Unfortunately it is a human trait to try to cut a corner where possible, perhaps attempt to cheat the system particularly if the system is perceived to be faceless or too gargantuan in scale for any deliberate deception or deprivation to be even noticed. It is often cited as an excuse, to justify a cheat or render it legitimate in the mind of the perpetrator, that if no single person has been hurt by a misdeed then it is perfectly OK and aceptable. However and deep down at a conscience level we all know that it is never the case. There is always a human element, a victim, a loss and a potential for suffering.
This was certainly the experience surrounding the school vending machine.
It was meant to be an amenity for the whole contingent of the Grammar School that I attended in the early to mid 1970's. Any automated purveyor of refreshments was still a novelty in that period and particularly so in an educational environment. Such machines were only otherwise found in a railway station or at a cinema dispensing bars of chocolate, packets of sweets, bags of crisps and always with an adjacent drinks only version for hot beverages although of quite limited choice of tea and coffee,black or white and hot chocolate. It was some years later that the all singing, all dancing chilled drinks versions became commonplace.
The school vending machine was, unusually, located outdoors. It stood under a sloping verandah roof on the western side of a quadrangle of concrete yard, bounded not on four sides as the name suggests but only three and a half, so technically a thralfrangle, a word of almost Viking derivation. The verandah provided an open walkway from the main school entrance to the cloakrooms. Directly opposite and at an elevated height was the staffroom. To the south was the school office. The north side was a short dogleg continuation of the same cloakroom block. It was an area of very high footfalls at the commencement of the academic day and at break times from the timetable the yard was packed with noisy boys kicking around tennis balls in a ranging game of football, the younger intake swopping football cards and the remainder just milling about idly with no determined reason or purpose.
As an area of containment and supervision the yard was ideal. It was quite similar in form and function to the central courtyard of Colditz Castle which was a popular TV series of the time. The staff had an excellent vantage point overlooking the yard. Such was the elevation of the staff room that they could keep watch but with no prospect of themselves being seen other than above shoulder height. Those summoned to the corridor outside the room for chastisement or on an errand often testified to getting a very brief glimpse into a smoke filled den of worn and sagging easy chairs with coffee stain patterns, piles of mugs, collapsible cardboard boxes from the bakery around the corner and even a bottle or two partly drained of their alcoholic content.
We did, over time, deduce a few blind spots such as directly under the staff room windows where inter-pupil transactions and not a little bullying and intimidation could be exacted with impunity. The vending machine was in clear and plain sight of the staff unless of course there was a sufficient huddle of schoolboys acting as a screen and concealing mischief and mayhem.
The standard price for a very flimsy plastic cup filled with scalding hot liquid and a quarter inch of sludge in the bottom was two new pence. This was clearly a much subsidised price as in todays money that equates to only 14p. I do not recall who first discovered that a bolt washer, skimmed into the coin slot in the front of the machine, tricked the mechanism into dropping the cup into the hatch for it to be filled with the dry drinks powder and the boiling water. It was now open season for all and everything close to the dimensions of a 2p coin to be inserted. There was quite a black market trade in the small metal discs found on the building sites in the town which were pushed out of the back plates of electrical sockets for the cabling to be fed through. Trespass and potential for criminal damage could therefore be added to the principal misdemeanour. Many nuts and bolts on street signs, road signs and the property of the Council were loosened and their washers removed to serve as a new , illegal tender in the playground.
Foreign coins were also in good demand although in those days any overseas holidays were the privilege of the wealthy few in our midst so many quite extensive and notable coin collections held by parents, older siblings and even grandparents were raided and looted of the smaller denominations.
For a time it appeared that the whole school were involved and it was necessary for the self appointed master criminals to allocate time to those wanting a go and in strict queueing order. The mass congregating of the school within the quadrangle was ultimately the downfall of the scam. An alert member of staff eventually noticed how deserted the wider school campus was at break times and conferring with his colleagues the scale of the deception and con was soon evident.
There were to my recollection no perpetrators brought to justice because that would have been much too damage for the reputation of that otherwise reputable Grammar School if the whole school were implicated. We really did miss a stodgy and rather stale tasting but nevertheless hot beverage in the winter months following the enforced removal and disposal of the vending machine.
As an exercise in responsibilty, honesty and trust we surely sold our souls for a grubby handful of nothing.
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