What Does This Button Do?: The No.1 Sunday Times Bestselling Autobiography. Bruce Dickinson
Oundle we found ourselves with unexpected privileges. There were enough guns and ammunition in the school armoury to start a coup d’état in a small African nation. All of it was Second World War vintage. There were 100 or so 303 Lee–Enfield rifles, half-a-dozen Bren guns, thunderflashes, two-inch mortars, smoke grenades, and live and blank ammunition. Both of us had attended the UKLF leadership course, where we were equipped with all the latest army kit and spent two weeks in Thetford being chucked out of helicopters, doing 24-, 36- and 48-hour exercises, and getting a lot of blisters.
My platoon supervisor had been in the SAS, and he told me I was above average in teamwork, but average everywhere else. I spent summers on attachment with the Royal Anglian Regiment and the Royal Green Jackets, and dangled off lots of ropes at Lympstone with the Royal Marines. I was pretty serious about joining the army.
Ian and I hatched a plan to make our Wednesday afternoons more interesting and productive. Incredibly, as 16-year-olds, we had the authority to sign for and withdraw rifles and automatic weapons, high explosives and blank ammunition. So every Wednesday, that’s what happened. We would come up with scenarios then wander off armed to the teeth into a local wood and shoot the crap out of each other.
I should set the scene at Oundle School. Before 1914, the British Empire was demanding technocrats. The traditional public schools churned out the Greek-and-Latin educated civil servants to be, but the dark days of the future demanded leaders who understood metalwork, mechanical engineering and electronics.
Oundle established what was essentially an industrial estate. It had an aluminium foundry, composite and fibreglass workshops, lathes, milling machines, and woodworking, blacksmithing and metalworking shops. Every term, I spent one week dressed in overalls learning to chop and assemble bits of wood, metal and plastic.
The aim of all this activity was to build a vice. The halves were cast from wooden moulds in the foundry. The sand moulds you made yourself, and there were various ways of sabotaging them to make life less dreary.
Excessive moisture and too much tamping of the sand in the mould would cause it to explode. Even better was to leave a hole in the bottom of the mould so that molten aluminium dripped onto the shoes of the pourer – the taciturn master in charge, Mr Moynihan. I suspect he quite enjoyed having his shoes set on fire. To this end he came equipped with multi-layered steel-capped boots, asbestos helmet and gloves, plus a rich choice of language, which meant that no one would skip the foundry lesson.
‘Faacking ’ell … ’Oo faacking set fire to my faacking feet?’
Mr Moynihan was a good sport and he taught me never to panic, even when you are on fire.
In woodwork I was an abject failure, although I designed and built the world’s most useless and uncomfortable chair and the most incompetent set of bookshelves yet devised. Even M.C. Escher would have been confused as to where to position his books.
In the machine shop I broke windows with the chuck key, using the rotary action of the lathe as a catapult. Finally, by an act of sheer mechanical stupidity, I destroyed a vertical milling machine. Had I been parachuted in to a Nazi factory, I could not have done a better job at sabotage. I wish I could say it was deliberate. As the machine ripped itself in half, the drive shaft stripping its thread, I stood and watched as it vibrated itself to pieces. It was the master in charge I felt sorry for. He was actually crying as he switched it off.
‘Oh, no,’ he sighed. ‘You have broken the machine.’
The only bit about the electronics shop I liked was the smell of the circuit board. I carried it around in a plastic case with various resistors rattling around. I don’t recall what the point of it was, possibly an oscillator.
Disinterested, disgraced and dangerous, I entered the last iteration of my workshop sojourn at Oundle, and unexpectedly hit the jackpot when I discovered an inspirational teacher who knew a bit about metal.
John Worsley was calm and tidy, and wore such a large pair of glasses that it seemed impossible to imagine that he wasn’t interested in you. The moment he picked up a piece of metal, I noticed his fingers. They were thin and nimble, and they floated across the surface of the billet of steel as if he was imbuing it with some otherworldly quality. John would always turn up to classes on his bicycle – racing handlebars, cycle clips on the bottom of his trousers. He had a curious gait, as if one side of him was a sailor and the other had been employed in a previous incarnation as one leg of a tarantula. One of his favourite words was ‘plangent’, and it was an odd, almost archaic-sounding expression. John Worsley was like a hybrid between a bicycle repairman and Gandalf.
Metalworking covered wrought iron, forging, silversmithing and jewellery, plus welding and associated skills. Our project was to make a nickel-silver bracelet, which I quite enjoyed and was rather proud of. When I brought it home, Dad regarded it with deep suspicion.
John Worsley had a plan to get our attention. He thrust a shaft of steel into a glowing brazier and sparks showered forth. He pulled it out, still red hot, placed it on an anvil and started to beat out the shape of what I immediately realised was a sword. He quenched the metal with a satisfying hiss in a bucket of water, and thrust it back in the fire. Without saying a word, he produced a leather blanket and dramatically unfurled it to reveal a replica of Excalibur. The crossbar of the hilt was leather-covered, but the blade, broad and gleaming, was what entranced me.
‘I could teach you all to make this, if you want,’ he stated, rolling the weapon over and over in his palm. He paused for effect. ‘And I could teach you how to use it, of course.’
‘Sir? What, you mean … sword fighting?’
The reason John Worsley walked funny was because he had been a fencing teacher for most of his life. On arrival at a posh public school, as a working-class northerner, he seized his chance. My hand was up right away. I signed up. I would learn how to fence. It would change my life.
My drama teacher also had a profound effect on me. John Campbell was one of those rare but essential teachers who give you permission to dream.
Drama, as opposed to music, was another line of escape, and I was in several productions: Macbeth, Hadrian VII, The Royal Hunt of the Sun and some local inhouse plays that were usually awful West End farces.
In Macbeth I was a witch, murderer and various messengers, spending much of my time under a gigantic polystyrene skull encased in toilet paper. Downgraded to acolyte in Hadrian VII, I stepped up a gear as the mercenary in The Royal Hunt of the Sun and oily manservant in According to the Evidence, a play so silly I was amazed that Samuel French kept it in stock.
Nevertheless, the roar of the greasepaint and the smell of the crowd were taking their toll on my subconscious. The germ of a philosophy started to take root. The idea that it didn’t matter what it was that you engaged in, as long as you respected its nature and attempted some measure of harmony with the universe.
It wasn’t just the senior boys who kicked you around. You could be legally beaten up by teachers. Corporal punishment was common. It ranged from slippers across the backside by individual teachers to more formal floggings with a cane or birch. Opinions varied about the efficacy of a beating. The event was usually administered during the evening, with the unfortunate recipient in his pyjamas, after lights out. This was to ensure maximum psychological anxiety and maximum physical discomfort, as six strokes through cotton pyjamas was almost certain to draw blood. The now thankfully meaningless expression ‘books down the trousers’ was intended to convey a situation where, in anticipation of physical sanction, a geography notebook might shield the buttocks from damage.
There was general agreement that fives or squash players were the most devastating floggers on account of their fearsome backhand. Golfers came a close second. A great deal of discussion in dorm rooms revolved around angles, velocity and acceleration. After a beating, the victim usually stood on top of a chest of drawers and dropped his pants to invite comments