Serendipity

I got back from walking the dog tonight, to find a very nice email in my inbox from a fellow ex-pupil who'd been looking at my schooldays website and who, although he was a pupil some thirteen years before me, found much of what I'd written very familiar. From other comments I've received, it certainly seems that the basic character of the school didn't change much over a period of some thirty years, something which I think was probably mirrored in grammar schools over the country. It's always very gratifying to get emails: I had an awful lot of pleasure in writing my story and putting the site together, and I'm always glad when other people take the trouble to write in and share their memories with me - although I suppose those who have unpleasant ones would prefer not to. To the best of my knowledge, my site is still pretty much the only one which has any real information on my old school - perhaps rather surprisingly in view of the many hundreds of boys who passed through its doors over the years. Maybe I shall inspire someone else to add their story some day?

The things boys do

It was another fine spring-like day today, and since it's still in the Easter school holidays I could hear some of the kids playing in the street outside. The next door neighbours must have had their grandson round, because I could hear the clippity-clop sound he always makes, walking up and down their garden path wearing his mother's high-heeled shoes, which as he's only about five are miles too big for him. I've seen videos of other kids doing just the same: it's obviously something small boys like to do, and I daresay I may have done the same at his age, although if I did I honestly don't remember it.

On the other hand, I do remember one boiling hot summer's day when I was eight going on nine, putting on my father's big hobnailed army boots and sitting around in my bedroom in them: I must have been absolutely roasted! My mother came in, took a horrified look and told me to take them off, thinking I'd gone mad. I escaped getting punished for it, and I never did find out whether she told my father what I'd done.

When I was eleven I went one better! On the top floor of the rambling old house we lived in there was a boxroom in which I discovered one day two pairs of my father's old army motorcycle boots. I put on the black ones which were a size 7, so they weren't that much too big for me, and I loved the way the thick leather came all the way up my legs to my knees. I had a playroom in the room just next door, and I used to wear these boots undisturbed for many a happy hour up there - undiscovered but with the thrill of doing something naughty. I don't know what happened to them, but one day when I went to look, they weren't there anymore. I guess my father must've had a clear-out or something.


That put paid to my boot wearing activities for a while. We weren't allowed to wear boots to school, so I knew my mother wouldn't buy me any of my own, and I could hardly ask her given the reason I wanted them! So I had to wait until I'd grown up, had my own money and could buy what I wanted with it. In fact, by one of odd those quirks of fate, I got a motorbike in 1979 and thus got a pair of motorcycle boots of my very own after all. Not only that, for most of my adult life, I've worn boots of one sort or another: even now I tend to wear them in preference to shoes most of the time.

I can certainly trace it all back to that hot day as a boy when I tried my father's on, but I can't help feeling there may be something even further back, earlier in my childhood, buried deep in my subconscious, for boots to have held such an attraction and fascination for me all these years.

Plus ça change

So... it's official. The date of the next General Election is to be May 6th. And while the Prime Minister may have termed it the least best-kept secret, the plain fact is that he's so close to the end of his five-year term in office he was fast running out of dates to choose from.

I shall cast my vote: I've done so ever since I got a vote in 1969 (when the voting age was still 21) because I happen to think unless you do you have very little moral right to complain afterwards if you don't like the outcome. I can't work up a great deal of enthusiasm, all the same. I remember some elections in the past with some character to them (and real characters in them) - and I stayed up half the night watching the results come in. All the present politicians come across to me as rather bland and colourless: there's no-one who's charismatic enough to inspire me with a vision of a future that I really, really want to be a part of.

Which puts me in mind of the old 'acid test' saying: "Would you buy a used car off this salesman?" I wouldn't buy so much as a bike off any of 'em!

What price privacy?

I had my attention drawn over the weekend to this news article concerning an allegedly illegal surgical procedure carried out in what appeared to be a piercing/tattoo studio. One of the questions it raised in my mind straightaway was who the anonymous 'mole' was, and the same question has since stirred up something of a hornets' nest, as only a small handful of people would have had access to the original videotape.

Over the course of the last eleven years I've had somewhere in the region of a couple of dozen genital piercings performed, a few of which of which I still have, and because I had many of them done in the company of like-minded friends, I had pictures taken of them, and submitted them to BME. All except one I think are disembodied shots of male anatomy which could belong to anyone, but on one memorable occasion after I had a guiche done, the piercer grabbed the camera and took a shot of me with a huge grin on my face displaying his handiwork! I'm not going to re-post it here. Not because I'm ashamed of it, I'm not. Nor because it depicts anything illegal, it doesn't. It's simply that, taken out of context, at best it's just going to titillate and at worst possibly shock the unsuspecting viewer.

This brings me to my main concern. Whenever I've been photographed doing something incriminating - be it just potentially embarrassing (say if my employer had discovered it), or actually illegal (and I don't think there is anything that falls into that category) - I've taken a risk. In my case the risks were fairly minimal, but they're there all the same. My privacy, in terms of who can see what I get up to, is important to me and while whatever is posted on the Internet is always liable to be illicitly downloaded, copied and circulated for a purpose other than that for which it was intended, the principle of safeguarding hidden identity should be both paramount and sacrosanct.

Mud-bath!

It had rained most of yesterday evening, and I could hear it beating against the window-pane well into the night, so I guessed that walking in the woods this morning, it was going to be extremely wet underfoot. I was right! I'd put my wellies on - smooth black shiny ones just like those I'd had as a kid when we lived in the village and I'd gone out to play wearing them, risking the wrath of my mother (who was fastidiously clean and neat), when I came back all mucky.

But today she wasn't around to complain, so I sploshed happily through the mud just as I loved doing when I about seven. In places it was quite deep and I could feel the suction gripping my boots as I pulled to extricate myself, and I heard the satisfying sluuurp sound. A bit further on there was surface water deep enough to wash it off, but only temporarily as I walked on a bit further still and started all over again. I guess I'll forever be a bit of a kid at heart, but it was a lovely fun way to spend Easter morning. I always find there's something innately satisfying about re-creating treasured childhood memories and experiences - especially those of things I wasn't really allowed to do at the time!

The stuff that dreams are made of

I dream most nights. Sometimes quite vividly, and very occasionally I have one that's nightmarish enough to make me wake up with a start in the middle of it and I worry for a few minutes that if I go back to sleep, it'll carry on from where it left off (fortunately, it never does). But generally I don't remember anything of what happened in my dreams the following morning apart from possibly the barest outline for a few fleeting moments. Maybe it was because this particular dream occurred right at the end of my night's sleep cycle - I don't know - but I do remember at least the finale of last night's.

I was back at school - or rather I'd just left. Because instead of staying on into the sixth-form and doing A levels, which is what I did at the time, I'd left at the age of 15. It wasn't altogther clear why but for some reason the impression I have (or had) is that I couldn't stop on. I think I may in fact have been expelled! At the time it wouldn't have mattered, but in my dream it did because the school-leaving age was the present-day one of 16 and not 15, so I'd left illegally - but without anybody realizing it. I was pretty sure my parents were going to get into heaps of trouble with the authorities as a result, although I seemed to be more worried about it than they were. Having been the youngest in the class I'd effectively completed my education and finished my exams a year early, so what the hell was I going to do or study for another whole year (the year in which I turned 16) - when I didn't want to go back and/or the school didn't want me back? I'd done all I needed to, so what an utterly futile waste of time it was going to be. At which point I neatly solved the dilemma by waking up!

I've no idea what brought that one on. Sometimes I can relate a dream to something I've seen or done recently which has a vague connection, but at the time when I was writing about my schooldays and putting up my website and I thought I probably would dream about it, I didn't. I daresay it's probably just as well that we don't have any real control over what we dream about. Or at least, I never have, even when I've tried to concentrate intently on something as I dropped off to sleep, in the deliberate hope of dreaming about it.

No Easter eggs for me!

Weighing myself this morning, I discovered I've lost around three pounds since Monday! I've learned from previous experience that while if I put my mind to it I can shed significant amounts of weight fairly quicky at first, the rate inevitably soon tails off and I get a bit dispirited, with the result that I tend to lose heart and it soon goes back on again. I'd love to get back to the 125 pounds and 28" waist that I had as a teenager, but realistically I can't see that ever happening! However the admonition I got a couple of years ago from the nurse when I went for my healthcheck to the effect that I was a bit overweight was a wake-up call, and I realized that I couldn't carry on stuffing sweets and chips in the way I'd become accustomed to without it showing. So cutting those out, and eliminating other obvious sources of trouble (after all, it is termed a "beer belly" for a reason!) got me off to a flying start. I don't like salad and never have, but things like swapping toast for crispbread were easy enough to do - and simply reducing the amounts of what I ate worked a lot of the time too.

Getting back into the swing of doing all that again this week has been plain sailing. I've been tempted by the odd piece of cake or two, but I've been strong willed and kept my resolve. And I'd forgotten how good it felt to wear a corset! I can see the effect slowly producing results when even after I've taken it off, my stomach is noticeably flatter now. I look better and I feel better. And since today is Good Friday and it's a holiday, perhaps I should improve on the shining hour by taking the dog for a walk in the woods: I'm sure she'd enjoy that!