FRED

Fred was the science department mascot, he was a full-size skeleton that we used to dress up often a lab coat, always with flat cap & safety goggles. We bound some tape around one of the hinges of the arm of the specs, so they looked like the ones that Jack Duckworth used to wear when he read the racing form in the paper when he sat in the Rovers Return.

At Christmas time Fred got decorated like a tree with tinsel and the odd bauble. He would always be put in one of the labs in a rough rota so that he toured the school over the year. Each lab looked after him, but his home was always down where I taught.

When we did lessons on smoking in Science and PSE,  Fred would get a fag and two of his fingers stuck in his spring loaded jaw, so it looked like he was puffing away on a tab.

During the World Cup in 98 Fred wore an England shirt and got propped up in front of the TV on a chair in his own when kids came in at lunchtime to watch the afternoon games.