Breaking Up Is Hard To Do – Part 2

So Part 1 looked at the transition from Primary to Secondary School – fast forward 5 years and 1992 brought to a close my compulsory education years.

Over those 5 years, as is the case for the vast majority of teenagers, I’d built up some incredible friendships destined to last, with both individuals and as a group alike. So much so that during our last year, we’d extended not only to simply meeting at the park or sleepovers, but  to also going out for full blown meals in Brighton. How very grown up!
The irony is that now I can't actually afford to go out as often as we used to back then!

I recall one night going for a birthday meal at the Marina for one of the girls and during the course of the evening it significantly snowed. I say significantly, it was about an inch (a man's inch), but at the time it had been years since the last snowfall, so some of us ended up walking back towards Brighton throwing snowballs from the beach, which seemed a bit surreal at the time!

Fish Dandruff

The last few months at school were fine, though for me absolutely carried a sense of impending endings – which I found a bit confusing as to how I ought to feel about it. Would I be friends with these people forever? Would I ever see them again? Did they even want to keep in touch with me anyway!?

All these considerations were set against a backdrop of imminent GCSE exams. Shamefully, I barely revised at all – mainly as no matter how hard I tried to revise, it seemed that the more I read (and re-read) my books and notes, the less confident I became. I did alright in the end though, with my best result being attaining the highest grade in German that a male had achieved to date at the school. Wunderbar!
I'm sure it’s been smashed since...

May 8th 1992 - Our last day before taking exam leave !
It was quite emotional for some, and we all dressed up for the occasion but by and large looked pretty terrible – such was early 1990’s fashion.

Many girls (and probably some boys) were seen to cry – seemingly in the misplaced belief that they would never see any of their friends ever again. Whilst the final assembly party was in swing, I joined a few of my best mates on a final tour around the deserted school to say goodbye to the ghosts. Albeit this was a little bit daft, as I was coming back to same school the following September to the in-house Sixth Form!

However that day really did feel like the definitive end of my schooling. Like my time at Primary School, I had mostly enjoyed Secondary School too. I had made the best friends and enjoyed some fantastic laughs along the way, and barring one or two notable exceptions, most of the teachers were pretty good too.

And, certainly initially, the end of school didn’t totally mean the end all friendships. Primarily with my male friends, we were together virtually every day of that prolonged summer (due to exam leave etc) – I didn’t own a bike, but I borrowed one belonging to my friend’s brother, and we cycled all over the place at all hours of the day and night just talking about everything and nothing, girls and football, school and music, starting a band, drinking, Winona Ryder etc.

I really don't care that she was once a shoplifter!

It was a hot summer and it was one of the only times in my life that I got anything like a decent tan!
Rather belatedly I also finally grew a bit taller – earlier in the year I had been a stunted five feet three, but by the time I started Sixth Form, I’d towered to all of five feet nine!

It’s fair to say though that many friendships through school association did in fact disintegrate from this time, and I guess that’s the way it is meant to be. You don’t live with your parents forever as you eventually outgrow most of what they can provide for you, and it’s the same for your school mates. By the time you get to 16, there’s less and less you have in common with them apart from the fact that you have to be in the same building as them up to that point.

My step daughter recently passed up the idea of having a big 16^th birthday party (not my fault!!) on the basis that she is very focussed and particular as to who her friends are and likes the fact that it’s a smallish group. I think that’s probably a realistic and sensible approach.

I’m in my 40^th year now, and although I don’t still have any kind of regular contact with ALL those who were in our school group of about 9 close friends, I happily communicate with those who want to still be part of my life, and know that with one or two of them, we often resume our friendship as if we’d only been at school yesterday, which is a nice state to be in.

Musical interlude time again: I've gone with the Number One for the week in May I technically left secondary school (for exam leave)

Two years later, and it really was the last year at school! I had been quite looking forward to my Sixth Form years, as I had this illusion that it would be a great last hurrah for my school days.

Lower School, turned Sixth Form, turned entirely new school now

It wasn't!

The last few months at Sixth Form were a drag and I was sadly pleased when it had all finished. I’d enjoyed some of it, and had bonded in some new friendships with people I had not known so well before, but from very early on it felt like my heart simply wasn’t in it. I had genuinely enjoyed 99% of my school years, but during the last year I just felt I’d had enough.

I got bored with the work and coupled with the fatigue I was feeling all the time (I had Glandular fever and Anaemia), I was in no right mind to want to go to university. I’m sure it probably showed in my work as towards the end of my final year, one teacher absolutely (and unnecessarily) ridiculed me in front of my classmates, which totally wiped out any confidence and drive I had left.
After that humiliation, I had classmates that I didn’t really know that well come and offer sympathies because of her attack.
Given that I train and teach people for a living now, as my teacher for several spells between 1987-1994 she really ought to have known how to get the best out of me a lot better than how she attempted. It’s unfair to say that she alone ruined my lasting memory of school for me, but she didn’t help bring the curtain down on a happy note that’s for sure.

I pushed on through though until the exams were done, and pointedly I set up the Alice Cooper classic ‘School’s Out’ to play on my walkman as I left the school and walked down Portslade High Street for the last time following my final exam.

It was time to go out and earn a living...