A Frankie View – Reggae Vibe 4

“I really like the reggae concepts like the culture vibe. They speak on everything that’s going on, they don’t have limits. They speak on politics, they speak on life, they speak on the troubles of poverty, everything. The message, the melodies and the concepts of reggae music are unbelievable.” – Sean Kingston

Hello all

Going to carry on from where I left off from A Frankie View – Reggae Vibe 3, and talk more about my school days.

I made a joke the other day in my year Facebook group, Manning Boys 78-83, that our careers officer/teacher got sacked because when he took the job on, he promises to fill 5 priest vacancy.

Let me explain, I went to a Roman Catholic School, and I got an unclassified or a simple U in my Religious Education GCSE (General Certificate of Secondary Education) exam. So I wasn’t prime material for the priest role, but I was once an altar boy and had to hold the bishop crook once, but that’s another story. My poor dad got blamed for my failure, by my mum because he wasn’t a Catholic or so my mum said.
I didn’t really grow up in a strict religious house, to this day I still don’t know what religion my dad was, but if you asked him about any of the Bible stories he just seems to know them, but he also knew a lot about history as well. My mum coming from Spain was a Roman Catholic, and that was the reason why the 3 of us ended up going to Catholic Schools.
One day my mum had some holy water, and she was going around the house spreading it, to give some luck she said, she did tell me she put some extra on my dad side of the bed because he needed it.
Well, it didn’t work, as I know his horses never came in, as there was no Chinese take away that Saturday night.

Anyway, I knew a couple of others had failed the RE exam, but 30 years later I started to find out how widespread the failure was.
Mark O’Donoghue said “ My RE exam consisted of writing my name and form number. Then I got up and walked out.”
Derek Cummiskey “ I looked at it and thought, I don’t know nothing on this and then left” while John Murphy didn’t even bother to turn up.
Paul Eveleigh, who is the encyclopedia of all knowledge of when it comes to our school days said, “ I remember various guys walking out of the exams and shaking my head in disbelief! However, I did admire the BALLS required”

I have asked the question “Let make this simpler, did anyone actually pass the RE exam” no one has come back to me yet.

I have started to ramble on a bit, and not really wrote anything about reggae, I was meant to tell the story about me and the careers office, and how I nearly joined the RAF, and how listening to songs like Ghost Town (The Specials), One in Ten (UB40) and Stand Down Margaret (The Beat) wasn’t painting a pretty picture of the outside world, and how I was told at school if I didn’t do well in my exams I would end up on the dole.
Yet in a lecture I gave to some 14-15 years old a couple of years ago, they are now being told, if they don’t do well academically, they will end up on a construction site, an industry I have been in for 37 years, and not one day on the dole.

So my U in my Religious Education hasn’t held me back, things have not changed, and after 40 odd years, I am still listening to reggae. I will continue this next time.

Stop the presses, one boy has owned up to passing, I just have to name and shame him, José Gopal has now been found guilty of passing Religious Education General Certificate of Secondary Education, 1983.
For his penance, he will have to catch the next flight to Rome and apply for the Pope’s job, because that is some achievement.

I have also been putting together these playlists, I normally make up a playlist from a variety of different music genres and see if they fit together. So lately I have restricted myself to the albums I have posted about and have decided to share it with you, as we did in the old days with tapes

The only way I can think of sharing playlists these days is with something like Spotify.