Lower School Festival? Yes, of course I'm bitter!

Bitter and resentful, to be precise. Let's discuss exactly why. (A sidebar: I suggest you ask Chris Guard for what was basically the prototype for this entry. It's a very amusing and painfully true read from a brilliantly embittered perspective. But for now, I'll just wax lyrical in my accustomed, pseudo-philosophical style.)

There is something very wrong about Manor School. Why does any worthwhile Christian organisation plunge us into such an abrasive sub-culture of hierarchies and cliques from the moment we enter? Everywhere you look, you're being ranked and organised for inspection - merit counts! Code counts! Attendance records! Mark books! I have no problem with these things. They're based upon the way we conduct ourselves (or not) and seem perfectly acceptable. There's another problem...

It's based on the house system. It boils my blood and sets my hair on fire. Never in my life have I encountered such brutal and unremitting cheating, deceit and callous favouritism running through such a skewed and unreliable system. Pray let me explain:

There's this school ya see, an' it's-a crammed full o' people. But thurs a foo-too-moo-ny people, so they 'ave to be split into groups, see. There's one called Abbey, which is kinda crappy. Another, called Manor, is a leett-le bit crappy too, ya see, reflectoid-ing the way I see its namey-sake roight noo. Then there's Stoo-hart which is also kinda rubbish. Yer see, there be other houses. But then, there is, sounding like the hammer of Thor -

WENTWORTH.

Oh. Oh, oh, oh. A thousand orgasmic groans, monsieur! WENTWORTH Oh! Brilliant, golden, glimmering, gilded WENTWORTH! WENTWORTH, yes, WENTWORTH! WENTWORTH, lynch-pin of the performing arts department! WENTWORTH, great, glorious out-pouring of the universe's talent! WENTWORTH, crammed with ardent RADA students and Tony-award winners! WENTWORTH, bubbling with young prodigies and masterworks of renaissance art! WENTWORTH, replete with its majestic hoardes of exquisitely athletic young boys and girls, vaulting over fences and doging buses on their way to school! WENTWORTH, where the fat and spotty nary show their face! WENTWORTH, where mediocrity is a byword for high treason! WENTWORTH, where dozens of young raconteurs and Stephen Fry-clones wile their way through dinner parties and costume dramas! WENTWORTH, where rules and good judgement are laid aside in favour of enormous gushings of relentless, beatific praise! If anything ever managed to stop the real God, you can bet he would be replaced by WENTWORTH.

Now, whilst I retire to the nearest piano and hastily puke into it, I would like to say that this is grossly unfair. It cheapens and destroys the hard work and effort that 75% of the school does, whilst blowing out of all proportion the other 25%. I have rarely encountered a more sickening and gut-wrenching sight than the millions of toussle-haired, dimpled urchins cavorting, capering, hugging and generally being doe-eyed, dwindling, vicious little arsewipes the moment the inevitable cry of WENTWORTH IS VICTORIOUS was called out. And I worked at the morgue. The good people I'd been working with and desperately nurturing for the last three months were instantly deflated, distraught and hastily swept under the rug. They were undervalued and ignored to the extent where I question my own sanity. Peripheral, oblique questions go twirling through my tormented brain... Should I change myself somehow? Dye my hair, don a track suit, wear eye shadow and lip gloss? Get a bit of bling? Perhaps, you wonder, in a violent fit of vomiting on the way to the stage, you should swap your name to Mam SacAvoy and start imitating Blames Junt. Or perhaps it would be simpler to invent a time machine, skirt back through the wasted years, bump off Scelena Hofield and replace her with a ginger tabby cat named Raymond Huntley to see if it still wins.

As far as I'm concerned, talent in Manor School's entirely subjective environment is little more than a flashy name or a catchphrase - buzzwords and flashing lights and pretty little elves and magic tricks all imitating true talent.

True talent. I cannot say I possess it, because I am not in WENTWORTH. I must settle for a position of vague, unfulfilled respect and no level of verbal acclaim or praise as I behold the confetti and doves rain down upon WENTWORTH. Nevertheless, I rest secure with the comforting vision that the objective realities of the real world shall reduce that brood of ravenous ghouls spewed up from the grave to dismal, drug-addled shadows of their former inflated egos.

God bless Britain and its Labour government! God curse Manor and its favouritism, prejudice and heresy!

I born a Stuart (well... not really) and I shall die a Stuart (God-willing). So let's have a little bit more of STUART! ABBEY! MANOR! And a little bit less Wentworth. Don't worry, precious. The anger only drives me to verbally (and, hopefully, physically) lash you. And please, Manor School, sort out this abhorrent theological issue.