So here we are, all but ready to depart. Paul and Emily provided the transcript of what was said, at least what their microphone picked up.
Great Elms School Trip to Wales
Transcript of Scene 1
Loading the bus
Edited by Paul Thompson and Emily Miles
Camera: William Turnstone
Mr Cockle: Get a move on Darren. That bag will have to be put in the boot, it’s too big to go inside the bus.
Darren: Sir, it’s got my things in. I need it on the journey. And Dean’s sandwiches. I’ll shove it under the seat.
Mr Cockle: In the boot.
Darren: I need it, Sir. What if I get an asthma attack?
Mr Cockle: You don’t have asthma attacks. Your mother hasn’t put it on your consent form.
Mrs Cockle: For heaven’s Charlie! We should have been moving half an hour ago. Just let him put his bloody bag under the seat. You boy, get in, get your bag in, and shut up!
Darren: Yes Miss. Thank you Miss.
Note: We did ask Mr Turnstone if we ought to bleep Mrs Cockle’s “bloody” but he said why bleep that when we couldn’t take out the rest of her rudeness?So we have left it in. PT, EM.
We didn’t think you needed a propaganda clip of how well great Elms students and staff can behave in public. But all the same, we did stop at the Reading Motorway Services.
Great Elms School Trip to Wales
Passage cut from Scene 3
At the Motorway Services
Edited by Paul Thompson and Emily Miles
Camera: William Turnstone
Mrs Cockle: Did you really have to bring that bag in here?
Darren: It might have got nicked off the bus, Miss.
Mrs Cockle: Well, you should have put it in the boot then, Shouldn’t you?
Darren: Yes Miss, I mean, no Miss. 1’m not hurting anyone, am I?
Man in red shirt: falls over bag. Look what you’re doing you little ________ . I’ll Knock your block off.
Darren: You look where you’re going! I don’t want my things spoiled by an ugly lump of a United supporter!
Man in red shirt: Cut it out kid.
Mr Cockle: stands up, all six foot two of him. What was it you wanted?
Man in red shirt: Nothing, sir. Shuffles off with his burger and cola.
Darren: looks in bag. Whispers to Dean: He’s all right. To Mr Cockle: Not you Sir, I mean, you are all right Sir, thank you Sir. Thanks, Sir. Thank you sir. Moves tables. Hi Ollie! Hey, Mr Turnstone, what’s Tintern Abbey? Miss Jackson set us homework on some poem about it while we’re away. She said the trip would help.
Mr Turnstone: We might even see it. I can ask the driver to go past. It’s a ruined abbey by the River Wye. Remember Henry VIII? And there’s a famous poem by Wordsworth – remember the Daffodils man? Its a bit long, I’m afraid, not your cup of tea at all. Did she give you the words?
Darren: No sir. She said we could find them on the internet.
Mr Turnstone: Well you could look it up when we get to the Centre. But what has it got in its pocketses, nasty teacher? Pulls out a little book, ‘Selected Romantic Verse’ and starts to read the poem:
Five years have passed: five summers,
With the length of five long winters.
Mr Cockle: Pipe down Will! You’re not in class now!
Darren: Well there would be five winters if there’s five summers, Sir. What’s he on about?
Mr Turnstone: Oh, you know, PE teachers. They like the sound of their own voices, but not anyone else’s.
Darren: Not him Sir, Wordsworth, Sir.
Mr Turnstone: Wait and see, Darren, wait and see. Some of it will make sense, but even the university professors don’t agree what he’s talking about. And he does go on a bit. Look! Pages of it!
Darren. Thanks Sir. Help! All that’s just one poem! He does go on! I can’t read all that! It’s definitely not fair, Sir.
Mr Turnstone: Come on, time to go! I’ll carry your bag and you can push Ollie.
Darren. Let me zip it up first, Sir.
I should introduce Ollie. He insisted on coming to Wales. He doesn’t let being in a wheelchair stop him doing very much. How we would get him up mountains, into canoes or sailing boats and down ropes remained to be seen. But I can tell you now that he did it all. I have the video pictures to prove it – and Ollie had the bruises.
Tintern Abbey
I didn’t think the homework was fair either hut I couldn’t say that to Darren. Teachers have to stick together against the kids, PE staff included. (I mean included with the teachers, though they can be worse than the kids.) Still, Darren and Dean and Stacey and the rest of them knew I thought holidays should be a homework free zone.
The driver said he was planning to go by Tintern to avoid road works on the main road, so a couple of hours on from the services we crossed the original Severn Bridge. By then everyone had tired of pulling faces at the United supporters overtaking us on the motorway. United are the team our kids love to hate. Charlie tried to start a countdown as we crossed the border into Wales, which at least woke people up. He does like the sound of his own voice. The driver headed up the Wye Valley, following the brown signs for Tintern, a treat for Ms Jackson’s English group – who should have been mine, and who wouldn’t have had any homework if I’d been teaching them.
Charlie refused to stop and visit the Abbey because he hadn’t done a risk assessment and did not want “those Hogben idiots climbing the bloody walls.” So we drove past the ruins at 30 m.p.h. People didn’t seem impressed by what we saw from the road.
“Is that it, nothing much, is it?”
“You’d see better from up the hill, Stacey, then it looks all spread out. But we’d never get up there in this bus. Anyhow, the poem’s nothing to do with the actual Abbey, It’s called ‘Lines Written a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey.”
“Lines, Sir. It feels like lines, Sir, poems on holiday.”
“Well you haven’t brought Your English rough book, have you?”
“No, Sir.”
Charlie eventually called a halt a few miles up the valley instead. Time to stretch our legs. Unexpectedly, Darren was last off. No-one saw what he was doing behind the seats. I was filming with my back to the bus.
The lay-by was an arc of gravel at the foot of a wall of rock, say 30 metres high, obviously an old quarry. Trees had sprung up all around, but it looked out across the Wye valley to meadows, cliffs, and far off, the towers of the Severn Bridge. Dean was three quarters of the way up our cliff before Charlie Cockle saw him and called him down.
Great Elms School Trip to Wales
Transcript of Scene 5
Dean on the rocks
Edited by Paul Thompson and Emily Miles
Camera: William Turnstone
Mr Cockle: Darren Hogben!
Paul: It’s not Darren, Sir, it’s Dean!
Mr Cockle: I don’t care which one it is! Dean Hogben! Come down. You’re not safe without ropes and a helmet. That rock-face has not been risk assessed.
Ollie: Sir, do you think he’s all right Sir?
Mr Cockle: Of course he’s not all right! Not if he falls. To Dean, louder and louder: If you don’t come down at once, if I have to get up there and rescue you, if you damn well fall, I am not responsible, do you hear me?
General editor’s note: Obviously Dean was too far away to hear Mr Cockle’s best come-on-you-slackers voice, for he just kept on climbing. I would have thought no-one would dare join him with Charlie in that state, though Dean was actually in very little danger, as the cliff was like a giant staircase, but suddenly, just to his right and a few metres higher, appeared two red faces, and Mr Cockle’s turned scarlet to match.
Mr Cockle: Stacey Oxenden and Gemma Toop! What are you doing up there with that idiot?
Dean: Silly, high-pitched voice: Hi Girlies!
Stacey: We’re not with Dean, Sir. We were only going to the loo, Sir. We came up the footpath.
Mr Cockle: Well you can just come down the footpath! And so can you Darren!
Dean: Dean, Sir! Whatever you say Sir!
That was when we heard the dog. A tragic, bewildered yowling.
Darren: It’s all right, he’s OK.
As everyone turned to look at Darren petting a little brown dog, we heard singing. A snatch from an old Welsh song, appropriately enough, but not sung by a male voice choir, fit to set your hair on end; no, this was Dean, triumphant at the top of the cliff, his falsetto fit to set your teeth on edge:
Dean: Gemma went behind a bush,
She was in a dreadful rush.
She came out feeling better
But the bush was feeling wetter.
Did you ever see, Did you ever see,
Did you ever see such a funny thing before?
Gemma: Shut up Dean! Think you’re so funny, don’t you! Well you can just get lost, and you’re not coming down with us, thank you very much.
Dean: So, I’d better come down by the way I came.
Mr Cockle: No you don’t! Come back down the path like I said.
Turning to Darren, who was now standing on the bus steps.
What are you doing there,Dean? Don’t move! I don’t want you chasing up there after that cousin of yours.
Darren: Darren, Sir. I wasn’t going to, Sir. I might not have a head for heights.
Mr Cockle: Well you’ll need one before the week’s up, but there’s no call to be practising now! Stay down here!
Darren: Yes, Sir.
Mr Turnstone: (trying to defuse the situation): Listen, all of you. Since you have been given it for homework, let me read a passage from Wordsworth’s poem. He wrote it near here:
— Once again
Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs,
That on a wild secluded scene impress
Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect
The landscape with the quiet of the sky.
The day is come when I again repose
Here, under this dark sycamore,
Dean: Was that a sycamore you was reposing under, Gemma?
Mr Turnstone: Listen, Dean, Gemma, Stacey, everybody: cool it! Let’s start this holiday in the right spirit:
. . .neither evil tongues,
Rash judgements, nor the sneers of selfish men,
Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all
The dreary intercourse of daily life,
Shall e’er prevail against us, or disturb
Our cheerful faith, that all which we behold
Is full of blessings.
We’re away from daily life, so let’s be cheerful! Life is full of blessings, folks, even Dean could be a blessing to someone before the week is out! Just let’s forget all these greetings where no kindness is, let’s be nice to Mr Cockle, and get back on the bus.
Charlie didn’t quite get what my little speech was about, but he watched the students very quietly getting back on the bus. And off we went, deep into deepest Wales.
Will Turnstone 