Salad Days? More Like Burger Days!



This is the village where I went to school. I don’t mean just infants school; it was a high school for 14 to 18 years olds. I don’t know what the year number is for it these days but it had to expand to take everyone from 11 up when the box that was the middle school fell apart because the cardboard walls got soggy. The school is hidden away to the left of the Church though the arrival of the pupils quintupled the population of the village. I should have made a full panorama for it was such a wonderful day. Sixth formers were allowed out of school for adult pursuits such as a gentle walk to the local post-office for Army and navy sweets. We even had our own path to it called sixth form alley though I am sure the villagers called it Tom’s Bottom or something equally carry-on-like. Not sure if it was the intellectual high place you might imagine but I think I enjoyed my time there. Of course all I remember now is the rural atmosphere and the occasional sniff of stale football boots. Yes! Football – not rugby. Rugby is another story; my Grandfather was head boy of school house at Rugby. I am a state-school boy.

Martin and I were, as ever, absorbed by the activity in the massive building site next to this office. For months, big yellow trucks have been passing back and forth across this scrub and earth, carrying various loads of hillside to some new estate. As the source of these diggings has moved across the horizon, we have eventually been able to see the trucks lined up, waiting to be filled by the digger. After a very sad conversation about why diggers are always yellow and a promise to request a blue JCB should one of us win the lottery, we both realized how sad we have become. We are Pete and Dud without the funny bits. I speculated that somewhere, at that moment, a few of our school contemporaries might be drawing the curtains on a Caribbean sunrise or finishing off a doctoral thesis. Martin said that his contemporaries were more likely to be slopping out. Can’t be true I said. Slop out is early morning. And I am turning into A. Mole.

Kate Bush has a new album called Aerial out on November 7th. It is double so 12 years have not been wasted. I think that is all I want to say about that because having read the exaggerated comments on some of the fan sites, I realize that I am not that obsessed about anything. Maybe it will be rubbish.