Here's lookin' at you, kid!

I was browsing through some updates on Flickr yesterday, when I noticed some new scans of the 1962 panoramic school photo... and there I am! Forty-nine years ago in April 1962, I was a 13-year old third-former - looking shy, timid and a perhaps little apprehensive. I wonder what I was thinking? Certainly not that one day I'd be sitting here remembering back almost five decades to my schooldays. I was never given to introspection, nor particularly to casting my mind forward to what the future might hold. I was always a "let's get through today" sort of pupil, young for my age and anxious to keep out of trouble.

It's odd in a way that I now think back so nostalgically as I'm certain I didn't feel like that at the time. I just wanted to get through school and get out of there,which is probably why I never really gave it so much as a backward glance: I don't think there ever have been any "reunions" as such anyway, and I didn't keep in touch with anyone much after I'd left. Whatever the line of reasoning, I do now enjoy looking back with some affection: my education had more of a lasting effect on me that I ever gave it credit for and it's certainly nice to swap reminiscences with other ex-pupils albeit coloured with the benefit of hindsight.