High School Reunions - Would You Go?

I was a pupil at the Herschel High School in Slough from 1981 to 1987. Here I am in my school uniform after coming home from school. I'm wearing my ski jacket that was bought for me to go on a school ski-ing trip to Foppolo  in Italy.  My PE kit is in my Chelsea Girl carrier bag.  I'm wearing a badge that probably showed my support for saving whales or banning the ban or something equally right-on!

At 11, I was a tall, skinny girl who was pretty awkward, quite shy and lacking in self-confidence. I made some very close friends at school who I stuck with throughout my time there. We weren't the cool kids, but we had a good time together.  I mostly enjoyed being at school but I did have some dark times.

It was always assumed that I would be successful and go on to great things. I was very clever, but never driven or motivated.  I never went to university and I'm sure I would be a great disappointment to my teachers if they knew I went on to basically become a stay at home mum and never have a career.  I never reached my potential academically.  I have five A'Levels that have never been used for the greater good!

Not many of the popular girls had much time for me. I wasn't really like them with their pretty hair and make-up.  I liked different music. I wore different clothes. I got A's in all my subjects. I didn't fancy the popular boys.  I wore black nail varnish before it was cool.  I didn't go out to the same places as them.  I never really encountered any hostility, I just rarely crossed paths with the in-crowd. 

I met Ian at Herschel.  He was one of my best friends.  I always got on better with the boys than the girls. We had a lot of laughs at lunch and break hanging out with the lads.  I have some good memories.  I ended up going out with Ian in the 5th Year and ultimately married him some ten years later. (The biggest bonus from my time at Herschel!)

During my final year of the sixth form, I was living with my then-boyfriend and working until 2 am in a bar near Heathrow Airport to pay the rent. I was juggling A'Level revision with pouring pints for American businessmen. I decided not to go to university and stayed with my boyfriend instead.  I got pregnant, he cheated on me, we split up. It was messy.  I moved away from Slough when I had my son Joe. Being a single, teen mum was all-consuming, mentally and physically.  In the years before mobile phones or the internet, staying in touch with school friends was not easy, so I lost touch with almost everyone. (Thankfully not Ian, who remained in my life forever paving the way to us getting together in 1993 and getting married in 1997.)

I've only managed to properly stay in touch with a few of my school friends from this time and don't see them anywhere near enough as I would like to. Other friendships fizzled out as I was pre-occupied first with boyfriends and then with babies. I don't think I was very easy to get along with at times.  I didn't invest very much of myself when it came to friendships.

I rediscovered a lot of fellow pupils on Friends Reunited a few years back and caught up with those I was interested in. It was nice to find some old friends but most of the enthusiastic early communications dwindled away as we ran out of things to say to each other.

Facebook opened up windows into the lives of many more familiar names. I have followed the lives of a few of them via status updates and photo albums and it's nice to know what people have been doing over the years.  I was devastated when one of my closest friends at school died a few years ago.  We were in contact over the internet but he was someone I would have loved to see again and catch up with properly - but that can never happen now.

Now there is the opportunity of attending a School Reunion in the hall of my old school in October.  I always thought I'd love to attend a reunion, but now the chance has arisen I am filled with doubt.  School was 30 odd years ago.  Will I even recognise half the people there?  Will they recognise me?  Will they even care that I am there?  The insecurities of 11 year old me creep back into my psyche. Will I be seen as being old and grey and a bit overweight, or will they still see my teenage self inside?   I think my teachers will see me as a disappointment, an under achiever.

I have struggled on and off with mental health issues for years.  They were at their worst when I was a teenager when I spiralled into a really dark place.  It is only in the last few years that I have put this all completely behind me and come out of the fog that kept on threatening to engulf me. But I know that my stability is fragile.  I don't know if going back to my childhood home town will bring back memories of feeling negative and insecure.  Will I feel like I've failed, even though I know in my heart that I have achieved the most amazing thing in the world: being a mother to my wonderful children.

Or am I just over thinking a simple event that would reunite me with a few old friends and give me the opportunity to have a nosey at a few more?  I am scared that some of the people I held in the very highest esteem may disappoint me, or I'll disappoint them, or we won't even have anything to say to each other.  I see groups of the once popular kids on the reunion thread on Facebook already planning a night out after the event, reminiscing about old times that I was never a part of.  I feel like the girl who never made it into the inner circle of popularity again...although I never really desired it.  It's safer existing in your own little bubble. I just don't want it to burst and throw me back into the insecurities of when I was a teenager. I'm just not sure that I want to come face to face with 'old me' ever again.

The Gallery...Home

Home is the subject of this week's Gallery.   I have chosen to remember my childhood home.  I lived there all my life, my parents didn't move until we had all left home.  It was a too-small two bedroomed semi-detached with five of us squeezed into it.  My parents slept in what would have been our dining room, leaving one small living room for us all to sit in, eat in, watch TV in and play in.  It was next door to a haulage contractors and on the Heathrow flightpath.  It wasn't the easiest of houses to live in but we made memories there.  We had fabulous next door neighbours and a garden which we could run riot in.  The bottom of the garden was an overgrown wasteland but it was where we made mud pies, built camps and let off steam.

The bottom of our garden.

As a young child our house had views of Windsor Castle and was surrounded by horses' fields and trees.  As time progressed everything green was turned into new housing estates.  Our views were replaced with row upon row of identical houses. 

Early days in Slough.

A few years ago we returned to Slough, and went on a nostalgia drive around our old haunts.  My childhood home was all boarded up and due to be demolished.  In a flash I remembered the things that would be forever lost.  The pet graveyard where our animals had been buried, the trees that were planted by my sister in the "plant a tree in '73" campaign, the apple trees which we used to harvest every year, the rickety old fence that my dad set fire to one bonfire night, the huge nut tree that blocked the light into our living room and the concrete yard where I learned to roller skate.  All gone forever.  

A development of flats now stands where my childhood home used to be.  The whole street has been transformed into homes for hundreds of flat dwellers, replacing the row of mix and match semis and detached homes from my childhood.  

My home on the left.

The bricks and mortar are no more, but the memories remain.  

Slough....

My birthplace is Slough.  A town that has become the butt of many a joke and the comedic setting for Ricky Gervais's "The Office".  But long before David Brent pushed paper in Wernham Hogg's offices, Slough was the subject of Sir John Betjeman's famous poem.  Written in 1937 as a protest to the building of 850 factories, Betjeman later voiced regret at ever penning his piece...but the fact he had felt so inclined to write it in the first place speaks volumes.

"Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough!
It isn't fit for humans now."

      
 

80's Slough and teen me!

Slough's image of industrialisation; tired, grey concrete buildings and a population to match is a damming one.  Sprawling housing estates covering every once green expanse served only to suck the life out of the town and its residents.  Electricity pylons and sub-stations, concrete bridges and building sites became the playground of my generation. 

Once upon a time our home was opposite open fields where horses roamed.  We had a clear view of Windsor Castle from our bedroom.  The speed at which the ruralness was stolen away was incredible.  A housing estate with a road proudly bearing the name of Concorde Way soon appeared.  This was an apt name given that we were on the flight path from Heathrow whereby at regular intervals the supersonic jet would roar over our house.  This noise was a signal for my parents to rush into our garden and for my mother to remark with gushing sincerity at how marvellous it was to see the sun glistening off its wings.

By the time I left Slough for good, the semi-detached and detached houses that made up the road that I lived on, were being systematically bought up, demolished and having space saving flats built in their place.  My parents sold-up following their second burglary.  No longer feeling safe in the house they had lived in since before I was born, they resorted to constructing DIY burglar 'alarms' consisting of an ironing board propped up against the back door which would alert them in the instance of a would-be robber gaining entry to their home.  God knows what they would have done in that eventuality...thankfully it didn't happen and they are now safely ensconced in a bungalow in North Wales.  My childhood home is now no more.  Number 151 is now just a dim and distant memory.

The last time I returned to my childhood home.

Following the death of my Nan in 2008, the only reason for me to visit Slough died along with her.  I have no desire to return to the place of my birth.  The only really good thing to come out of living in Slough was going to school with the boy who would later become my husband.  Our grammar school was named after Sir William Herschel who himself came from Slough...the astronomer who discovered Uranus.  (I always felt there was a joke in there somewhere!)

Sometimes I wish I had a more positive attachment to my roots.  However, I did always have a little smile to myself at the opening titles of "The Office" seeing the familiar Slough sights and chuckled upon hearing the occasional reference to a place I once knew in the script...maybe there is a deep seated fondness after all!!