Ask (GA-Slag FAQ)

Two years ago in the GA-Slag Retrospective I wrote about the genesis and development of said site. In this second background feature I've collected some questions about the GA-Slag, addressed some issues, and provided a little background to events depicted in prominent editions.

• Does anyone still read it?

Apparently so. My brother says people still tell him how much they love the GA-Slag. That includes people who weren't in the same year - evidently it's been passed down from older siblings. I removed the counter after school finished, so I don't know exactly how many views it gets or how often. Nice to know there are fans out there. Can I interest you in a t-shirt?

• What does Prij mean?

Prij is a contraction of South Slavic Prijatelj/Пријатељ. The nome de guerre Che was, of course, taken and I picked Prij as an alternative almost entirely on the basis that I had once been to Croatia in 1990. Would it kill everyone to pronounce it correctly?

• What was the point of the site?

There was no point initially. We were just pissed off about losing a free period and I decided to write up a rant for a friend's website. As it progressed through fifth year it became more about directly challenging the school's authority - specifically, that over me. If you want to get into the psychology of it, I was using it to create a new persona. More than once Makka claimed I was no longer smart because I wasn't doing what he said, which says it all. Obedience is what they want, and I decided through my own free will to do what the fuck I wanted to do and I got my fifteen minutes of fame out of it. The Terrible Children were certainly not under the delusion that we would somehow 'overthrow' the school as some critics derided it. If you've got a blacklist I want to be on it.

• Was the site ever rumbled?

As I've never been subject to a lawsuit for libel, I have to conclude it was never made known to the school administration. One of the Chemistry teachers was aware of it (and warned me to be careful) when Altavoz wrote the address on the blackboard. The closest it probably came to being uncovered, at least in my mind, was when I ran into Alan Brands in Slag 12. The site was being hosted on my NTL webspace which then included the account holder name in the address line. The URL redirection service masked that - which was enough to hide it from casual browsers - but my surname was plainly visible in the links and page HTML. As a precaution to probable expulsion, I pulled the site and re-hosted it on an ForetuneCity account. I returned it to NTL not long after because FC's FTP was a pain in the arse.

• Why were you suspended in Sixth Year?

I was suspended on two occasions in March/April 2004. The second instance was simply because I and a lot of others decided to skip one of the last English classes. The first, however, is subject to plenty of stories. One of the rumours I heard, and my parents heard this one too, was that I told Makka to fuck off. I only mentioned being suspended in passing as the prologue to Slag 15, leading to plenty of spurious explanations. I didn't dedicate an edition to the situation because it resolved itself in two and a half school days and by that time the next assembly provided stronger material.

The story was that the Snack Bar had been closed because it was supposedly generating too much noise and the exams were coming up anyway. They figured they could dump us in the canteen for a few weeks. I decided to call a sit-in for the following Tuesday and put a flyer up on the doors, which was removed by someone and then put back up by someone else by the end of the day. When the free period rolled around on Tuesday there were about a dozen of us in the Snack Bar until Makka dropped in and warned everyone. After that there were five or six of us when he came in again and lined us up against the wall in the corridor. There he explained why the Snack Bar was off limits and then went round us for an explicit agreement to stay out. There were two before me who agreed, and then he came to me. My response was to slowly shake my head, whereupon he told me to go stand outside Moira's office. On my way there I told Chris M to let everyone know I was being suspended and that I wouldn't be able to sneak back in - as I had done the last time I was sent home.

I had to go back into the school accompanied by my Dad in order to find a 'solution' to my behaviour. As we sat there in his office he mentioned the flyer and asked if I knew who made it. I said I knew of the person who made them, which isn't a lie as it's me. That was when I pushed the three copies of the flyer sticking out of my jacket pocket back down.

• What actually happened in the end of year episodes (8 & 16)?

In Slag 8, it's what it says in the footer. I walked in for registration and walked out the front door ten minutes later. I wasn't sticking round for the Prize Giving and certainly not for the fucking Church Service. I just made the whole thing up as a shallow school-as-Nazis joke.

Slag 16 is entirely different. Gary, Jack and I decided to attend the Prize Giving with no intention other than to have as much fun as possible, and I wanted to give the site a five-star send-off. What appears in that edition is entirely true, just reported as a muddled Nazi-Stalinist 1984 parody. The story about the Waverley recalls the 20th July Plot, particularly the detail of the wood deflecting the blast; and 'The West-End is Maroon' references the old Chinese national anthem 'The East is Red' where Mao is Pao, and Pao is Mr (Pat) Innes. The continued line about people heckling at the back is actually us being a nuisance. We were shocked to find out none of us had won any awards.

At one point a girl named Shona won a prize and I spontaneously shouted out 'My Sharona!' to which Gary and Jack did the drum beat before the three of us then shouted 'My Sharonaaaaa!'. Amazingly we weren't kicked out. I don't know what the kids around us thought. Downie waited till it was over to pull Jack aside and ask him if he was high. When we heard the prize winners were invited to a reception in the library we decided to sneak in and have something to eat before Makka finally kicked us out. Slag 16 was the most fun. They could hardly expel us after we'd already left.

• So school's out forever, then?

The last original episode was to be the prom, which occurred before the Prize Giving but would be the last published. Though Makka hassled us a few times for singing Stand and Deliver on the bus and going to the real bar in the hotel, there was little to complain about and I scrapped it. I wrote the final edition (16) on holiday and published it when I got back. And that was it.

However, last year I published two new editions. Slag 0 was an event that pre-dated the site by about two years (sometime in late 2000). I had been telling my brother about Chris Eubank's infamous and impenetrable anti-drugs ramblings during his blink and you'll miss it visit, and realised the farcical nature of that incident fitted right in with the tone of the series. Slag -1 is directly inspired by GA-Master's GA Chronicles. I liked the idea of focusing on some of the 'characters' and combined it with the original site concept - of slagging people we didn't like. That concept necessarily required a lot of neds as a common enemy, and as they were mostly gone by Slag 1 there were no easy targets within our ranks at the time. From personal experience, Mr Deehan was obviously the biggest dick amongst them for four years, so I happily slagged him after the fact.

That leaves the GA-Slag Finale I announced two years ago in the retrospective. Once I knew the school was going to be razed when the new schools were built, I immediately got the idea for a great parody. I've got a draft outline prepared and when my contact gives me the date GA will close, I'll break it out. So far that provisional date is in this half of 2011...

The GA-Slag

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