The Bubble Meets…
Max A: the man, the myth, the manuscript
Max A is someone that would describe themselves as out of the ordinary; someone that is writing a 200,000 word book aged 16 and yet would like to join the army and study psychology. This cocktail of interests is perhaps a base of who Max is, and his personality reflects in many of the things he does. He is well aware of this trait, so much so that in creative writing pieces he often feels uncomfortable because it is something that’s so personal to him, as though he were giving away one of his deepest secrets. Despite the intense connection Max has to his writing, he is unfazed by the idea that others may not like his writing or even find it particularly interesting, seeing others feelings for his book as the lowest priority for him. I was interested in what motivate Max to write, after all I certainly find that I can lose interest in smaller projects, let alone 200,000 word books. He said that he feels as though he is the God of his own book, and that the ability to control what happens to his characters is valuable to him, following a life where he has often been unable to control what happens to him.
Max is very interested in psychology, and he has aspirations to go to Oxbridge, something that he feels encouraged to do by his academic scholarship. It would appear it gave him confidence in his academic ability and led him to an avenue previously unexplored. When asked why he came to RHS (being new to the school this year) he mentioned the school’s military history as a driving factor. “My dad was in the army and all throughout my life he has told me these amazing stories and… I’ve always wanted to live up to that. He was enlisted in the Gulf War and oversaw javelin missile launches and after expressed a real interest and he said ‘Max, wars do still happen in this world and there’s a very real chance you would be deployed; it’s not to be taken lightly.’” Max was dissuaded by this stark warning, though he was keen to get it across that he’s “not running scared”, perhaps a reflection of the way Max perceives himself.
The Javelin Missile
At 6’4″ tall, Max is hardly one to run scared from physical confrontation and this shines through his aggressive goal keeping style, though there is one physical attribute that limits him significantly; his legs. He has a problem with them that means he is unable to run long distances and this has limited him in the past. Before Max moved to this area, he lived in Twickenham and was very into his rugby (one would assume the stadium on his doorstep might have put it in his mind) and was successful in this, frequently playing club rugby and even being in the Harlequins Junior Squad. However, his rugby career came to an end a few years ago when his legs problem developed, and he had to stop. One might think that it was this that pushed him into becoming a goal keeper but no, he actually picked it up in year 8 having been unable to play football at his new school and picking the closest possible thing. Since then he has been obsessed, finding the “little burst of adrenaline [he gets] really great” when he saves a goal.
Following my Studd Society talk on the decriminalisation of illegal drugs, Max mentioned to me that he and his family had been the victims of an illegal drugs operation, and I had to ask him to tell me more about that.
“As I mentioned earlier, I recently moved to Dedham, and we had decided to rent out our house in London. Not many people would want to live opposite the stadium but eventually we got an applicant, the North family. They loved the house and the Norths moved in, the wife heavily pregnant, but when it got to the end of their first month in the house, September 2021, no rent came through. We waited a few days or so and then pestered them asking where the rent was, and they told us this story of how the baby had unfortunately been lost and they were all at the wife’s family’s house and the husband couldn’t get into his bank account. My mum was very understanding of course but at the end of October there was only half the September rent, let alone that for October. Mum was confused and so she went down to London to knock on the door of the house. She knocked but no one answered and so she then asked the neighbours. They said they had seen no one going in and out, so with one of our old neighbours, Mum tried to see what was going on inside. All of the windows were covered with plastic sheets and the house looked as though it was abandoned, so they knocked again and kept on knocking until eventually a middle eastern man, definitely not one of the Norths, opened the door. What they saw was a temporary wall with a door in it, right in front of the door. They opened that door and saw hundreds of cannabis plants: the kitchen, the sitting room and all but one of the bedrooms upstairs absolutely full of it, with lights blazing down. It was very weird to see your childhood bedroom turned into a drugs farm.
Naturally they called the police and they eventually found out that our house had been turned into an organised crime gang’s cannabis farm. This was no low-level dealer, and these people were so professional they had managed to tap into the mains power supply for free. They intended to do was stay there a few months and then move on. The craziest part is that had they just paid the rent they would have got away with it and we would have been none the wiser.”
‘The Bubble Meets’ is a new segment where we interview various people, staff and students alike across the school and find out about their lives both in and out of school. If you know someone that you think deserves an interview, email 6sellew@… and you could see them interviewed in a future article.
WS
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