1988 - 1990 At school

Things started to change a bit in the third year at high school. Wedge/step hair cuts were fashionable and suddenly I could make my awful short hair cool. It was long on the top with a step then shaved underneath. My fringe swept across my face and was held there with two cans of hairspray! I think I got fed up of being a nobody in particular. I started to get interested in the boys and they weren't interested in me. I started to rebel. My school work began to go down hill, well if I bothered to do it at all. By the end of the third year I was 'on report' constantly. I had to meet with the head every week and keep a diary of what I was meant to be doing and what I had actually done. I very rarely did homework unless something 'grabbed' me.

I started to skip classes and get into general mischief around school. I met a girl in the first year who became a firm friend and was my sidekick. We always got into trouble together. Although she was the same school year as me, she was in fact a year younger, so any trouble we got into together I always got the blame for whether it had been my idea or not. I have to admit though, it usually was my idea. I frequently had detention during or after school but the postman came earlier than they seem to now and I usually got to the letters that were sent home before my mother did. She still doesn't know quite how many times I wasn't at Hockey practise or something similar!

I started smoking and used to employ first years, usually boys, as look outs for when we were smoking on the field or behind the gym. I got on well with one of the school bus drivers, he used to drop me of in town instead of going to school. He also used to let us smoke on the bus. I got into trouble for both those things because there was always a first or second year willing to 'split' on you. I was never really a bully but I did have a 'word' with one girl who had split on me for smoking on the bus. Unfortunately the warning didn't work and she promptly split on me again!

At the end of the fourth year I received my final warning, shape up or get out! None of the stuff I ever did was THAT bad, it was just a constant lack of respect for anything I guess. My sister had left school by the time I got there but her legacy remained. My sister is very intelligent and worked very hard at school and did well. She was quiet and compliant. I often had teachers remark that it was a shame that I wasn't more like her. The trouble is I think that just fuels the fire! I knew I wasn't stupid but I wasn't as smart as her.

I did get on with a couple of the teachers though, and one in particular, my Agri Science teacher. He was great, he used to ignore the fact that we smoked in the chicken coops. He had a very imaginative punishment system for the boys. There were coloured spots in a line going down one of the walls. Behind the door in his office he kept a selection of 'canes', although some were rubber tubes! If you were mouthy or did something wrong you had to put your nose on a spot and got a whack. The lowest spot was the black one, it was almost a prize if you managed to earn yourself a whack on the black spot. He never did it to the girls so we always managed to get away with quite a lot, but to this day I'm sure how HE got away with it, he certainly wouldn't now.

Anyway, after my final warning it kind of dawned on me that my final year was important. I stopped getting into quite so much trouble and started doing some work. I still wasn't the best student in the school but I had improved. My mock GCSE results came back pretty good, all As and Bs and I was determind to reproduce them at my final exams. I worked really hard that year but I think it was too late because when my results came back they weren't really what they should have been. Ok, so I got a B, four Cs and 4 Ds so it could have been a hell of a lot worse but they weren't really what they should have been. Too little too late!