Skool Daze

I've written about my convent girl days before and thinking about it, overall I had a blast....at least compared to life now. Oh, to be young and free with only the worry of what mark Sister Pius would give my Math homework! If I knew then what I know now I would have been a far different girl.

When I was a kid we moved around a lot, between England and Ireland and I was lucky really to have all my secondary schooling in one place. But because we moved I didn't stay in touch with schoolfriends - not like Big Man did, for example, or like Red and Mr Charming have been able to. In fact, when Big Man was in the Navy and we had the opportunity to make the family 'mobile' (ie we agree to move around with him) I opted to be 'static' ( we stayed at home and Big Man lived in Plymouth in barracks), so opposed was I to moving the kids around. That's what 13 different houses and 21 different schools'll do to you I guess. Anyway, like I said, I was never really able to keep in touch with school friends.

But then there was Facebook!!!! I managed to get hold of one schoolfriend, Anita who now lives in London and is a nurse. Her parents still live in Dublin and in fact nearly all of the girls I knew then still live there also. Now I've heard through Facebook that there is a school reunion being held for the Class of 88, on July 23 this year. In Dublin, and my dilemma is whether to go or not.
If I thought there would be lots of girls from my 'gang', or even my class going I wouldn't hesitate (although the price of the flight plus finding somewhere to stay would be a big factor....I suppose the place to stay isn't insurmountable); BUT from what I can see of the RSVP list on the event page I only recognise one definite (out of nine!)and that's Anita, who I can see any time. Another two good friends live in Paris and Maryland so they won't be going. And like I blogged before, my bestest buddy Gez is MIA somewhere.

But apart from the financial aspect, the other thing that is putting me off is....what if they're all prettier, slimmer, cooler and more successful than me? I know I shouldn't care but it's human nature, right? I already told the mother of one of Red's old schoolpals who I met in Poundstretcher that Red was doing really well in London at uni, when in fact you and I know that she has dropped out of her course and is being evicted from her house (which I can't even bring myself to blog about at the moment). But in the face of her girl doing fantastically well, I just felt that I didn't want the inevitable sympathy and questions that would follow. I'm so shallow.....I'm just like a swan, serene on the surface and flailing around crazily underneath.

Of course I've seen some of the attendees' photos on FB and what they work as, and they're just regular women like me so I shouldn't worry, should I? But I know only too well that should even one old girl walk in looking fantastic and really together it would make me feel just awful plus I'd be stuck there, unable to skulk off home. Is it just me feels a failure most of the time or do other people feel like that too?

Just like Morrissey, I hate it when my friends become successful........

Perhaps I should heed Babcia's school reunion experience. She went to one quite a few years back and told me that the women attending were cliquey and had obviously kept in touch with each other over the years. There was only one other woman who had been in the same class as her '....and I never liked her anyway.'

Looks like my schooldays will probably remain in the past....



You Know You're Getting Old When.....

...your ex-heart-throbs are pictured looking like this...

Oh Lewis Collins, time has been unkinder to you than she has to Martin Shaw, the Sam Tyler of his day. You were always the macho, gung-ho half of the Professionals duo, the tough guy who fell for unsuitable women - a self-destructive junkie; a gangster's wife; a double agent - and got his heart broken, whilst still maintaining that stiff upper (usually curled in contempt) lip. You acted first and thought later, to the barely restrained fury of George Cowley (the lovely Gordon Jackson). Martin Shaw's Doyle was always more circumspect, thoughtful, by the book and, to my mind slightly dorkish with his silly hairdo. To be fair he's improved with age and I loved him in George Gently, though not as much as I loved Lee Ingleby. But that's by-the-by. Bodie was everything I, a mere strip of a schoolgirl, thought was exciting in a man. Roughty-toughty but unashamed to cry.

It's funny the things that stick with you...I always remember an episode of The Profesionals that involved drugs and Bodie had become close to a junkie girl. At the end the dynamic duo had to break into her flat (to save her or whatever) but sadly found that she had overdosed and died. Before she succumbed she had been able to write on her bed headboard (and I quote) 'Dear God, I'm only little....' I don't recall her being especially petite but perhaps I watched the episode in a seething state of jealousy and teenage hormones because she got to snog Bodie. She clearly didn't deserve him (unlike me).

One more memory of The Professionals (and I'm sniggering now thinking about it, as I do every time it comes into my head). When I was at my all-girls convent in Dublin being taught by the Sisters of Charity we were on the whole a fairly innocent lot - some might say naive, some might say 'a bit backward' - though I like to think I was maybe a bit less immature and a bit more sussy since I had been transplanted from my particularly malevolent Northern home town only a year earlier. The Professionals was a big hit amongst us girls and one of the popular break time activities was to make up scenarios whereby we were somehow related to the CI5 members and got involved in their derring-do. I suppose it would be called wishful thinking or more likely fantasising. We didn't actually run around with sticks pretending we were shooting people (we were 13, come on!)  - we mainly pretended that we were related to them and got involved with their work and 'Bodie said this' and 'Doyle said that'. A major part of it was that you had different names from your own; after all what's glamourous about Linda, Geraldine, Anita, Bernadette and Anne? (There was also Sabina, which is different I suppose but she didn't like it so naturally had a 'nom-de-guerre' too). Well, my friend Geraldine's story was that she was Bodie's niece and the name she'd chosen...I can hardly type this for tittering.....was Jodie. I immediately said 'Jodie? Jodie Bodie?' Geraldine got very flustered and said, 'no, no, he's my mum's brother' but the spell or whatever had been broken. By laughing at her I guess I made everyone think that what we had been getting a lot of fun out of was childish and pathetic. And so the 'Being-Part-Of-The-Professionals-Family' game ended with a whimper.

Surprisingly enough Geraldine was my best friend for a good few years. She was really bright but her mum was a very pushy parent from the North (Norn Ireland that is) and I think she had an adverse effect on Gez. Wonder what happened to her?

And my name in our fantasy life? Well, punk was coming and I was rather busy trying to be Debbie Harry. If pushed I would've been Velda Vomit, gangster's moll and nemesis of CI5...