Back to school- the first day at secondary school.

Back to school.

It only seems like yesterday- but it wasn't - so it's time to hark back to your first day back at school after the most unforgettable of summer holidays. For some of us it was the most daunting and, in a way, the most frightening of all formative experiences. We all have contrasting childhood memories and many are burnished with golden, nostalgic memories when the sun shone all day and every day, the merry tunes of the Rossi ice cream van always filled us with an abundance of warmth and games of hop scotch outside our homes were followed by mad dashes around the back roads on our bikes. But that first day back at school will always live on at the back of our  minds for many years.

But then you were faced that dreadful prospect of going back to school at the beginning of September. After six or seven blissful weeks of fun and mischief, the realisation dawned on me that the impending school uniform had finally become a painful reality. I can still remember climbing into my black jacket and hating every moment of it. Then there was the black and yellow striped tie with the well ironed shirt, the immaculately pressed grey trousers and of course the regulation Adidas bag groaning with academic books, pens, pencils, exercise books and what seemed the entire contents of the local stationery shop. There were rulers, protractors, felt tip pens, huge tomes on science, geography and anything that might be considered very learned and intellectually challenging.

For me personally it rained heavily, prodigiously, monumentally, persistently and then eventually stopped when that first day of school came to a close. I can still see one of my first year contemporaries standing pitifully by a drinking fountain, soaked through, hair matted with rain and Pack A Mac coat thoroughly wet, a sour, sullen and sodden figure who must have wished that the whole event could have been postponed to a later date.

The truth was of course that this was my first day back at this huge Victorian building  that was somehow a throwback to Tom Browne's Schooldays, a vast, sprawling grey bricked edifice that looked as if it had been there since the Battle of Hastings. Its air of antiquity and stern respectability reminded you of that hilarious 1950s film where an entire school went completely potty. Poor Ted Ray suddenly found himself caught up in the middle of madness and mayhem, as hundreds of children got up to all manner of totally unnecessary mischief.

My first day at secondary school was rather more restrained and formal, a day of new beginnings, new chapters, introductions, meeting up with new teachers, the headmaster, finding out which house we were about to be placed in and then discovering how many ink wells we'd find on our desks. Let me tell you that those ink wells were about to deface a thousand classroom desks. Soon there were thick, indelible scrawls that covered almost every available space, dark blotches of  blue ink with comical and rude messages on them. But they didn't care because they felt under a simple obligation to do whatever they wanted. Besides we were still kids and we didn't care. Oh for the gloriously wild impetuosity of youth. In later years, maturity would mellow us and we might have regretted our childish tomfoolery.

Most of us can recall some semblance of our secondary school years even though they were tainted and tarnished with ugly and awkward moments we'd rather not remember. It seemed to me that we'd suddenly adopted two playgrounds, a bike shed, big old windows that were almost as large as the school itself and a couple of very young, small trees in the playground that gave every impression they'd just been planted and were yet to bloom.

That first day at secondary school though was utterly bewildering, terrifying and confusing. There was something intimidating about that massive bell tower on the school's rooftop. I was fortunate in my choice of school because both my infant, junior and secondary schools were all housed in the same building so my journey to school was perhaps the shortest any child could have wished for. My abiding memory and perhaps the first thing I saw on arrival, was the bell tower, one that hung in the air sombrely.

After a quick tour of the drinks machine in the area next to the assembly hall and a brief glance at the boys changing room and showers, we all marched earnestly towards our destiny with that doomed air of  condemned men about to go to the gallows or the guillotine. In the hall the classrooms crossed the whole spectrum of colours, blue for one room, red for another, a large splash of green accompanied by a dash of yellow just to complete the set.

Thinking back to that first day at secondary school I do remember that not a great deal of significance happened. The school was appallingly anti O Level or GCSE oriented and none of us really felt, even then that by the end of that five year period  we'd be sufficiently equipped for employment or any kind of career. At the time I didn't really know what to expect but because it was a secondary school I must have felt privately that I'd walk straight out of those school gates and straight into permanent unemployment.

So I muddled my way into the school assembly hall on that first day still dripping with wet rain and wondering at the sheer futility of it all. Around the edge of the hall new kids on the block, literally first year and wet behind the ears, sat expectantly on the floor, bags and satchels slumped forlornly next to us and bemused by everything around us. None of us knew where we going and none of us really cared. There was a kind of pained silence, a yawning gap before our first assembly and our first lessons.

Following on from the formalities of assembly and that first welcoming speech from the headmaster we were then given tiny pieces of paper which, in retrospect, seemed bizarrely primitive at the time given where we are now. On the papers were our timetables for the rest of the year which were subsequently turned into aeroplanes or lost forever in some hidden pocket of our trousers, screwed up beyond recognition and left in tattered pieces.

But, in a strange way, we were all intrigued and delighted to be together, rallying together in some perfect male bonding unit. Of course we were scruffy, dishevelled and completely indifferent to the charms and glories of double drama and pottery. We knew what we were about to get and I for one was immediately horrified by whole afternoons devoted to woodwork, metalwork, music, drama and pottery, the kind of academic trivia and ephemera that made a mockery of any ambitions you might have had.

Those subject timetables in shades of yellow and orange linger in the memory like the most revolting of smells. Eventually though we got used to the same daily routine finding that the subjects  that were our favourites were somehow tucked away in the margins of the last periods on a Friday afternoon. This was infuriating and designed to traumatise us with deeply upsetting nightmares.

That first day at our new school though did have a freshness and novelty about it that I may have conveniently forgotten. I can still see my doting parents waiting for their beloved son in our porch. Still dripping wet and relieved, I traipsed back into our home, glad to be in the warmth and perhaps resigned to my fate in life. At the time it must have felt like the most exciting adventure we'd ever experienced but then it all faded into some mysterious corner of my young life.

 Duty now called and the tough rigours of our adult life would beckon. Soon the screams of infant years would be replaced by the disciplined murmurs of the sixth form. Then we were confronted by the serious business of college, advanced education, university and the real world of work. For those committed to the technical crafts an apprenticeship seemed the most appealing alternative but that first day at school was rather like an initiation ceremony, chapter one, a tread into the unknown. Still when I turn the clock back that first day in September 1974 it was idyllic, an isolated memory that somehow seems rose tinted.

So to all of those fresh faced kids in shining uniforms, I would encourage you to take the advice of Robin Williams, that great American comedian. Please seize the day. In fact seize the day because if you don't you may find that the years will fly past you without stopping. Depending on your point of view school days were quite probably the best and although we may look back with just a hint of  sadness we might think that we could have done more. But that was never the case and I for one knew it.  Oh for double woodwork on Monday morning followed by double music in the afternoon. How pointless and time consuming that must have felt. Still as our technical drawing and deputy headmaster once said to us in low and portentous tones. You know the rules boys. We listened intently and respectfully because we knew what he was talking about.