New school not the old school

My parents live in Shirley. They moved there while I was in utero. When they got paid out on their munted old house I suggested they move. ‘‘Maybe somewhere more salubrious. Like the city with its vibrancy? Or Sumner with the rest of the Poms? You could live in Mt Pleasant – there’s a reason Shirley’s not called Mt Pleasant.’’

They wondered how they’d raised me wrong. ‘‘This is our home and our community,’’ they said. ‘‘We’re certainly not moving to try and impress anyone.’’

Now they’re renting in Shirley while their new house gets built in Shirley: the king and queen of Shirley.

It was this rental house that recently received some mail that got stuck in my craw.

The letter was from a concerned mother pointing out that once Shirley Boys (SBHS) moves to its flash new location, chunks of the current catchment zone would be excluded – meaning some people living in Shirley won’t be able to attend SBHS.

You see, the site on which SBHS resides is no longer suitable for a school. So they’re booting the boys and opening a different school on the site. Go figure.

Do we really think they’d have gotten away with this if they’d tried it with one of Christchurch’s prestige schools? Me thinks not.

Do you know people’s opinion of Christchurch? They think we’re racist carpers and moaners, obsessed with what school we went to.

Well I’ve managed to have this opinion gig for over half a decade and I’ve never told you all what school I went to.

In the current situation I feel it necessary. I started my schooling at Shirley Primary. There we had gang violence and Rottweiler attacks.

Eventually I got some knee high socks and went to Shirley Intermediate. Now that was an education. It made Shirley Primary look positively genteel.

One assembly the principal marched the school crooks up on stage and told us their crimes. ‘‘Don’t be like these dropkicks. They’re scum.’’ Sadly, most of those boys ended up in clink and one was even murdered and had his fingers cut off. True story.

I eventually progressed to Shirley Boys High School with a style of schooling that had more in common with the days of the Raj than with the 21st century.

But we got by. We salvaged half an education between bunking, smoking and learning that the key was to do just well enough that you stayed off the radar and not so well that you stuck out.

Going to a boys’ school with a girl’s name is enough to make you tough. I can still hear the taunts: ‘‘Shirley’s a girl’s name …’’

My point’s not to reminisce about an outdated style of schooling. It’s to demonstrate impeccable credentials: the Shirley trifecta.

I do have one friend who went on to marry a woman named Shirley, which puts him at the top of the heap as a rarefied quad-Shirley-boy. But that’s another story for another day.

As a triple Shirley, I’m here to explain that the new high school/barn being constructed out east isn’t Shirley Boys. It’s not in Shirley. It doesn’t take its students from Shirley and frankly it’s a mockery of a neighbourhood that’s had to fight hard to prove it’s not a bloody girl’s blouse.

The Government and its army of PR hacks can smash up our neighbourhoods. But they can’t have our traditions.

Because guess what? Even poor schools have a bit of tradition – they’ve just got less money with which to celebrate them.

It should be QEII High School and there’s nothing wrong with that. They can start their own traditions.

They just can’t have mine.