All good things...

Disclaimer: this post was written in December 2023, and scheduled for future posting. Its contents may no longer be accurate or appropriate.

Today is the last day of the school year for Amusements Minor. Which means it's close enough for government work, as the saying goes, for me to mark the anniversary of when I left school. Okay, I would have to dig out my old diaries (shudder) to be sure of the exact date, but it's pretty much 35 years to the day since I finished the sixth form and got the school bus home for the last time. A lot of water has flowed under the bridge since then but I can honestly say I have only happy memories of school days, and only good things to say about my alma mater and its staff. I sometimes feel sorry for people who had a different experience of secondary education, and I accept I was fortunate enough to go to a brilliant school, with a unique spirit, at a special time. Not fortunate to gain a place there, because I earnt that, but fortunate that the place was there to be earnt, I suppose. And of course I met and befriended The Man Of Cheese there and the rest of that, as they say, is history.

There was no end-of-school prom for us, like there seems to be at the drop of a hat for schools these days. No. Instead TMOC, Roachford, a third boy (whose nicknames would no longer be considered appropriate) and I went into the city in Roachford's Allegro, for a spot of lunch; on the way, we popped into the hospital to see another boy - let's call him Horse - who was in for a hernia op, if memory serves, and so was missing the last day. After a fry-up lunch in Sarnies we went back up to school, via a quick pub stop for a pint, for an afternoon of "mingling" on the school field with the rest of the upper sixth and a few staff. I wandered around with a point-and-push Halina camera, taking a few pics of those that had hung around for the end though, truth be told, not everyone had. It was all decidedly low-key by today's standards.

I'm glad there was no prom for us though. I was terribly shy and so almost certainly would not have enjoyed myself. That said, I love this little clip from Spiderman: Homecoming in which Peter gets nervously excited for his prom (and date), perfectly soundtracked by Save It For Later by The Beat.

As I may have mentioned before, I also love the reinvention of the Tom Holland Spiderman era that allows me to fancy Aunt May...

...but enough about Marisa Tomei. When I arrived home from school that last time, Mum met me at the gate and took a picture of me with that same point-and-push. In it, I am trying to smile but look sad. I think I felt life was, if not over, certainly up in the air. I didn't know it for sure at the time but university was waiting, and a whole other adventure that is also full of almost exclusively good memories. But at that precise moment, as I came through the old front gate with my hands in pockets, trying and failing to look cool, I looked like a boy who'd not only had the rug pulled out from under him but had then been forced to watch whilst the rug was trampled on, shredded and finally set alight. That's how much I loved my school days.

Anyway, it's not from 1989, the year we are commemorating here, but it is from the 80s and it is good, so let's hear that Beat track in full:

More to follow, no doubt, when I have another "getting old" anniversary to ruefully acknowledge...