Raindrops keep falling in my bathroom

Mr Rosen­berg would be proud of me.

Mr Rosen­berg was my O-level Phys­ics teacher at com­pre­hens­ive school. I had wanted to give up sci­ences alto­gether, because when it came to choos­ing my O-level sub­jects I already knew that com­plex sci­entific the­or­ies and I were not suited to each other, and that I would have no need of them any­way since I planned to live out the rest of my life as an artistic wastrel. But such strong-willed choices weren’t allowed, and I was forced to opt for at least one from the awful selec­tion of Phys­ics, Bio­logy and Chem­istry — because, accord­ing to my form tutor’s advice, “a sci­ence sub­ject will stand you in good stead for the future”. That was rub­bish, and I knew it. Phys­ics, how­ever, seemed to be the least prac­tical of the three (no cut­ting things up or mix­ing strange liquids in test tubes), and it did at least offer me the greatest poten­tial for star­ing out of the win­dow, writ­ing ter­rible teen­age poetry, dood­ling aim­lessly and occa­sion­ally doz­ing off in the back row of the classroom. So Phys­ics it was.

Myself and Mr Rosen­berg — or Kevin, as he some­times allowed pupils to call him in a rare informal moment — soon came to an under­stand­ing. For some obscure admin­is­trat­ive reason related to my timetable and my band­ing in other sub­jects, I had been placed in a top group for Phys­ics. I would have been strug­gling in a lower abil­ity group, but in Band A I was def­in­itely the dunce of the class. So Kevin didn’t bother me with classroom ques­tions about, er, Physicky type things, and I — in the damning faint praise of school report ter­min­o­logy — “tried my best”.

All that was to change, how­ever, fol­low­ing the the ill-fated cent­ri­fu­gal force exper­i­ment. Dur­ing one after­noon les­son in the second year of the course, Mr Rosen­berg marched to the back of the classroom, where there was more space, to give a prac­tical demon­stra­tion. The equip­ment involved com­prised of a small metal pro­jectile, shaped not unlike a bul­let, con­nec­ted to a long piece of string. Without warn­ing, Mr Rosen­berg began spin­ning the pro­jectile round and round his head, gath­er­ing speed, talk­ing excitedly to the class at the same time. How the hell this demon­strated the com­plex­it­ies of cent­ri­fu­gal forces, I had no idea — and I still don’t to this very day. All I do know is that at some point he lost con­trol of his exper­i­ment, and the lethal metal object zipped past the side of my head at an alarm­ing velo­city, nearly sli­cing off my right cheek.

Kevin — and this was most def­in­itely a Kevin moment, believe me — was mor­ti­fied. He rushed over to check that I wasn’t injured. I wasn’t, but I decided to play up the sense of shock. That was my big mis­take, because although it got me excused from the rest of the les­son in order to recover from the trauma, Kevin obvi­ously felt such a sense of guilt that our agree­ment to vir­tu­ally ignore each other sud­denly ceased. At the end of the next class, a few days later, he called me over and asked if I would like to join a ‘spe­cial’ (oh, how I hate that word) lunch­time Phys­ics ses­sion for people who needed a little extra coach­ing in the sub­ject. He asked me so politely, with such a tone of con­cern in his voice, that I felt like reply­ing truth­fully and explain­ing to him that my inten­ded career path — dir­ector of an exper­i­mental theatre com­pany or exist­en­tial poet — would be unlikely to require much know­ledge of Phys­ics. But then again, I was also only 15 years old with O-levels loom­ing, and I didn’t feel as if “no” was being offered as one of the pos­sible answers to this par­tic­u­larly nar­row mul­tiple choice question.

For the next how­ever many months, Tues­day lunch­times were sheer tor­ture. The class was smal­ler in size, so there was less chance of let­ting my atten­tion wander, but I still think that the only thing I learned was how many units of energy (kin­etic or oth­er­wise, I don’t remem­ber) it was tak­ing me to stay awake and write notes.

Yet Kevin — and since this was a ‘spe­cial’ class, it was always Kevin — seemed pleased with my pro­gress. Both of us were still aware that I remained utterly crap at Phys­ics, but he seemed fairly con­fid­ent that I was less crap than I was before. And that was pre­sum­ably why, as the exams loomed, he told me that I should be able to man­age a C grade. A pass. Wow. For a sci­en­tific­ally proven numb­skull, this would indeed be a huge achievement.

I got a U. Unclas­si­fied. Maybe I spelt my name wrong.

The strange thing is that, at the time, I actu­ally rather enjoyed my Phys­ics exam, because the ques­tions all seemed to be about areas that I’d mugged up on whilst revis­ing. Evid­ently, how­ever, if my under­stand­ing of this branch of sci­ence had been put into prac­tice, I would have ended up being respons­ible for knock­ing the Earth off its axis, and caus­ing fair­grounds to go out of busi­ness as their most exhil­ar­at­ing rides all failed to demon­strate the cent­ri­fu­gal forces needed to get the thrill-seeking punters scream­ing their heads off.

So I became a drama stu­dent instead, and the world was saved — even if my career devel­op­ment wasn’t.

So why this sud­den misty-eyed recol­lec­tion of my days study­ing O-level Phys­ics? Why has the bespec­tacled fig­ure of Kevin Rosen­berg sud­denly popped up in a corner of my mind? Well, you can lay the blame squarely with the water that was drip­ping down through my bath­room ceil­ing earlier this evening.

I didn’t notice it at first, not until I entered the bath­room and found that it was rain­ing indoors. That’s always a wor­ry­ing sign, isn’t it? I imme­di­ately rushed upstairs to my neigh­bours’ flat to inform them of this calam­ity. The man who answered the door seemed remark­ably uncon­cerned, but he did call into the bath­room and sug­gest that his girl­friend might like to fin­ish her shower. Even­tu­ally. If she didn’t mind. He then accom­pan­ied me down­stairs to take a look at the increas­ingly sieve-like nature of my bath­room ceil­ing. By this time, the light drizzle had become steady rain.

“So are you sure it’s com­ing from our flat?”

Was I sure it was com­ing from their flat? Was I sure? Hmm. Well, I sup­pose it was a valid ques­tion. After all, the water could be flow­ing upwards from my flat and then drip­ping back down into the bath­room. Or maybe there was a small fam­ily of mice liv­ing in the space between my ceil­ing and their floor­boards, and they’d chosen tonight to have a par­tic­u­larly exuber­ant swim­ming pool party?

I stared at my neigh­bour for a moment. Then I stared back at the water drip­ping through the ceil­ing. I could even hear the sound of his girl­friend in the bath­room upstairs, as the shower was turned off and the pipes run­ning down the side of the house gradu­ally emp­tied of water. It didn’t take a genius to work it out.

And that’s when it happened. The school flash­back moment. Mr Rosen­berg. Kevin. O-level Phys­ics. Small metal pro­jectile. Exam. U. Unclassified.

“Well, water tends to drip down­wards. It’s the ele­ment­ary laws of phys­ics. It can’t really be com­ing from any­where else, can it?” I replied.

I said it far too politely, of course, as I always do. I know that’s one of my worst faults: being too polite, even when I shouldn’t be. For heaven’s sake, I even smiled at him — though I’m telling myself now that it was more of a forced grin.

But he couldn’t argue. Not with science.

“Yeah, phys­ics. That’s true. OK, I’ll call my land­lord first thing in the morning.”

So, kids, there’s a les­son for you here. Don’t give up on those dull as dish­wa­ter sci­ences — even if you’d rather be pran­cing about in drama class or writ­ing soppy poetry. I under­stand your pain, really I do. But a sci­ence sub­ject will stand you in good stead for the future (as someone once said to me), even if it’s just to remind you that water drips down­wards. Who’s the unclas­si­fied U-grade dunce now?

Oh, Mr Rosen­berg would be so proud of me.