Erwin Finker

About Our Mascot

Our mascot is Erwin Finker. He writes Erwin's Essays.

Erwin is a (fictional) 12-year-old boy. He's a very happy child, though he tends to get his words and ideas a little bit muddled. But he's a fast learner and is always eager to learn and to share what he knows. And despite his habit of getting things a bit muddled, Erwin always somehow manages to land on his feet.

You will often see him proudly wearing his school uniform — a white shirt and tie, long shorts and long socks, and the shiniest black shoes you have ever seen. Occasionally, he wears his school hat, especially in the summer, even though he thinks the hat looks a bit "nerdy".

Erwin attends a boarding school. He likes it there, but sometimes he feels a bit lonely. He has lots of friends, including his best friend (a red-headed 10-year-old girl named Kate), but he has nowhere to go on school holidays. He has never known his Mum and Dad, who left him at the door of the boarding school when he was just a baby.

Erwin's physically strong for his age, and fit and healthy, because he eats only good food and because the boarding school works him hard with daily manual chores. He's good at mechanical things and great at inventing gadgets. He has a rare and funny, but cute, way of speaking: he pronounces "th" like "f" and "r" like "w", and he "ers", "ahs", and "ums" a lot.

His favourite teachers are Miss Glubb (the grossly overweight gym teacher) and Mr Smith (the ridiculously handsome English teacher, whom all the girls adore). Erwin doesn't like the head teacher, the stern and humourless Mr Fenwick. Mr Fenwick is tall, skinny, and looks like he's 100 years old!

Erwin's favourite game is marbles; you will often find him playing marbles by himself, in the school stairwells.

Erwin has dark brown eyes, dimples, and black hair cut in an old-fashioned "short back and sides" style. He's a day-dreamer and is always thinking wacky thoughts. His adventurous spirit sometimes gets him into trouble; it's rare that you will see him without a band-aid, bandage, or some other kind of first-aid implement attached to a grazed knee or elbow, a cut hand, or something or other. The school nurse has a whole bottle of iodine set aside just for him!

Although he gets things muddled, Erwin is not stupid; in fact, it is his superabundance of ideas that gets him into strife: he thinks more quickly than he can speak. He is also a very accomplished boy scout, having receiving the most scout badges in his District. He doesn't mean to be, but he can sometimes be very chauvinistic. As well as marbles, his favourite toys are his old red yo-yo and a rubber super-ball.

Erwin makes friends very easily. Everyone he meets, and everything, seem to end up being his new best friend (the truth is that the friendship is mostly in Erwin's mind, and is not always reciprocated by the person he befriends). Extraordinary things happen to Erwin: amazing coincidences and astonishingly good luck, and occasionally bad luck too. Erwin doesn't care what anyone thinks about him; he hasn't got a self-conscious bone in his body.