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Molders of mind… Waters… Dorrington… Boustead… Vaughan… Austin… Not Steve… But he was a sort of smaller… Punier version of… Parsons… If that were possible… Parsons was pretty slight… Pretty lightweight…. Himself… Although that didn’t really become apparent… Until the staff versus kids rugby match… As you have possibly… Surmised… Surnames… Were… De rigueur… At Beacon High… But what did they mean?… Not a question that was ever asked… At the time… Austin… A short form of Augustus… Meaning ‘great’… Which he wasn’t… Particularly… Waters… Norman, ‘the son of Walter’…
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And he did look sort of Norman… And would not have been out of place… In a medieval court… Vaughan… Allegedly derives from Welsh ‘small’… Which he was!… Actually… In stature… At any rate… Which leaves… Boustead… ‘The bull farm’… But more likely… A place… In Cumbria… Boustead Hill… And Dorrington… Another place name… The settlement associated with Dodda… Bingo!… Ken was a Dod Man… And an art teacher… Which, perhaps, figures… Does it matter… It possibly should… But probably doesn’t… Over much… It might, though… Have been useful… To know all this… Back then.
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With the exception of Waters… None of them made us answer… The register call… Just got to know us… Then quietly ticked our names off the list… And Waters was probably only following the correct form… Because he was new… He was also right about I.C.I. folding… Despite being shouted down… By Whittaker… English, ‘White acre’… Who weirdly… Everybody referred to… As ‘Eddie’… Possibly because Eddie had a nose fetish… And liked… To stroke… And tickle… The noses… Of young boys… But only… When no one else… Was looking… But what, pray tell… Constitutes an acre of white?