Wednesday 2 September 2015

Take three girls

My two longest-standing friends and I try to meet up a couple of times a year.  We’ve known each other since the age of eleven, when we started at the same school, our home town’s equivalent of a 1970s St Trinian’s – all hockey sticks and Latin lessons.  We went through the same humiliation of wearing the awful brown uniform (which, for the first two years was a shapeless tunic because, the school’s Ministry of Uniform dictated, “we don’t offer the option of a skirt to the younger years because they haven’t yet developed waists”.)  Our bond of friendship helped to get us through all those awkward moments of adolescence, comparing notes on buying that first bra and snogging.  And developing waists, amongst other things.

We pooled our pocket money to buy Cadbury’s chunky chocolate bars to share at break times and some years later upgraded this to the occasional Benson & Hedges, ten in a pack from a slot machine in town, having meticulously planned our movements in advance to avoid being spotted.  We’d sneak them into school and find a quiet corner of the playing field to try a furtive puff or two.  I’m pretty sure no actual inhalation ever took place.

By the age of 14 we were also into punk together.  We’d invade the local record shop on a Saturday afternoon and pore over the album covers, longing for the day when we’d saved up enough to buy one.  My first was the Clash's debut, eventually followed by the Stranglers' Rattus Norvegicus, which cost about 50p more for some reason and I remember how much I deliberated over spending those vital extra pence.

We also made forays into the local hardware stores – rummaging through trays of bulldog clips and sink chains and any other strange looking metal fasteners or hooks we could find with which to accessorise our DIY clothes.  On the last day of  term in 1978 when the school finally allowed a ‘no uniform’ day, we all got into trouble together.  It was our one chance to ditch the brown uniform and proudly wear our bulldog clips and Sex Pistols badges on our DIY clothes into school.  I'd had my long hair cut off completely the evening before and wandered into the classroom with my newly cropped barnet and punky clothes to a room full of shocked faces.  That afternoon we were called in by a teacher and given a stern talking-to; there had been complaints at our apparent lack of respect.  We could not have been awarded a better compliment, it was perfect. 

We all left school at 16 and went to different colleges, got jobs, got married, moved house a few times, but always kept in touch.  Now we meet when we can for lunch in our old home-town, our old stomping-ground, where none of us live any more.  Now our bond of friendship helps to get us through all the awkward moments of middle-age – comparing notes on a whole new set of life experiences.

As I sat there drinking wine with my two lovely friends last time, reminiscing about the day we sat and wrote dirty stories in the school lunch-hour, only to be so mortified at the thought of them being found by a teacher that we tried, unsuccessfully, to flush the offending pages of our exercise books down the toilets, it seemed impossible that over 40 years have passed since we first met.   And those school loos were out of order for days.

2 comments:

  1. Nonconformist Passage of the Day: "That afternoon we were called in by a teacher and given a stern talking-to; there had been complaints at our apparent lack of respect. We could not have been awarded a better compliment..."

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    1. :-) We might have outwardly protested at the time for being picked out 'just for the way we looked' - but secretly we'd have been so disappointed if we hadn't....

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