From 1982 to 1988 I went to St. Basil’s infant and junior schools. I spent my time doing what you would usually expect of a child under twelve; drawing pictures, being told off, riding my bike, being a robot and so on. In addition to these pastimes however was a project of an altogether more serious nature – a fight against a deadly foe, an adversary of pure evil, a shadowy defiler. Hailing from the Cape Verde Islands where I was pretty sure the Bermuda Triangle was, ‘The Phantom’ was a silent, nebulous spectre of some seven feet in height and of indeterminate blue-grey form, haunting both school buildings and cruising menacingly between whichever classrooms weren’t being used that day. Out of school hours The Phantom had the run of the entire site and used the opportunity to wreak his subtle, uncanny works.
Anyway, I was out on the playground one morning when Dave Atherton looked at the sky and noticed the vapour trails from two passenger jets, crossing one another in an approximation of a letter X. ‘X is the Roman numeral for the number ten’ he announced, ‘And the tenth letter of the alphabet is J. That means that The Phantom’s power is at J10 today’.
Unsure as to what this actually meant but alarmed nevertheless that our opponent’s strength was already roughly halfway up the alphabet, I clutched my Monster Munch ever tighter and hurried back towards the school building, as the teacher’s whistle blew.
TAAAALES APROPOOOS OF NOOOOOOOTHING! 