Drug Stabbing Time at Holland Park Comp

Holland Park School is the topic again and this installment is a short history of drug taking at the infamous almer mater. 

My attention to the scourge of drugs (JUST SAY NO!) at the infamous state school was drawn to "a thread" (diatribe) on "Facebook" (a 21st Century social media publishing platform.) Do bear with. It's been translated, punctuated, transposed and distorted for clarity and the purposes of general misinformation.

"Anyone remember drugs in school? The only fing not in ready supply was coke. You could get it, but it was expensive. Even some of the teachers did some, those that weren't were in the pub at lunchtime getting half pissed. I was in there wiv 'em. I tried hash n' speed at school but not for long, guv'nor."

Boozy, coked-up teachers at my old school! Dirty-assed hippy brats on "hash n' speed'! Where's the prefects? The cane? How about "six of the best" from Dr Rushworth and a course of "tough love" therapy with a school guidance counselor about the perils and pitfalls of teenage substance abuse blah blah blah? Fat chance then, fat chance now. Nonetheless, the opener sparked a healthy response on the "Holland Park School Alumni" Facebook page. "Can't say I remember much," replied one old boy. "Plenty of glue sniffers as I remember. I wasn't introduced to drugs until I joined the Royal Mail." 

"Sex, drugs and rock and roll was the school's nickname when I went to Holland Park," said one old boy. And then came another. "Plenty of spliff. Bit of speed (hated it). Coke in the park. Acid to celebrate leaving. The odd sleeping pill. Mandrax were good. Hippy diet." Cocaine at Holland Park Comp? That must have been rich white kids in the Thorpe Lodge Sixth-Form. Mandrax? Dirty hippy motherfucker drug (or is that Mandrake?) Mandrax (Mandrake numb nuts) the Magician! When was the last time that gear was in circulation, 1974? I have yet to "Google" this ABC Movie of the Week mystery. 

More hippy muthas and flower kids came out of stasis. "1961-1965 all I ever saw was lots of 'purple hearts' but I never indulged in anyfink. I've reached 70 and never touched a single fing even though I was into the hippy culture." Hmm, maybe he worked for the plods? Maybe, just maybe, he was Russ Tamblyn from High School Confidential, a narc posing as a pupil. It would have been a good time for a marijuna free plant at Holland Park Comp. "The place was awash with drugs from 1966-1968. Nick Kunt used to make these huge joints behind the medical suite every morning break just to stay high from the night before!" Yeah, daddy-o. We had "cats" like "Nick Kunt" in the Eighties and Nineties too, maaan. By the way, what the fuck is a 'purple heart'? Is that speed or LSD? I'd best "Google" (FACKIN' STEW-PID INFANTILE NAME!) to find out...   

"Picking magic mushrooms right on the school doorstep was always a bonus," said another child of the revolution, who went on to declare, " I didn't get any drugs from school... Fulham was very well stocked at the time." Fulham. Who'd have thought that Fulham was west London's posh cousin to the All Saints frontline... 

But what about skullduggers on the faculty? Stoned out hippy dippy teachers, seemingly unable to start a sentence without the word "basically"? No way, maaan. Not at Holland Park Comp. BASICALLY, the Trendy Trots of the faculty had to be "straight" so they wouldn't fluff their lines in the daily militant pantomine on campus. Fair point. OK. Let me do a Marx and turn Hegel on his head. How about dodgy teachers dealing drugs to subsidize their income as educators? "Anyone remember the ceramics teacher who dealt? Mid-late 1970s?" Alas, no reply. But 1970s-era muck on the faculty was yet to come "The Head of Social Studies had a large slab of hash in his office desk drawer," an old boy recalled. "The Police turned up. He claimed that he had confiscated it from a student. Whilst he and the cops did the rounds of Thorpe Lodge Gardens said slab went missing. How we laughed." Dirty mutha fuckin' evil hippy teachers peddling dope n' Mao on campus (anyone got his number maaan?)

Ex-pupils were on hand to point out that "not everyone partook of the numerous drugs on offer," at Holland Park Comp. "To give you some idea," recalled one, "the girls toilets had clouds of billowing smoke pumping out of the doorway... along with make up refreshment, and discussion on how to make sure your nails looked perfect enough so that you could get into X rated films." She signed off,  adding, " I was there at the same time as Hilary Benn, who was rather boring as I remember. No change there I fear."  

How about your first day at school, do you remember that Zammo? For some Holland Parkers, it's hard to forget. "On my first day I remember seeing two punks off their nuts glue sniffing in the car park while we were lining up for our new tutor sets in the North Playground. I thought, is this the shape of things to come?" Another added, "I saw a girl injecting in the playground on my first day". Hmm. That was not something I ever saw at the infamous state school in the 1980s. 

My observations matched those of a chap called "Bush Master": "Weed. Hash. Trips. Speed. Not so much coke. Smoking in the park." Who needed to smoke weed or hash on campus when you could slip to the adjacent park at breaktime? It was also a handy spot to bunk off, too. "You didn't go into lessons when you were out of it," said another ex-pupil. "You went down the park and just chilled out." This was soon confirmed by another, "Smoking (ganja) was daily in the park. Funny times."  Shameful conduct at Britain's most prestigious state school! 

"There are drugs in all schools but at Holland Park it was rife," said old boy Gaz Mayall to the Independent newspaper in 1993. "It wasn't how you imagine - some dodgy geezer standing on a corner trying to sell little kids drugs... Some people became junkies; it's very sad. But I don't know if the school was to blame for that. It was quite a free thinking, liberal school." The 1969-75 old boy added, "My attitude was school stinks, but it does anyway, whatever school you go to. But here they leave the gates open and there's a beautiful park next door." 

"Leave the gates open..." Not any more. These days, Holland Park Academy is locked down like HMP Wormwood Scrubs. And the past? Isn't that a foreign country where things were different? Nope. I'm trading the English novelist L.P. Hartley for S.D. Plissken: "The more things change, the more they stay the same".