A supply teacher at my Balham school in 1968 proved I was never going to make it as an aeronautical engineer.
Instead of doing maths, history (always the bloody Tudors) or geography (the field trips were always to the field adjoining our school – so not much of a trip) – we were taught origami. The supply teacher was from India, so closer to China than Balham, so he had credibility with us ten-year-olds.
While my efforts to fly paper-airplanes were similar to watching grainy and speedy footage of man’s earliest “flight” I did become very adept at other things which involved the intricate folding of paper.
Although I should have been learning important dates in history, capital cities of the world and times tables past 12, because of the supply teacher, paper folding became my new obsession.
The making of water bombs resulted in the entire class up before the headmaster as we’d doused the dinner ladies during morning playtime; the thing I was best at was creating chatterboxes.
However, this talent was not one I should have taken with me to an all-boys secondary school.
My schoolmates, amazed at the proficiency of my origami, became slightly confused (the more sexually advanced kids in the first-year, slightly angry) when, after much swift action between both thumbs and forefingers – and vigorous counting at pace – they read, “kiss a boy” or “I love you”. These had worked as a pre-cursor to mixed junior school kiss chases, but rather made me a target during inter-house rugby matches.
There were many who wanted to tell me my fortune – many without the aid of a carefully folded sheet of A4 paper.