They Might Have Been French

Listening to Baggy Trousers by Madness – accidentally.


This is the outside of my Sixth Form House upper sixth common room. When I was there, the French Windows opened onto a shrub-lined bit of lawn, which faded into the more robust grass of the main school field. The lawn has been dug up to provide a turning circle for the buses that used to circle the big tree in the village. Inside we had a collection of very old and very smelly settees and other soft furnishings, which didn’t provide more than half the seats for a full complement of pupils. We all had our defined areas, with the top echelons of the pecking order getting the seats by the window. My little group had the corner by the waste paper bin though I like to think that our trying-too-hard poses were the coolest of the lot. Across from us, sat both sets of girl twins, which was confusing, though having grown up with them, it was very easy to tell them apart; the boys of course divided the twins up as the attractive one and the not-so-attractive one. I think my brother went out with one of them but don’t ask me which. The head boy and girl and deputies had the corner parallel to ours. All this makes it sound as if there was some sort of social division but I don’t remember it like that; it was all quite civilized really. As I have said though, I was not really attuned to the emotional signals that float around so there may have been some sniffy stuff between the various factions.

I’ve just read the only entry by a teacher for this school on friends reunited and she says that she expected to teach science at an allegedly quiet school in rural Worcestershire but instead acquired no new friends and clinical depression. Never knew the pressure was that bad. I felt like emailing and offering an electronic there-there but I know I shouldn’t. All that new wave stuff we listened to at lunchtimes, probably suggests that the school has a high population of the trench-coat brigade, which may not help. Oh well! Back In The Jug indeed!