doing time and distance. I will go easy for the rest of the morning and see how I feel tomorrow, especially if I am going to try 400m front crawl. How were my times? And can you put them into context for me please. I have never swum competitively so I don’t know whether something is good or not.”

Andrew waited for Kearns to tell him his times.

“Your 100 was 1.35 and your 200 was 3.13. Those are good times for a swimmer who has never swum competitively or even practiced these events. You have built up good muscles and are strong and fit. The top boys in your age group are doing between 1.25 and 1.30 for the 100 and around 3.00 for the 200m. Go and enjoy the rest of your swim time and we can talk about next steps later.”

It was the same on Wednesday. Andrew warmed up and then went hard for 16 lengths to get to 400m. The last 50m He was really struggling and knew that he slowed down at the end. After Andrew caught his breath Kearns told him the times.

“You were 1.24 for the 100, 2.50 for the 200 and 5.55 for the 400m. You lost about 10 seconds on these last two laps. If you had managed to maintain form until the end then it was more like 5.45. Best guys at your age group are doing around 1.17, 2.35 and 5.20 for the three distances. Like I said yesterday these are good times for a complete novice competitive swimmer. Swim easy for the rest of our time.”

Once they were showered and getting changed for school, Kearns talked to him about interval training. Doing set distances, rest periods, a burst of flat out swimming, all sorts of things. Kearns explained that in addition to just putting the laps in, by doing interval training you were increasing the power of your muscles. The other point was Andrew had rudimentary technique. Just by developing the proper technique he could save seconds off his time. Andrew had a lot to think about. Did he want to join the school swim team? He needed more info about training sessions and when meets were held. But he could not believe how proud he felt to at least be considered for the swim team. Any kind of physical or sporting achievement still was such a surprise that the feeling on pride was intense. Andrew, of course, went to the City Library on Wednesday and found a book on swimming training and borrowed it to read. He waved over at Nikki but didn’t get a chance to say hi.

School continue to be entertaining as 1400 boys were thoroughly disrupted by 150 girls. There were so many moments of comedy. Some of the best ones in the year were from the three classes that had not been assigned girls. The B class was always mad at the A’s anyway. Now they had one more chip to put on their shoulders. Andrew’s confidence was still too new and shallow for him to engage in verbal hostilities, so he lived it all vicariously. The most obvious jibes were the best. ‘Not only were the B’s stupid but they were ugly as well.’ ‘They had let all the girls pick which class they went into and nobody picked the B’s.’ Juvenile he knew, but still funny. Not funny? Screw ‘em the B’s deserved it.

Andrew had introduced himself to the other four girls in the class over the course of the week. He had said hi to Hannah Adams in English and made Pete introduce himself as well. Pete managed to remember his own name but not much more and he was grumpy with Andrew afterwards. Alessandro Denofrio sat next to Andrew in music and they chatted a little bit. She asked him why Ford kept glaring at him. Andrew told her he had dropped orchestra and joined the CCF and Ford was still mad. No need to go into too much more detail. June Wyatt and Mary Jones he met in the library one lunchtime. Andrew thought they were just checking it out but they came up to him and introduced themselves. He managed a five minute conversation with them. A new record.

The first week had been fine, no drama. Andrew had to decide what to do about swim team but that was a nice problem to have. CCF at the end of the week was truncated. They were concerned that the pupils might have forgotten how to march. So after an hour of marching about they were dismissed early.

The first Saturday of term Andrew paid a long overdue visit to Tony’s camera shop. With working at the farm and then for Mr. Campbell it had been weeks since he had popped in. Aiden was serving a customer as Andrew arrived but waved him behind the counter to go and see Tony. The darkroom door was open but the darkroom was empty. Andrew was about to shout up the stairs to check if Tony was in the flat when he noticed the door in the back wall of the stockroom was open. The door to the studio. Andrew had never even seen in the studio never mind actually been in it so he walked over. Standing at the doorway he saw Tony up a ladder changing a light bulb on one of the studio lights.

“Can I come in?”

“Andrew? Hey kid, sure come in.”

Andrew walked round the studio looking at everything. It was roughly the size of four garages, although the ceilings were higher. More than half the space was taken up with several sets. There was a mock office, a kitchen set, an area with a couch, and most intriguingly, an area with a bed. There were all sorts of back drops behind them. There were several stands of lights, two arrays that appeared to be permanently suspended from the ceiling and then several others on stands that looked like they could be moved and positioned. Tony was up the ladder fixing a bulb on one of the permanent arrays. The back half of the studio had a separate room in the corner, and when Andrew poked his head in he saw it was a changing room. The rest of the space had an assortment of stands, tripods, several tables, two dressers and a couple of racks of clothes. It was an impressive sight. A variety of sets, that could be lit in a variety of different ways with lots of costume or clothing options for the model. Andrew was impressed and surprised at the professionalism of the space. Tony come down the ladder.

“Have you never been in here before?”

Andrew shook his head.

“No. This is my first time.”

“What do you think?”

“I am impressed. It is bigger than I thought, there is more options than I had imagined.”

“My Dad opened the studio 20 years ago, right at the start of the 60’s. He built it up slowly, it was one backdrop, an old sofa and a couple of lights when he got going. When I left school I joined him in running the shop and we were able to expand the studio. The secret is to use it as much as possible, don’t let it sit around empty and unused. So I rent it out to photographers throughout the area. I get a fair bit of trade in the shop in return. If they are a customer of the shop then they get 20% of the hire price. It works out well. It is a bit of a labour of love.”

Tony had been speaking proudly of the studio while they looked round.

“So where have you been for the last what? Six weeks?”

Andrew filled Tony in on his sojourn as a farmer. The mocking was mild as Tony was someone who recognised hard work, and he was interested in some of the jobs Andrew had been assigned. Andrew was only there for an hour but it was good to chat to Tony, to keep in touch.

On Sunday over dinner Andrew was telling Leslie and her parents about the first week of school with girls. He told Brian and Mary that it was due to Faith and Leslie that he had been able to talk to some girls that week. Leslie smiled over at him as Andrew tried to keep Faith’s memory positive with them. Brian recommended that Andrew get a savings account at a bank or a building society and put the remaining £1,700 in there. Brian had talked to him about investing but that was pretty complicated even for adults in 1979 in the UK, or so Brian said. Andrew would need his parents to complete a lot of paperwork to be able to buy shares. Until Andrew had saved enough money to make this worthwhile he was better to leave it earning interest in the bank.

Andrew’s life went through phases, often lasting several weeks or a month, where there was a sameness or routine to it. September 1979 stood out as one of those periods. Andrew was not sure he could tell what happened in one week versus another because they were so similar. Exercise and swimming, school, study hard, work on some balance, try to be a better friend and classmate, CCF, study some more, work on his computer projects in the evenings and weekends, visit Tony, volunteer on Sundays, catch up with Leslie on Sunday evening. There is three weeks of his life in less than three lines. It was true though. At his core Andrew was a nerd who liked school and studying, including now computers. Everything else was an adjunct to that. Now history will record that something of note must have happened in September 1979 but not to him, yet!

The autumn of Andrew’s 3^rd year made up for the calm start to the new school year. In the space of one month he started tutoring, met someone also interested in computers, decided not to join the swim team, became an object of scrutiny to the girls in his year and discovered something about one of his friends.

Andrew had decided that he was not going to join the swim team. He explained to Mr. Kearns that due to the CCF on a Friday and his volunteering every Sunday afternoon it was not possible. Swim meets happened on the weekend with some Fridays afternoons. Andrew’s current activities meant he would not be able to commit to regular attendance. He did however, start to adopt swim team training methods in the morning. Kearns was still prepared to swim with him in the morning and they were joined by a couple of team members, although most swam at private pools rather than the school. If they were ever short Andrew would help out where he could but he wasn’t putting this ahead of established activities.

So that was easy. Then one day in early October a scruffy fifth year came up to Andrew in the library at lunchtime He introduced himself as Julian Strong.

“You McLeod? The one that put up the flyer.”

He waved vaguely at the noticeboard.

“Yeah, that’s me, you into computers?”

“Totally. Have been for about 18 months now. What about you?”

The older pupil had become more animated as he sat down.

“Less than that. Just this year. I have done quite a bit of coding, installed some hardware and used some applications. A little bit of everything. I code in the evenings and weekends. I am working on some of the example programs they have each month in Practical Computing. I do not really want start a club with meetings and rules or stuff like that. I am just looking to meet a couple of like-minded guys. Teaching ourselves, lots of trial and error, get some hints and tips, share some of the same. Nothing fancy, that sound okay?”

Andrew had rattled everything off in a staccato fashion. He might as well see if this guy was serious.

“Wow. Similar ideas to me, especially about meetings and rules. I have not used any applications, I have not had any need. I have a TRS-80 that I code on. I am looking to add some hardware to it but it is as I got it a year ago. Do you have a computer?”

“Yes. Apple II with a RAM upgrade and twin disk drives.”

“Wow. When did you get that?”

“I got it at the end of the summer from a friend’s dad. He had upgraded to II Plus and he gave me the old one. It was a thank you for working for him over the summer. I did a ton of work with VisiCalc which is where I got my application experience.”

Andrew brought the conversation back on track.

“I am trying to figure out what to do with computing. There are no courses, no examinations, nothing. If I am going to learn to code what is it for? I am only just started third year so I have plenty of time. I want to learn as much as possible and see what happens.”

“Yeah, I’m interested. So you know my name and here is home address and phone number. I live over in Murrayfield, near the stadium. What about you?”

Andrew gave him his information as well.