(Age 16)
The bells rang triggering the tap of the first domino of our regulated and structured day. I sprang out of bed with all the enthusiasm of a baby taking its first steps. Life was good. Good fun! As we herded across the dining room to get our first batch of fuel, to set us on our regimented day, I was unaware of the turn my spoonfed lifestyle was about to take.
Blissful and lively I joked with my friends, making them all giggle with my new and well practiced Woody Woodpecker laugh.
Everyone was in good spirits. Today was the day we got to join the outside world for the weekend. It was an exeat weekend, one of two each term where we got to go home, where we got to pretend we were like all the other children who saw their parents everyday.
My parents had made the choice to work abroad as the prospects of work seemed better. This made me part of a small group of children in each year whose parents lived abroad while they studied in the uk. We were not like the elite and select children whose wealthy parents had become accustomed to sending generation after generation to top boarding schools. Breeding grounds for the middle and upper classes.
There was a reason we boarded, or at least so we thought. For our parents were not living in the U.K at this time. We were the overseas borders, children confined to established schools to achieve and walk away with a solid education whilst their parents were… well… whilst their parents were elsewhere working.
Today was an especially exciting day. Never the completely obedient child, I had devised a plan to stay with one my good friends who had left to go to a mixed sixth form college at the end of the fifth year. Stuck in an all girls boarding school, the allure of relations with girls and boys was exciting. Our catholic convent style existence did not see mixing with the opposite sex as anything but an unhealthy distraction, to be put off until the very latest moment. In our cases, at the age of 18, when we were armed with qualifications and good breeding.
For the most though, the transition was far from simple, for the single sex establishments. the bricks of that taboo wall seemed to stretch higher and stand stronger. Talking to a member of the opposite sex was a very big deal. Loitering around the multiplex was not an option and whiffs of their reality came few and far between. We were indeed cocooned. Cast away on an island of traditional ethics, defined and moulded by the tried and tested formulas.
Today was different though. I was going to live a different kind of reality, albeit for a mere 48 hours. But 48 hrs of difference generated a sense of inspiration that weeks of regularity could not capture. Already packed and train journeys planned the tedium of the day’s lessons ahead was a hurdle that I hoped would pass quickly. And so it was. One class after another began and ended at the pace of a tortoise chasing its hare. But eventually at 4.30pm the bells chimed for the last time and class was out.
The plan was immaculate. Everyone had been briefed to where I was going to be. But no one knew that my friend’s parents were out of town. We had the flat in London for the whole weekend with no adult voice of concern. Genius.
As I boarded the train to London, Paddington, with the openness of a young child I swiftly entered into conversation with a girl of similar age sitting next to me. It was as if I was a magnet of spontaneity and I listened patiently as the girl wandered in and out of her life, detailing snippets of information whilst sporadically sipping from her Sunny Delight. Indeed she was garrulous, a word I had learnt earlier in the week in English Literature but now thanks to her chitter-chatter was experiencing with full intensity.
The journey passed quickly and we bid farewell like two old mates biding our time on the train towards our adventures.
I had arranged to meet my good friend, Laura, at Camden Town station, where she lived and was the setting for our weekend. I had been to Camden Town many times before and loved the swarm of individuals that wondered up and down the streets. A haven for the alternative, it was a far cry from the structured school life I had come to know. Laura was one of the few friends whose parents had allowed to attend mixed schools in the sixth form. Everything about her life seemed cool and free, I longed to taste her reality which had been labelled forbidden.
I had stayed with Laura many times before, but this was the first time we were blessed with a lack of parental concern. In true fashion, to begin the weekend, Laura arrived with a nose piercing. It looked kind of scabby but the defiance against society was secured.
