1 Green Days, Green Daze: Land that is lost now
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| Glorious. And green. |
(This is the third part of a story called The Art of Being Different. The first two parts are here and here.)
There is something
inherently wrong with secondary school, as it has tended to be. Just
when hormones turn into internal fireworks, when a need to express an
individual self clashes head-on with an absolute dependence on The
Tribe, we are required to suppress all natural instincts, quash all
rebellion, and sit in neat rows, accepting the unquestionable
authority of a handful of sometimes questionable figures standing at
the front of the room on raised platforms from which they look down
on us. The idea of maturing from child to adult thus mutates into one
of enforced regimentation and regulation. I suppose we do the same to
plants – rather than let them grow higgledy-piggledy, we plant them
in rows, water and fertilise them and bind them to canes to mature,
unbending and unblemished. But that's not the only reason secondary
school casts a distinctly green shadow over my past.
Secondary school. Yes... I
have to admit mine was different from all but those to be found in
novels and the autobiographies of, say, Stephen Fry and John Peel -
but in tunics. I had sat the two-day entrance exam in the dead part
of that mid-seventies winter and, having only particularly
embarrassed myself in the P.E.test, I was accepted. My parents were
proud, relieved (I might actually get an education at this school)
and shocked. They would only have to pay part of my fees, but
scrutiny of the list of uniform items to be purchased at a reputable
establishment in Reading resulted in the summer holiday budget for
that year being rethought. Le Continent would have to wait.
In fact, the uniform list,
as a means of predicting my immediate and mid-term future, was far
more revealing than a palm-reading, the Financial Times and the
entire I Ching put together, and far more terrifying even than a
blind dentist. Beige socks in winter, white in summer, green for
Games. Regulation shoes: one pair for outdoors (two models to choose
from), one pair for indoors (two models to choose from), T-bar
sandals for summer (two models to ...), black hockey boots, white
sports shoes. Two mint green airtex shirts and a green, pleated
P.E.skirt. One dark green tunic to measure 3 inches from the floor
when kneeling (believe me, they checked). A dark green, V-neck
jersey. One emerald green 'girdle', a belt or sash worn around the
waist and knotted like a tie. One emerald green tie, which was
compulsory with the white shirt, optional with the green and white
checked one (not to be worn on special occasions). There was a Mac or
a cape both dark green with a baize bowler hat for winter, a white
straw hat (think St Trinians) or a boater (think Eton) to be worn
with the dark green blazer for summer (you could wear your blazer
under your coat and over your tunic and dark green jersey for extra
warmth in winter). The tunic disappeared in favour of a mint green
and white nurse's uniform style dress in the warmer months. The
uniform list was accompanied by a letter indicating which house we
were to be in (alas, no Sorting Hat): Paget (yellow), Carrington
(purple), Kensington (blue) or Ducat (orange). This was vital
information for hat, swimming hat and tunic badge purchase, as the
hat-band was a compulsory item and indicated your house, as did
swimming hat colour and the badge embroidered on your tunic.
Hogwarts, here we come. Not.
Of all the items on the
uniform list, none was scarier than the garment that was to enter my
school lexis as 'Abbey Nationals' - large, thick, dark green,
cotton knickers. With termly, unannounced knicker-check to ensure
adhesion to this particular rule. Believe it. (We soon learned to
keep a pair in our gym bags and wear them over more 'appealing'
underwear on PE and Games days, the most likely to hide a
knicker-check ambush).
Hair had to be its natural
colour - not an issue in 1975, but '76 and '77 were a different story
– and short, off the shoulder or tied back. Bobbles and ribbon were
to be bottle green or brown. No jewellery. Tattoos, of course, were
for merchant sailors, army-types and The All Blacks only. These were
the rules we were informed of before starting school and there were
also regulations relating to leotards, hockey sticks, overalls,
satchels, name labels, embroidered names and so on and so forth, so
that, in combination with the number of items to be purchased, the
subjects on the syllabus, and the distance to be travelled daily by
car, train and on foot … well, I was overwhelmed before I even got
there. Particularly as I didn't know anyone else who was going. My
Best Out-of-School Buddy had also passed the entrance exam, but was
(and is) a year younger and so would be going to the Junior School.
In The Annex.
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| Regimented, regulated green...... |
The school itself occupied
an old, red brick building, and it had been there for 70 years prior
to my arrival. It was a labyrinth of musty corridors, high ceilings,
uneven cream paint, creaky floors, stained glass windows and narrow
staircases up and down, and a gallery allowed for two tiers of
classrooms to lead off the side of the Old School Hall, three up,
three down. Water pipes churned, radiators clunked, the stairs to the
staffroom creaked wildly and the Deputy Head's office nestled in an
attic-like study. The Headmistress, Miss Hardcastle (honest!) - in
appearance a stand-in for the Queen, a fact which explained one of
her nicknames – had a large study at the front of the school, above
the front door and away from the scum and wretches that were the
staff and students. When she did deign to mingle with the commoners,
she protected her Chanel-like suits with a black robe, not dissimilar
to that favoured by Severus Snape. She was aloof and 'ungenerous' to
all alike but she did manage to keep the school in the top 2 on the
'league table'.
Beyond the nooks and
crannies of the old building, housing the first two years of
secondary and some of the staff, and just round the corner from Sick
Bay and the Ink Fountain, the school lost some of its mothball
'odeur' and was transformed into wide, partially glassed,
lino-floored corridors, and large, airy classrooms, with the building
holding the language labs, language classrooms and the science labs
wedged between the two classroom blocks. The science labs were filled
with row upon row of wooden science benches where Bunsen burners and
agar jelly in specimen dishes were part and parcel of daily lessons,
along with transparent plastic protective glasses and an increased
concern for hair-elastic-use. This language-and-science block marked
the grey area between pre-pubescent and full-blown adolescence and we
dreamt of leaving the wood, clanking pipes and leaded windows behind
in favour of the shades of yellow modernity beyond The Glass Corridor
(flash memory from second year – an entire class of older girls
crawling on the floor in the Glass Corridor looking for our Latin
teacher's missing contact lens...). The modern building also held the
lunch-room with its variations on liver and onions and bacon suet,
and the huge new assembly hall named after some generous parents
whose name I have forgotten in the interim. Richards. Richardson.
This was the vast, parquet-floored hall where Dance was scheduled
once a week, and where the floors were kind, nay soothing, on the
bare dancing feet, and we aspired to sing in a school opera and stand
on THAT stage rather than the smaller one in the Old School Hall. Ah,
dreams come true, say they do, say they do, say they do.
Back to the rules.
The number of rules was overwhelming and virtually impossible to
learn, short term. To speak in class, we raised a hand until invited
to stand. Once standing, anything uttered had to be prefixed with the
phrase “Please Miss/Mrs....., “. Dropping your pencil could set
you back five minutes if your teacher was mid flow, and woe befall
the girl who bent down to pick up her pencil without
going through the ritual. In the corridors, no more than two abreast,
no running and under no circumstances overtaking teachers or sixth
formers. We didn't have to curtsey to prefects but that was probably
an oversight. Exercise books were colour-coded by subject and
replaced at the Stationery Cupboard (inhabited by Miss Beard, our
Maths teacher) when you only had two clean pages remaining. You
handed in your exercise book (which was labelled with your stationery
number as well as your name and class, so I was Fiona M..., IIIW,
Nº64), Miss Beard checked it for wastage, torn out pages etc, your
stationery number and the subject were noted (in case you were
collecting brown jotters on the side), and your form mistress brought
you both your old book and the new one to afternoon registration.
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| Green acorns become great oaks. Sometimes. |
Apart from the flood of
regulation-information at the start of the year, other shocks or
surprises included the subjects we were to consume, like piggy banks
collecting for the future: Music, for example, was to be divided into
three – History, Practice and the totally unfathomable Theory.
There was Biology, Chemistry, English Language, English Literature,
Maths, French, History, Geography, Art, Cookery.... over15 in total
and including Latin and two mysteries: Scripture and Physics. What
were Scripture and Physics? Who knew? Scripture, as it turned out,
was my old pal Religion and consequently a doddle, and Physics – I
remember half the class having no idea what that was – turned out
to be rainbows and cannonballs, magnets and batteries. So that was
alright.
In terms of teachers, my
first year at The Green School was gentle. Some teachers stood out.
The repressed, prim Miss Packer with her tweed skirts and twin-sets,
who taught us to parse, spell and punctuate with surgical accuracy –
I never saw her smile. Ever. And the word 'dictation' (and a large
number of grammatical terms such as demonstrative adjective) still
unfailingly bring her to mind. Miss Beard, guardian of The Stationery
Cupboard and teacher of Mathematics. Slightly masculine in that
sensible brown lace-ups sort of way that some women were in those
days without anyone even pondering their sexuality (did we care? no),
a good, caring teacher who taught us memory tricks that are still
firmly embedded and who had the knack of explaining her subject in a
way everyone understood (maths teachers were, without exception,
brilliant at the Green School – in fact, certainly in my first year
there, most teachers were). I am sure there are hundreds of women of
around my age who smile when their children ask 'Mum, what's a
polygon?'....
There was Miss Kendrick, a
truly inspired Scripture teacher who told us to personalise our
exercise books, and taught us the etymology of the days of the week.
Miss Whittle, our form teacher, who had a tick we were just too young
to ridicule and whose 'Ecce, in pictura est puella' and tales of
stuffed dormouse at supine banquets I still remember vividly. There
was Miss Wilkinson who taught us Art and Games and who was later
ordained and, last I heard, reached some of the highest échelons of
the Church of England, Miss Wilkinson, who reminded me of a whip-sharp willow tree, and consistently called me 'Mc-Cough-Lynn-with-an-E' but was
inspiring as an Art teacher. Many faces, many names. I also remember
an extremely attractive History teacher from my first year at the
Green School with long, straight, fair hair which she tossed artfully, a
penchant for mini skirts and a tendency to sit cross-legged on the
edge of the teacher's desk up on the platform at the front of the
classroom. She was quite a good teacher, I think, and taught me the
difference between 'pacifically' and 'specifically' (I really WAS
green...) but what would have been a schoolboy's wet dream was simply
off-putting in our all-girls environment and we didn't warm to her.
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| Little clusters of green form |
Friends were made as
friends are always made, more or less the same way as sand dunes are
made, shifting and reshaping as the wind pushes one way or another –
but then those dunes once formed turn to rock, the rock which Petra
was cut into, at least in the case of the friendships at the Green
School. Initially I think we teamed up with those sitting nearest us,
and as we were in alphabetical order (my class went from Latter to
Reed), my first friends bore the surnames Marshall, Millington, Mills
and Morton. This system was added to by the fact that half of the
girls in the class had been together in the Junior School for the
previous six years or so, so Mills was already friends with Manning
and so on. Marshall and Millward were the tallest in the class, so
that was another point in common, and then there were those who all
travelled on the same train or bus, thus The Henley Set gelled.
Obviously, over the year, interests, maturity, worldliness (we were
11 and 12 at this stage), background, character and other such
concerns influenced and the groups congealed. The Henley Set expanded
to include the wealthy, worldly girls, whose parents had trendy
professions and chic friends, some were divorced and had
boyfriends/girlfriends and (in my mind's eye) they drank G&Ts,
walked barefoot, ate lasagne, smoked joints and played with ouija
boards. These were parents who didn't just like Fleetwood Mac, the
Beatles and Genesis, they KNEW George Harrison and Peter Gabriel and
went to the pub with them. The girls in that group were into hair and
music and being clever although they actually occupied the middle to
lower half of the class in terms of results. They excelled in sport,
art and music, though, or they had elder sisters who always won the
school drama prize, all of which was totally cool.
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| We were beautiful, no matter what they say... |
My little group ultimately
consisted of 9 girls – 10 until Morton left school and moved house
– who were nice, perhaps slightly eccentric, non-trendy and on the
whole from stable backgrounds with 'regular' parents who actually got
on with each other. This turned out not to be quite the case for two
girls, but by the time that emerged our group was fixed.
Academically, we were a bit of a mixed bag but on the whole in the
upper half of the class results-wise, in some or all of our subjects.
We were more naïve than some of our classmates, but we enjoyed each
other's company and put up with those of us who enjoyed French
skipping and cats' cradle without complaint. We didn't pick on other
girls, we were not good at sport, apart from swimming and dance, and
we came to be fans of Spike Milligan, reading and 'music in general',
but that was later. We were slightly misshapen at that age: we had
bright red hair, a big nose, wonky eyes, big teeth, huge feet, we
were overweight or underweight, unusually tall or on the short side
(note: none of us had ALL of these features!) – but we wore it well
and I don't actually think we consciously realised that we had this
in common, as I've only just realised while writing myself, but that
first year at the Green School, none of my little group was average
height, weight, hair colour and more or less pretty. We were all
Different. And I could say we were all sharp-minded, but that was a
shared characteristic of 97% of the girls in the school; whatever it
was that glued us together, it worked, it stuck and I'm sure we could
still get together and enjoy each other's company, these several
decades later.
As I write, I wonder how,
why and when it all started to go wrong. I'm not at all sure I know
the answers to those questions, but go wrong it did. And Big Time. My
second year of Being Green was a disaster to the extent I've been
putting off.......no, AM putting off... writing about it because my
memories bring back all those feelings – and my stomach turns. I
got lost in my second year at secondary school, the year that made me
what I am, for good and for bad. I got lost. And I'm not entirely
convinced I got found again.
Green images all
taken from the Colours set at eltpics
http://www.flickr.com/photos/eltpics/sets/72157630608863638/,
contributed by @elt_pics, Victoria Boobyer, @AliCe_M, @ij64 and
@sandymillin and used under
a CC Attribution Non-Commercial
licence, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/”
