At one time we were doing a project on wildlife, and a visiting bookshop was selling The Nature Trail Book of Garden Wildlife, which looked rather useful. However, it cost a whopping £1.99, which neither of us could afford on our own. We decided to buy it between us, and take it in turns to look after it. Jon had it for a week, then he gave it to me and I had it for a week, then I gave it to him and we forgot about it and he had it for nine years.
I think it was during our second year that we started Blobs. Blobs was a comic Jon and I made and sold for a bargain 10p. It was quite successful and went on for some time. Eventually we decided it needed a revamp, and the first issue of Blobs volume three was less of a comic and more of a magazine. It was also rather more controversial, promising exposés on the teachers, and discussing serious issues of the day (each copy came with a free sticker: 'Is there a solution to polution?' We'd made about fifteen of them before we realized it was spelt wrong. I suppose it could have been worse. We could have asked: 'Is there an answer to canswer?'). Shortly after this issue came out, the headmaster called us into his office. He explained that, though the decision pained him greatly, he would have to ask us to stop selling Blobs. If he let us do that, he pointed out, with logic that escapes me to this day, he would have to let people set up stalls in the foyer selling hi-fis. We could continue, but we would either have to give Blobs away for free, or give the profit to the school. There were no more issues of Blobs.
In all our time at Manor, I only got higher marks than Jon once. We had a test on sewing machines, about which we both knew woefully little. He got 3% and I got 4% or something. I almost beat him in a History test on the First World War, but I put that it finished in 1915 and he beat me by one point.
