This page is intended to be a duplicate (and extension) of what I tried submitting to the “School Pals revisited” site at the group of websites for the local papers in my area - when I posted, the stupid thing kindly  gave me an “Error500: Internal server error” message & lost the shitloads of info I typed!

My Name

John Duck

My Nicknames @ School

Schools / Colleges I went to

About me now

My School Memories

Best friends (or at least people who didn’t make me wish I could afford to put out a Mafia contract on them)

More people to be added when / if  I manage to remember their names... apologies to anyone I’ve missed out or fucked up the spelling, but as I haven’t needed to use some of the names for quite a few years now...... and as you can see from the list so far there was that many of you, it’s probably amazing enough I managed this much already + there was loads of you I knew by name but not by face, and those of you I knew by face but never found out the name to go with it.

The Bullies

Update: Quite a few of these people can be found lurking @ FRIENDSREUNITED.co.uk - JD, 1st Feb 2005

My Memories of stuff that happened:

Brief details of my life from leaving school until the present

A long and not all that particularly happy story... left Whitby Community College in July 1998 having finished my GNVQ (Foundation) Art & Design + re-sits at GCSE Maths & English which I never got the certificates for. But I know I did get a MERIT for the Art & Design.

August 1998 - November 1998 was mostly spent waiting for NYCC Training Services to get back to me about doing “NVQ Training Options” or whatever it was bloody called........ so I think I was mostly watching TV, and going for long walks around town, with not all that much human contact.

From November ‘98 they finally got their fingers out their arses, and just had me coming into the office next to the Police Station & Job Centre every 1 - 2weeks...... then because of some sort of change to the scheme they basically left me vegetating at home most the time until about April 1999, as they deemed the scheme no longer suitable for me.

In April 1999, they eventually transferred me to another scheme called “KICKSTART”, which mean’t having to go over to REDCAR & CLEVELAND COLLEGE about once a week.... I think it was on Thursdays..... at least the journey there wasn’t too bad for the first couple of months with other Whitby people going there, doing the final months of their courses there (all of them girls, if I remember rightly).

I remember doing a couple of insignificant short courses when on that scheme + also went on a college trip to Flamingoland....... which was my first day trip out to anywhere fun since 1991. By then I’d almost forgotten how to have fun.

September 1999 saw me start a GNVQ (Intermediate) Information Technology course at the college, which was paid for by KICKSTART + they also paid for me to have a few driving lessons. Despite having to get up early, I didn’t mind too much, since the 50minute journey there onboard a COATHAM’s Mercedes-Benz mini bus was, erm...... “interesting”..... seeing as I was usually (for a while) the only bloke on the bus apart from the driver..... bumpy roads..... the other passengers a group of kinda hyperactive Teenage girls (though don’t think they liked me all that much)....... I remember there was Leanne Storr & Laura Simpson & Becky Urban who I liked + one called Sarah who I can’t remember her last name :-(

Unfortunately it began taking it’s toll on me...... and the fact that for 2 days of the week there was just 1 lesson lasting 2hours, and 5hours of waiting around with fuck-all to do until the Bus came to take us back to Whitby.... and I started sleeping in and missing the Bus..... missing lessons...... failed the course + also the KICKSTART scheme went completely tits-up and stopped on December 31st 1999.

May / June 2000 was, I think mostly spend messing around on my computer + going for the occaisonal walk around Town...... and maybe watching TV when my sister wasn’t driving me nuts, and also saw the start at some failed attempts at finding a job. In August 2000 I was finally signed on to Job Seeker’s Allowance (a.k.a Unemployment Benefit), which I’ve pretty much been on ever since.

Then things really started going downhill....... around February 2001 the job centre sent me on this 2 week course in Scarborough called “Gateway to Work”, which mean’t having to get up early once again..... then going by Harrison’s Taxi to Scarborugh, which wasn’t too bad apart from the fact I had to share it with Michael Jeffrey, who I remember from school in a not particular good way - my main memory of him being the time in a class room waiting for the end of school after getting back from a History field trip somewhere and he started flicking Drawing pins at me...... and then there was also in the days after he’d left school when I was walking around Town one day and he shouted at me from the window of a Flat on Brunswick street, then gobbed out the window at me.

After that course had been completed, I was then conscripted onto NEW DEAL for the first time...... and I do mean conscripted. It was being run by a re-branded NYCC Employment Training Services (see NVQ training wotsit earlier in this page)......... and to be perfectly honest they couldn’t organise a piss-up in a brewery.

Their “New Deal Co-Ordinator” was an ex. Army twat, I think his name was Alan, but I can’t remember...... you’re supposed to be given a choice of what you want to do in terms of work placement they send you to. But was I given a choice? Was I fuck! he was like “oh, I’m sure a big strong lad like you wouldn’t want to be working in a charity shop, blah, blah”.......... and I was subsequently conscripted into doing Gardening work with a load of others at a spot called “Stainsacre Hall”.... which I was totally out of my depth with, as I don’t really have the strength for digging or carrying things over a distance.

As this was also at the same time as the “Foot & Mouth Disease crisis”, it mean’t that the other “New Deal Enviromental Taskforce” groups from Scarborough & Malton were coming over to work there too ‘cos they couldn’t work on their usual spots such as the Forests & Moorlands.... some weren’t too bad.... and I got on alright with a couple from Scarborough called Mark Tulley & Joe Hepples....... but after they’d finished their time on the course, along came some new lads from the same places, and they were the nastiness bunch of fucking arseholes I’ve ever had the displeasure to put up with..... I’ll spare you the details until I get around to writing the Extended version of this (link for it at the bottom of this blurb).

I somehow finished the scheme in one piece in October 2001, most the time afterwards was mostly spend hanging on the computer and helping my Mum since she wasn’t doing all that great.

Sometime in the early part of 2002, my Mum went away on Holiday with her sister to Norway aboard a cruise ship....... and when she came back the shit really started to hit the fan.

She had to go for an appointment with Mr Nath, her brain consultant about the results of her latest brain scan and was told her Brain Tumour was growing yet again (they’d only just removed one of the sodding things the previous summer) + that she also had a Brain cyst in there too. Then just when you thought things couldn’t get much worse...... she somehow managed to trip on the steps up to our flat, and ended up with a fractured ankle as a result. I’m not sure how she managed it, but my theory has always been that my Auntie Gwyn (her older sister) who was behind her tried rushing her, instead of letting her take her time like she normally did.

A few days later, on Father’s Day...... my Dad had her taken away to Whitby Hospital “for a few days” ‘cos he just couldn’t cope with her much longer (especially after she’d come down with the shits the night before)...... then a couple weeks later they decided to put forward her Brain Operation to deal with the Tumour / Cyst, since she was off her feet anyway..... so she was transferred to Middlesbrough General Hospital for her 5th Brain Operation since 1992.

At the sametime all this was going on, I was conscripted back onto NEW DEAL...... only this time I was sent to work at the NORTH YORKSHIRE MOORS RAILWAY in Grosmont Engine Shed..... something I’d dream’t of doing since I was about maybe 5years old...... which went fairly well until the silly old buggers in charge of the place took an exception to the fact I was keeping the very Railway Enthusiasts that made it the success is today informed on my day-to-day activities at the place.... And it wasn’t as if I’d mentioned any of the really dodgy stuff I’d heard there, like how they used to dispose of Asbestos there in the early days.... or the thing of the apprentices told me he and one of the others had done the winter before with an Coca Cola bottle, some Acetylene gas + one of the portable coal powered heaters in the running shed.

After my dismissal from my former life-long “Happy Place” I was stuck at home again, still taking more shit (see the extended version, if I ever get round to writing it)........ My Mum was finally released from Hospital (after months of buggering about by the people in charge of her home care arrangments, including that nasty bitch of a district nurse I’ll also tell you about later) in December 2002....... only to have to be rushed back to Middlesbrough General Hospital on Friday 13th December a few days later because of what turned out to be a Brain infection.

She was released again permanently in February 2003..... so I was stuck at home virtually all the time looking after her..... though she was also released earlier for a “Home Trial” in time for her 58th and what turned out to be her last Birthday.

Then she was pretty much permanently bed ridden from May 2003 onwards because someone had fucked up the dosage of one of her medicines for a couple of weeks....... then at the end of July 2003 she got real bad with her breathing, and died roughly between 12:17pm - 12:19pm on Saturday 2nd August 2003.

My Dad wasn’t much help, making a bad situation worse for me by disposing of nearly everything in the house that gave me some form of comfort + been doing the same with pretty much everything else around here that gives me a sense of feeling “at home” ever since..... so alot of the time I tend to wish he’d hurry up and join her, since he just dismisses me as though I’m a fucking lunatic if I so much as protest or try to get back what he got rid of..... such as my Mum’s “keepsakes boxes”, and the contents of my late Grandma Thomas’ sewing box.

I’d only turned me blinkin’ back on him for a few hours while I went to watch the 2003 Whitby Regatta firework display..... only to find he’d pinched my Grandma Thomas’ old sewing box from behind the back of where my computer is...... tipped out the contents of that into the wheelie bin, along with my Mum’s keepsakes box having put the contents of that into my Grandma Thomas’ old sewing box which had been there almost undisturbed since she died in 1993, and was one of the few things I had left from her.

Anyway...... end of September 2003 I was conscripted back onto New Deal once more, and sent to Stainsacre Hall once again..... only this time they had me helping in the office, and doing stuff like promotional bits and pieces like a website + some leaflets & a monthly newsletter to try get the place pick up a bit after the Manager they had there the first time I was sent there on New Deal had made a pretty good job of getting the place into a bit of a state.

I finished my time on the scheme there around end of March / early April 2004........ just in time for the start of the Trout fishing season in fact. The Deputy Manager there (Ian Henderson) wanted to try get some funding to keep me on there as part of a proper job for 6months or so..... but nope, didn’t work out.

Since then, I’ve been doing pretty much what I’m doing now........ lots of fishing (though not at time of writing, since it’s the close season ~ JD, 26th Jan 2005), hanging on the computer..... catching up on putting my websites straight..... watching TV a little bit........ and trying to recover from that last New Deal placement, inbetween my Dad and various other people driving me nuts.

It certainly didn’t do me much good...... mostly because of my Dad rushing me out of bed every morning with a nasty shock when started banging on my Door shouting at me it was time to get up, often about 7:45am around 25 - 40minutes before I’d set my sodding alarm clock to go off (it was him stressing me out doing that which also caused me to miss all that time at Redcar & Cleveland College)..... then having to walk all the over to bloody Stainsacre, often with no Breakfast along Glenn Esk Road while still half asleep, trying not to step in the Dog & Horse shit + mud on the road there while trying to avoid getting run over...... I was in agony most the time.

For a while, I tried going there and back on me old Mountain Bike which I hadn’t ridden since about 1997... but that was nearly as bad ‘cos I was pretty well out of shape, and all the Hills we have here didn’t help much.... I gave up after a while, since once I got the hang of balancing properly again, and started getting some of my old speed back........ I just couldn’t resist it, and the urge to try my old trick of flying down Glenn Esk road as if I was on a Formula1 qualifying lap got the better of me.

By the time I reached Danger Bank, I was really giving it some stick........ right on the limit, Montoya style. On the approach to the narrow bit at the bottom where that house is, it seemed all clear........ so I just went for it flat out, but then saw a blue Vauxhall Carlton Estate coming the other way, and I was thinking SHIT!!!!!!!!!!!!!

As usual, I quickly thought of an escape plan and decided to dive completely over to the left once I’d cleared the house at the bottom. It worked, but then I found myself on a load of mud and could do nothing but go straight on and not brake in the hope I’d get spat back onto clean tarmac........ then the left side of the handlebar got caught in the hedge near the little bridge that takes the road over the stream there....... down I went. As usual I was able to hobble home (and took my Cousin’s son fishing for the rest of the afternoon)..... but was in pain for about 10days or so.

And that pretty much concludes my “brief” details of my life since leaving school...... pretty crap, huh? (wait ‘til I get round to the extended version some other time... then I’ll probably really let rip).

Extended Version

Out of about 167 I knew back then (and never got anywhere with) - These days I much prefer going fishing, since I don’t get as messed around or let down as much