Edssential article from @kevbartle:
Eddie was his name. As incongruous in 1996 as it is now. And he was a fairly incongruous manboy: fully grown moustache to put my facial hair to shame; built like the proverbial brick shipyard’s toilet; trapped in the last year of compulsory schooling, like Ted Hughes’ Jaguar:
“On a short fierce fuse. Not in boredom / The eye satisfied to be blind in fire, / By the bang of blood in the brain deaf the ear / He spins from the bars, but there’s no cage to him”
I had taught Eddie for three weeks (with apologies to the word taught, for Eddie and I had done little more than share space within a