Dare to be wise!

Sometimes when I got the bus home from school, I'd be ambushed by kids (and it was always girls) who had a thing against the 'posh girls' who wore the same blue and grey uniform that I did. For years after that, whenever I met girls who were at neighbouring schools, I was reminded what a snob I was by folk who were no less bourgeois than I was. I went to a girls' grammar school - which I will refer to from here as GGS - entry into which was by the now almost defunkt Eleven Plus exam.

Reading the message board for my school at www.friendsreunited.com, it looks like most of the girls spent their school days in a state of terror. The headmistress, a cantankerous midget with an MA in Classics courtesy of Cambridge University and a shock of white hair, was joined by her sidekick the deputy head, who also taught physics. Between them this double-act played bad cop/nice cop respectively with no role-switching. While the deputy head had the odd pleasant word to say on Parents'/Teacher Evening ("Emily's a lovely girl - but she does dream"), there was no method to the madness that was the head honcho. She hated my parents, rightly identifying my mother as having been a teenage mother, and my stepfather as nouveau riche. But she also hated my friend Alex's dad the diplomat, and even more so her Volvo-driving mum, with whom she'd had a screaming match on PT evening. There was the odd girl, and by extension parents, that she liked, but as my mum said recently there was no pattern to her favouritism whatsoever. If you asked an expert nowadays, they might say bi-polar. Reports on the message board speak of her raging at a girl for letting down the school because she couldn't take part on Sports' Day when she had her geography O-level exam (an unmoveable feast), ripping up a girl's French exchange form before her very eyes because she was in high spirits at the end of term ("I wouldn't let you represent the school, let alone the country!") and yelling at a girl who dared not go to university.

Speaking of daring, our school motto - can you believe some schools have mottos? Is this normal? - was in Latin and to avoid identification, let's say it translated as 'Dare to be wise' or perhaps 'Use your initiative'. Not a bad thing to pump into young minds. Grammar schools tended to turn out a fairly elitist bunch of people, even though it was open to any smart kid from any background. Although there were plenty of working-class kids at GGS, it wasn't a port of call for the humble TEFL teacher, artist, manual worker or nurse. In many ways I was lucky to have gone to GGS, although any kind of thinking outside the box was discouraged (can't think what it reminds me of!). But I was envious of the guy I met whose cool comprehensive school once hosted a visit by Keith Joseph, Education Minister in Margaret Thatcher's Conservative government. While our teachers would've arranged for Keith to come round each classroom where we'd be swotting up on the present indicative in Latin or burning oxide powder to work out the chemical compound, these kids were handed bags of flour by their teachers and told to pelt the man who was cutting the funding for their low-life schools.

Perhaps Mr. S. would've felt more at home handing out bags of flour, though as our English teacher in the Fifth year (Year 10 in old money), he was unlikely to have met any takers except me. And when it came to going to local schools' meetings, Mr. S. found himself treated in the same way I had been by local comprehensive teachers - as a snob. I know this now because I bumped into him around fifteen years ago in a coffee shop. It was as frustrating for him as it was for me, given that we were both left-wing types who, although we appreciated the fine education that grammar schools offer, could see that the idea was to turn out bog-standard doctors and lawyers. *

And here's two of them!

Being a man was enough to guarantee instant stardom at a girls' school, but having an infectious and fun personality helped too. Mr. S. was a half-Italian Irishman and seemed to have but one set of professional clothes which comprised of a burgundy V-neck jumper which he teamed with a pair of orange-tinted glasses. He had a big belly laugh which we'd sometimes hear through the wall in a dull class, and there were plenty of them. He would egg us on to do cheeky things - being good grammar school girls, the worst thing would've been planting stink bombs in the bathrooms. Besides encouraging us to be imaginative, he was always receptive to a bit of leg-pulling. On April Fools' Day the whole class came in wearing red or burgundy jumpers and yellow glasses, cackling the whole class long. That didn't bother him - he just gave the lesson in Italian!

After my exams I left GGS, vowing never to return, though I occasionally went back to see friends who'd stayed on till the sixth form. By this time I had the blue hair I'd been threatening to bring back to school, and it didn't go unnoticed. Despite what my family describe as my wonderful education, I did most of my learning after I left school. That's where I met people who'd lead very different lives, many of whom were a lot smarter than my old schoolfriends and me, but who hadn't been on the fast-track from the age of eleven. In time I lost contact with the girls from school, save two.

But I always remembered my cool teachers. And it seemed that they, too, remembered me.

It was a summer afternoon in 1993 and I was on my second cappuccino in a Clapham cafe, making notes for a writing class. A young woman came over to my table and asked me if I had ever been to GGS. Yes, I replied, banjaxed. Did I remember Mr. S., she asked. He was waiting outside - would I like him to come back in and talk?

Mr. S. was straight back in, with that heaving belly-laugh. He said they'd both been trying to work out if it was me, but I seemed so serious with my bright red dreadlocks, my notebook and pen that they thought it couldn't possibly be me. But I had exactly the same face as that girl who used to come back to visit the school with the bright blue hair. Mr. S. had never forgotten that and was always egging me on from the sidelines, knowing how much it annoyed the snooty members of staff. He'd left GGS which he found stifling - even the teachers from other schools in the borough hated our teachers! This must've saddened him a bit, 'cos he remarked that from all his years there I was one of the view pupils he remembered as having any kind of spark and who lived up to the school motto.

So Mr. S. wasn't teaching any more, but it seemed like he'd quit quite some time earlier. Meanwhile his female companion who'd approached me said she'd been in the year below me - and they seemed to be on very chummy terms! Of course I did the maths - hmmm, so I left aged 16, you went on to the sixth form then went to uni... how come you two are hanging out looking all comfortable together after all this time? But, of course, I didn't.

Looks like Mr. S, had dared to do something extra-curricular - but had GGS gotten wise?

* No offence meant to doctors and lawyers - you're all a fine bunch of guys n' dolls!