School Daze

11 May 2007

"Blogs are currently disabled for special maintenance. They will be available again in about 20 minutes." How gutted am I?

The one time I actually feel compelled to write a blog, and the bugger's down. Oh well, that's why it went on Facebook first...The summer of 1988 was amazing. I spent it over in Ballymena, Northern Ireland, with my aunts and uncles, and I have some great, great memories of it. So much happened that summer. I was 10. A month later, I was beginning a sentence of five years at a boarding school, and I hated every minute. I think.

Not a lot of people know this, but with every passing year, my fading memory of that time seems to be more and more negative. I was a bit of a monster when I was young – not in the sense you hear it nowadays, just a bit of an out of control little shit. I was getting into more and more trouble. My mum, in her infinite wisdom didn't like the way I was headed and wasn't too impressed with the school options on offer in my hometown. She decided that the only chance of sorting myself out and getting a decent education was to find a good boarding school.

A few weeks later, I found myself, suitcase in hand, being fitted out for my burgundy school uniform, grey shirt, black trousers and red and yellow tie. Needless to say, it took me a long time to get over my homesickness. The house I was in was called "Cornwall" had seven dorms, each with 7/8 beds. It had nasty brown blankets (duvets weren't brought in for a while afterwards) and was run by an older housemaster who used to scare the life out of me. One of the older kids would be designated dorm leader. They'd usually be a few years older and would tend to be quite burly. They and weren't to be messed with because they could make your life a misery. The house staff relied on them to keep order after dark, and they inevitably abused their power. One night, in dorm 5, a skinny kid with lank blonde hair was chewing a red pen lid (I still remember that night quite vividly), and it was getting on everyone's nerves. It wasn't that big a deal, but in the dark of night, that kind of noise carried.

The dorm leader, a chap called Paul, got a bit frustrated and asked who was doing it. We all knew of course, but no one wanted to rat him up, because he was bound to get a beating. So we were all made to stand at the end of our beds and balance pillows and books on outstretched arms for hours. Which was nice. It's no wonder that with memories like that I've been a bit jaded about the whole experience. We even used to have school on Saturday mornings (I know! Poor me!) and then we'd be given less than two quid (in the first year or year 7 as it later became) to go and buy some sweets from Woolworth's pick n' mix, because that was all we could afford. That was called exeat. Most of the time I had to skip this because I'd been naughty, so would have to do lines outside the maths' teacher's house. It wasn't all bad though, his daughter occasionally turned up, and she was quite easy on the eye…

Over the years, the pocket money grew, and the curfews got later. Truth be told, it wasn't all bad, but there were some utter bastards there. Without wanting to bore you with the details, the thing that struck me most was that if you didn't like someone, or they didn't like you, there was no escape from them. You'd see them in the morning at 7am, rubbing their eyes, at the breakfast table, in the classroom, and in the TV room before bedtime. You'd hear their voices in the dorm, before the staff would shout in to be quiet as it was nearly 3am. I'd gone into that school being completely ignorant of other cultures and had that beaten out of me, quite literally. Among the lessons I'd learned, was one fundamental thing, even the bullies at the school pissed their beds and cried when they got homesick.

Not all of them, you understand, but you get to realise that when you're at day school, you get to reinvent yourself as soon as you leave the house, and you get to hang that personality up on the coat-rack when you get home. This realisation was both a blessing and a curse, but it's stood me in good stead since I've left, and has had a massive on my choice of career. I learned a lot while I was there, even after spending a full day out of every month standing in the head's office. We were practically on first-name terms. The food was good though. Three cooked meals a day, plus some toast and hot chocolate in the evening for supper. The other kids used to playfully take the piss out of me because my mum used to sneak up to the school and give me a bag of what they'd call "Tuck" (basically multipack bags of crisps and chocolate). It's little wonder I've always been a bit soft around the stomach. One day there was a power cut and it took a while for the school's backup generators to kick in.

We were all in the dining hall at the time, and it coincided rather unfortunately with one of the most popular meals, 'Tom-Toms' (breaded chicken balls with scalding hot ketchup inside, not Sat-Navs) and chips. It makes me chuckle now. It was winter time, so it was dark anyway, but when the lights went out, you couldn't see anything at all. A riot ensued. Because these Tom-Tom things were so popular and we were never allowed seconds for them, everyone rushed over to the serving trays in the pitch black and scooped up as many of these little balls as they could and then ran for the exit, tripping over the benches and sliding along on trays as they went. It was utter carnage.Year 11 was the best time, I'd graduated to dorm 1, which only had two beds, and I was given much more freedom.

Still, when I finally left in 2003, gratefully declining the option to stay on for sixth form, I was somewhat relieved.Needless to say, when I received a friend invitation from one of the girls from the school, I was utterly shocked. There on her profile page was about 20 pictures of loads of people from the school and some really great memories came flooding back. It really can't have been all that bad. And no, it was nothing like bloody Hogwarts.