This is the article that appeared in September for the Derby Telegraph:
On the whole, I've come to
realise that there are pros and cons to having your birthday at the end of
August.
On the positive side, back in my
school days it meant that I had the day free from school and could do some fun
things. It also meant that I avoided the
dreaded birthday 'bumps'. Do you
remember those? I don't know if it was a
fairly widespread tradition or just a form of sadism peculiar to Anglesey
Secondary Modern? The concept was that
the birthday boy (I very much doubt that girls ever inflicted this on each
other, they had too much sense) would be grabbed hand and foot by his
compatriots (often including a fair
sprinkling of enemies) and then would be bounced vigorously up and down by his
arms and legs. In a perfect world, this
would not include frequent collisions between the lower back and the tarmacadamed
playground, but it often did.
On the minus side would have to
be the inescapable fact that the arrival of my birthday also presaged the
imminent end of the school summer holidays, with all of the horrors that
foretold. It also meant that I was the
youngest in my class, which was a mixed blessing.
Time operated on a wholly
different scale when you were a child, didn't it? On the last day of term, the summer holidays
seemed to stretch out for centuries ahead, with the return to school distant
and, thankfully, forgettable. Hopelessly
impracticable and wildly ambitious plans were made and the potential of all of
those weeks seemed enormous. If the sun
was shining and everything was fine, the days zipped past like an old-fashioned
silent movie. When the days were grey or
rain-sodden, every minute seemed interminable and you would drive your Mother
mad with the time-honoured wail of "I'm bored!"
My birthday was, therefore, a
double-edged sword. On one hand, I
inevitably looked forward to the cards and presents I would receive but, I was
acutely aware that the act of looking forward to it also meant that I was
willing the end of the summer holidays to come.
This is quite a dilemma for any child and no amount of clandestine deals
with whatever deity deals with schoolchildren's wishes (usually of the nature
of "Yes, please hurry up with my birthday but can you postpone the end of
the summer holidays indefinitely"), ever changed the simple fact that the
arrival of one meant the inexorable end of the other.
I often think that my childhood
depression would have been even worse if I was at school now (apart from the
fact that they would doubtless be a bit dubious about having a 58 year old in
their class). Why? Because no sooner
have the summer holidays commenced than all of the clothing and stationery
stores are holding 'Back to School' sales.
I would have hated that. It was
bad enough being dragged off to Fox's or Curzon's in Uxbridge Street to get
replacements for any items of school uniform that I had either outgrown or worn
out. A shopping trip that invariably resulted
in me being buried beneath a dark grey blazer, with the consistency and
fashionable appeal of corrugated cardboard, and the assistant assuring my
parents that I would grow into it.
I used to look, with amazement
and horror, at those parents who would say to my Mum, "Is he looking
forward to going back to school?" which was always followed by something
like "Sarah is, aren't you Sarah?" (Sarah would smile and nod
winningly). This caused me to give Sarah
the evil eye and generally regard her as a traitor and a quisling. This however, was as nothing to those Uncles
who would tell me, in all seriousness apparently, that "you should make
the most of your school days, Philip; they're the best years of your
life". Anything more calculated to
send me into a fit of depression, I can't imagine. If these really were the best days of my
life, what the heck was the rest of it going to be like?
Much better was the answer, as it
turned out.
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