Schools Out - For Ever!

Prize giving day, August 1979.


I received two invitations over t'internet today.
The first was from someone I used to go to school with (with whom I used to go to school? - oh, fuck it, I didn't want to be an English professor anyway!) who somehow got hold of my e-mail address and wrote to ask me to a class reunion. It turns out that it is a little over 28 years since we sheathed our catapults and walked out of the school gates for the last time to take on the world.
Now, only my school - perhaps only my year - could go to the trouble of marking the 28th-and-a-bit anniversary of something! It speaks volumes, I think. Rest assured I shall not be going.
I went to an "institution" which drew its inmates from across the country. The logic behind these dos, therefore, is that they offer you the chance to catch up with old comrades and hopefully stay in touch in the future. Why the fuck would I want to do that? Haven't they worked out that if I haven't been in contact with them since 1979 there is a reason? The reason is I DON'T EVER WANT TO SEE THEM AGAIN EVER!! It was bad enough having to sit next to some of them during my formative years. Putting myself through that in adulthood would be more than I could bear. I don't think it is insignificant that number one in the charts when I left school was We Don't Talk Anymore by Cliff Richard! I think the full title should have been We Don't Talk Anymore - Ok, Got It?
Why, on God's own earth, would I have a desperate urge to chat again to Greg Ducker - the lad who once, when we sang the symbolic masterpiece Jerusalem in assembly, turned to me and said "I thought Jerusalem was in Egypt"?
Why would I want to catch up on all the gossip with Steve "Brick" Sudlow who, when asked in biology to draw an annotated diagram of either the male or female reproductive system, crayoned an enormous dick and marked it "knob", "balls", "shaft" and "pubes"? (which earned him five marks from the biology teacher - work that fucker out!!)
What would be the attraction of teaming up again with Andrew Barnfather who, when asked in history who was involved in the Peninsula War, said in all seriousness "it wasn't me, I was off sick last week"?
The above is all true, believe me. With the exception of about four blokes, all of my classmates who weren't brain damaged (like those mentioned already) were just plain wankers. I remember bumping into one particularly odious little shit from the Class of '79 in town a few years ago. He gushed on about how well he was doing (obviously) and then thought it would be fascinating to tell me that he lived "in a barn conversion"! What the fuck was I supposed to glean from that scintillating piece of information? All I could think to say was "Oh, I am sorry. I'm sure a council house will come up for you soon".
That's the kind of thing which goes on at these bloody reunions. The only reason for them is for everyone to eye everyone else up and then bullshit about how successful they are. The conversations are all along the same fucking lines:

"What are you driving these days?"
"A car?"
"Yes, but what kind of car?"
"A red one?"
"I've got the GTi 720x. It gives the kind of torque I need and is pretty yummy at the top end."
"I'm sorry. Is there something wrong with you?"

"You lost your hair, then?"
"No, it's over there."
"You're carrying a little excess baggage as well, I see, fnaar, fnaar."
"And you'll be picking your teeth up with a broken arm in a minute."

As I said earlier, if I had wanted to keep in touch with any of them I would have done so.
I have yet to reply to the invitation and, when I do, I think I shall follow Peter Cook's lead. He said, when invited to dinner on a particular date by the odious reptile who is David Frost: "Having consulted my diary I see that I am watching television that evening."

The other invitation I received was to a reunion of people who, like me, worked on and survived a newspaper which is the journalistic equivalent of the Burma Railway. That do I SHALL be attending. I keep in contact with almost all of the escapees and am proud to know them. We shall get drunk, have japes and then go round to the editor's house and take it in turns to piss through his letterbox. Now that's my idea of a night out.
Anyway, in the meantime, school reunions can go to Grantham.