1983: Feeling browbeaten day after day

Much as I'm rhapsodising about boarding school here - and my memories are for the most part overwhelmingly rosy - it wasn't all beer and skittles.

In fact, sometimes it could be really cruel. At times, it was lonely, cold, miserable, desolate, hurtful, spiteful, childish, wicked, boring, especially and almost exclusively at first.

This song reminds of the very first weekend back after Christmas ready to start my second term there. It was cold but the sky was clear and blue. School was meant ot start on Mondy and I arrived back on the Saturday to find about three people there, three people I wasn't particular friends with. But needs must and we decided to go into town together. I bought this record. I actually really dislike it now.

It makes me think of a quite a lonely time. I can't quite put my finger on it. I may well have fallen out with someone, and the first term had been a rollercoaster of passions, fights, bitchery, gossip, friendships, new discoveries and adjustments. It was perhaps the most turbulent time of my life.

I'd been away from home for a while now, but had only been boarding since the previous September. To be away at school with your parents in another country and any close family far away took a bit of getting used to. Perhaps about half-an-hour. The real test was making and hanging onto new friends. Teenagers are a difficult, fickle bunch and I was no different. You make and break friends at a rate of knots, you have a nemesis and an unattainable apple of your eye and someone you target for friendship. At least you have goals to work towards.

I'd done all this. Some of it had worked out, some of it hadn't. And this was only the first term. So arriving back for term I was expecting more of the same. I wasn't disappointed. And I wouldn't have had it any other way.