The way we woz

I recently came across these wonderful photos (lots more at the link) taken at the Riverside School in Thamesmead between 1976 and ’78. I don’t have many photos of myself from that era so it’s like discovering a lost window into my own past, the nostalgic glow coming off these is almost blinding.

It’s easy to develop a rosy and cozy, jumpers-for-goalposts view of your schooldays but there’s a reason most kids hate it when grown-ups tell them it’s the best years of their lives, when you’re actually there it seems a long way from heaven. I bet that behind the awkward smiles and nylon shirts in these photos are a few kids whose lives are being made miserable by the casual cruelty kids can inflict on one another, either verbally or physically. Along with a happy one who can’t wait for home time so he can go to the record shop and buy the new Jam single there’s another who’s dreading it because he knows some piggy-eyed thug of a bully will be waiting for them outside the school gates to knick their bus fare or do something worse.

Download: I Was A Pre-Pubescent – Jilted John (mp3)

The school I went to I went to had a bad reputation (the local legend was that all new kids had their head stuffed down the toilet, not true as it turned out) and, though I did OK, wasn’t exactly a temple to academic excellence. A lot of kids left at 16 to get jobs with the gas board or digging up roads for the Council and by the time I got to the Upper Sixth there were only two of us left taking A-Levels. We also had our fair share of “problem” boys given to outbursts of violence like beating up one of the Prefects so badly he ended up in the hospital or shooting someone in the playground with an air gun. Of course there were also the sadistic, ex-army PE teachers who took great delight in picking on the fat, the skinny, and the asthmatic — cross-country running in freezing rain isn’t much fun at the best of times without one of those bastards coming up and literally kicking you in the behind to make you run faster — and sneered at the note from your mother excusing you from games as a sign of your pathetic weakness.

Download: Baggy Trousers – Madness (mp3)

Don’t get me wrong, on balance I did like school, especially the Sixth Form where we didn’t have to wear uniforms and were allowed to smoke in the Common Room, and it was probably an idyllic sanctuary compared to some these days, at least nobody got murdered over their mobile phone. The only drugs we had at school were cigarettes and the illicit trade was in wank mags (my mate Gary’s Dad owned a newssagent and he’d come to school with a sports bag full of Penthouse and Men Only) which seems so innocent now. These days they’re probably smoking crack behind the bike sheds and watching hard-core porn on their video iPods.

There wasn’t any ceremony when I left in 1980, I just walked out of the gate after my last exam (A-Level English, I passed) and that was it, school was over. No fuss, no goodbyes, nothing official, out the door and I was gone. I can’t remember how I felt that day apart from sweet relief that my exams were over, you’d think it would have been some big emotional event but all I remember is that it was a sunny day — the first day of the rest of my life.