My final couple of years at school were, in many respects, the most formative. It bemuses me to hear, from friends, how their own kids' experience of school is so similar to their own - how the early years were the best - how it was all about looking forward to going to school to see one's friends. Not for me.
My final couple of years were where I started to find myself and find my place. I knew that I wasn't going to get invited to the 'right' parties and I was perfectly comfortable with that. I went to my friend's parties and they might not have been the 'right' ones but they were right for me - right for us. We went to the pub - we drank too much for our age - we enjoyed the things we enjoyed and we enjoyed each other for who we were.
I also found my academic niche. I took a combination of A-Levels that I wanted to take and not a combination that my parents thought would get me a job (i.e. the combination my brother took) and I worked really really hard. My memories of studying at that time involved the sheer terror of economics tests through to being the last one to bed, night after night, whilst I memorised everything from the latest maths formula, to a line of poetry, to a factor affecting Demand. It was the hardest I'd ever worked academically (and ever would) and it was combined with two music grade 8's and a sense of willing myself to work harder and to test myself further - something that I still have (or indeed suffer from) today.
I also had a taste of Public School life - I had a significant birthday on a week's exchange to a leading private school - an unforgettable week of dishy posh boys, their preconceptions of us and their holidays in Kenya jet ski-ing. The ones who exchanged in the opposite direction enjoyed themselves even more - apart from the one who went into self-imposed exile after a night out on the tiles that ended with him puking over my bedroom wall.
The final band-tour was carnage. Tears and Tantrums in Denmark. Youthful protestations of never losing touch, lives having been changed and never wanting it to end.
The final day of school was similarly strewn. I was voted "most likely to become a member of the royal family". An extended pub lunch was followed by a bladder-busting economics lesson. And the final Summer was upon us.
How could it all be over so quickly? How could we, all of a suddden, be in a place where we were having farewell party after farewell party? How extraordinary to be given the most wonderful of send-offs by friend's parents. How amazing to think that some of the most desparate of moments could have seemed so significant when compared to the terror and anticipation that awaited.
So much to come. Thanks, in whole, to what had passed.
Go on. Have a good cry.
