Letters from the Wilderness to King's Scholar Luke Dunn by Joe Pollitt

24/10/2019

Dear King's Scholar Luke,

You have run beside me and at times held my hand metaphorically but you have been a great support. What is African Art to me? When I was a child I went to my primary school…First Day, I was given a small bottle of milk with a blue straw…New to me for sure…but I saw the straw and I saw the girl's ear and thought is this straw for that ear? Come on yes of course...it kinda fits…yes it does...makes sense...I don't need the straw, maybe she does?  Maybe she has somehow misplaced hers and I really don't need mine. Yes, maybe she does need my straw afterall...let us see. I had been strategically placed in the high-chair and overlooked the other toddlers. I felt so powerful, an overwhelming sense of unearned privilege. I was seen as important by the group. I had to do something all their eyes where on me. So I reached across and pushed the blue straw into the little girl's ear canal thinking it was meant to be….'The Lady Oldie'…Wwwell she wrenched me out my high-chair with such familiar force and rushed me out the room…I WAS EXPELLED….I was 4 years old. It was the First day of my academic career. Clearly, I was a non-starter....

When I was five I pissed my bed like a drunkard that I am now, in fact, aged 49, I piss my bed more now than ever before. I am known by some as the "Bedwetter of Royal Tunbridge Wells".  I piss the bed twice, if not three times a night just to make sure and in winter more to keep warm. Put I used to go on this hateful “school run”…I would punch the driver in the back of the head for driving too slow and again when he or she (dependent of school days) was driving too fast…I used to weep in the car every morning….and my school uniform stank of piss because I was so sad..I never noticed myself but others said I stank…They tried to help but I would simply piss on them....SO MISERABLE….TO HAVE TO LEARN FROM SUCH SELF RIGHTEOUS DO-GOODERS! I remember one day I went to the school and wanted to say goodbye to my Mummy….and Mrs Gledhill held me back with both arms…So I punched her in the face and ran to  kiss my dear Mummy goodbye…Again EXPELLED ..aged 6 and three quatres. MYBAD….

It gets worse…

I joined the Cubs and I was 7 and then my very famous AdMAN Dad, Stanley Pollitt, from Boase Massimi Pollitt went and died on me at the tender age of 49 in 1979, I was 8 years of age and I remember walking to the Sweetshop in Sussex after our weekly boring Sacred Heart Sunday Catholic Mass and saying to him, “D-Ad you are 49, you will be an antique at 50…if you make it?” The next day he was DEAD. Still to this day I feel my comments killed him…Bullet words from a terrible bed-wetting ‘EXPELLED’ son. He tried to teach me to Box but never let me punch him….he wanted to punch me to a pulp to teach me a lesson…A lesson in what? Well, I did learn something…how to run from adults. I don't miss our so-called, "BOXING LESSONS" one bit.

Naturally as a young fatherless boy of 8, I started swearing. Well what else is there to do...FCUK.

"FUCK…FUCKERS..BUM-LICKERS, ARSE SCRATCHERS, NOSE PICKERS, SHIT, SCREW YOU….BUM, TITS, BIG TITS AND ASS. SPIT, FUCK, FUCK, FUCK..COCK..COCK A DOODLE DOO...COCK...cock..cock..COCK..COCK...FUCK..FUCK..JESUS...CHRIST ALMIGHTY (pause for breath) CHRIST ALMIGHTY YOU FUCKING JESUS (that was my ulitmate 'crowd-shocker'!)"

Well, what a reaction from the Scout Hut. Everybody was watching me now...I was virtually famous. Celebrity no less..the rudest boy in the room. The fact was that nobody had heard such a potty-mouth, the parents heard right away and I was excluded…No more jelly and ice-cream birthdays for little old me...No Sir ree... I was sent home immediately…EXPELLED YET AGAIN…but all I wanted was for others to feel as angry and upset as I felt about losing my favourite dear AD/DAD…BMP | “SMASHED GET SMASHED” and he did….The silly potato-head.

It gets worse

To be continued.....

Anyway Luke, just thought I’d touch base. 

Hope that your childhood was worse than mine…I have plenty more to offer.

Big Kiss,

YOU ROCK…..STAR.

Yours sincerely,

Master Joseph Pollitt | 3^rd Grade Student, Bottom Set and Sinking Fast