A life in letters: Bullying at School

Any bullying I endured at school was mild compared with what many children face; nevertheless at Wishaw High School it caused me, particularly in my earlier years there, significant unhappiness. 

I must have suffered some bullying at Carluke Primary School – I remember my father going in to discuss the issue with my teacher, and trying to train me in basic self-defence, which resulted in my giving him a black eye. I also remember the glorious day (glorious as it felt to me at the time, that is) when, provoked by policeman’s son Alex Lippiatt I engaged him in combat and landed fist after fist on his face, the crowd of kids gathering round shouting ‘Fight!’, ‘Fight!’ until he capitulated. Trembling, but calm, I picked my spectacles off the tarmac. 

I had a nickname at the primary school. It was ‘Bugs Bunny’, given rise to by my slightly prominent central front teeth, and frequently shortened to Bugsy. But this sobriquet was normally applied in a completely friendly way. On Christine Odger’s lips, ‘Rabbit’ (her variant) was close to a term of endearment. 

Those two front teeth also gave rise to the nickname by which I was widely known at Wishaw High School, Tufty, after the cheerful squirrel featuring in the road safety promotion after whom thousands of ‘Tufty Clubs’ across the country were named. It was rather disquieting that in my first week at the school I was assigned about seven nicknames by different groups of kids, until by some unfathomable process ‘Tufty’ was universally adopted. It was disconcerting that I was apparently so eminently nicknameable. 

I found my identification with Tufty a difficult burden to bear. At the time I hated Tufty, although I now bear him no ill-will. It seemed the whole school knew that I was Tufty and every time a group of kids passed me someone would shout, sneeringly ‘Can I join the Tufty Club?’  Safe in the thoughtless security of the pack, they mocked this ‘different’ kid. 

There was no physical abuse, however, although I remember the indignity of that trick some boys would play: coming up behind you on the stairs, and grabbing at each side your blazer and beneath it your shirt and wrenching both upwards so that shirt was pulled out of trousers. I found this maddening and humiliating, but I didn’t show it.

‘Ask your father what Durex is,’ the boys said mockingly. Did they really think I was so naïve? And yet I cultivated an appearance of naivety as a defence. ‘It’s a kind of paint, isn’t it?’ I replied, innocently.