From the comfort of my sofa and slippers I learn that the Glastonbury 2025 Friday night headliners have jumped on the band wagon of my youth, ‘My’ 1975 may be older and less melodic but I can confirm that The original 1975 played out to a packed library when we met last weekend to honour the 50 year anniversary of our arrival at secondary school.

I will apologise now for the length of this blog. I realised this weekend that I am one of those dodderers who – when losing something – has to walk back into all the physical spaces previously frequented in order to remember where I actually misplaced my marbles in the first place. The 50th reunion offers an extensive school tour and unleashes some spatial unravelling of teenage memories – but sadly along with my locker key and homework diary, I seem to have lost the editing skills taught to us in Mr H’s English class. Buckle up for an indulgent school bus tour – I will not be offended if you chuck this nostalgic tosh into ChatGBT to see if you can get some edited highlights and save yourself some time.

In 1975 our band came together for the first time in an unfinished sports hall before filing out to brand new tutor bases with brand new tutors. We were the first year group to join a ‘start up’ secondary school that would be under construction for the next five years. We would always be the oldest year group. We were an affable crew, distracted from the constant background noise of of cement mixer and hammer by the assault made on our other senses by the hideous school uniform. There are few teenagers who can carry off a yolk yellow school shirt and matching socks, and I was not one of them. I was coming out of my Bay City Roller phase and trying to grow out my Eric Faulkner hair cut into a ‘Purdy’ before I got to big school. I already had a fragile sense of fashion. While the boys had some choice of school trouser, some fashionista chose an elastic waistband for the girls’ A-line skirt and some unforgiving navy nylon gym shorts – both would prove my undoing.

When Oldest Friend (she became my friend in 1975, thankfully stayed that way and returned to work at ‘our’ school some years later) told me about the 50th reunion, I found myself wishing that I had kept more photos because I could remember very little about those days. I gamely joined the FaceBook Reunion group but did not share in any of the discussion threads because I seemed to be the only one who had forgotten the name of my Year 7 tutor or what I ate for lunch. I know I left school with a love of English Literature – and eventually ended up teaching it myself – but it took actually walking back into the school building to help me cram for an intensive history test.

I am ashamed to say that Oldest Friend is the only person from my school days that I have kept in touch with – it is fortuitous that she has proved to be such great value. I moved far away from the area to go to university, then went to work in London and ended up in Bristol; when my parents also moved away from Sussex, Oldest Friend became my only connection with this bit of coast.

As I drive up to the school on Saturday morning I immediately recognise the old school gym. Current staff have given up their Saturday morning to host both the reunion tours and the annual summer fayre. Working in a school as I do, I know how frayed these staff will be feeling at this stage of term, and appreciate their selfless welcome committee.

I ask two students if I they will take me to the library. The students have clearly pushed back on the uniform front since our day and are now rocking tartan skirts (The Bay City Rollers may still hold some retro influence); thankfully there is not a whiff of yellow in their plaid. I am looking at clusters of adults who I assume were all students at this school at some point over the years and suddenly feel quiet shy. I am relieved when Oldest Friend and her son bowl over and take me off me on my own bespoke tour. The memories start to return:

• I see my tutor room – and remember that one wall of this room slid back at the start of lunch because we did not yet have a dining hall. If you were unlucky enough to have a lesson in this room before or after lunch, nostrils would be assaulted – usually by the fetid aroma of school cabbage or fish fingers. Cheers were heard around the year group after the student council successfully petitioned for pizza slices and plastic cups of raspberry yoghurt (I think these were even served separately), but by this time I was bringing my own lunch to school and was a frequent shopper at the chocolate vending machines positioned conveniently around the site. I was an early recruit to the Government’s ‘5 a day’ campaign.
• I see the corridor outside the make shift dining room and remember queuing here for lunch. It was in this queue that I had my nose broken and my elasticated skirt pulled down – thankfully not on the same day. Fortunately I was wearing the unflattering gym shorts underneath my skirt, so at least had some coverage for my ample embarrassment when my classmate joker completed this daring act of public deskirting. I know you will want to ask about the broken nose, so in the spirit of no blame, no claim, this was caused because the same student – probably already enraged by the slow kitchen service and limited food options/previous sanction for deskirting – went to punch the adjacent student in the lunch queue; the intended target ducked at the very moment that I turned around to see what was going on and I still sport a unique (I like to think ‘interesting’) bridge to my nose.
• I see the door to the girls’ toilets and then remember how long it took the First Aider to get my nose to stop bleeding in these sinks following the above right hook, and how I crossed my legs for weeks to avoid the girl who seemed to have set up residence in these toilets to run an ear piercing side-hustle (the Maths department surely must have noticed the dwindling supply of classroom compasses?)
• As we continue walking I think I see the woodwork room in which I laboured for a whole term to make a perspex paperweight. Oldest Friend says I am mistaken and that the room I remember is now a block of toilets – clearly the site team shared the same view of my DT skills as my parents.
• I am strangely disappointed not to see the pop up PE changing rooms; in our first year there were no changing rooms, so Littlehampton Council kindly loaned some multi-coloured beach huts which smelt of urine and had no lighting. I hated PE, but at least these changing rooms were close to the those chocolate vending machines and provided an antidote to cross country running. They also explain why I was always wearing my nylon shorts under my A-line skirt.

On account of Oldest Friend being a member of staff at the school, we get a VIP pass to the staff room to see if they have better catering than in the library (they do) and here I meet my former Head of Sixth Form. Suddenly I can remember how much I loved his General Studies lessons – a genius use of ‘Fawlty Towers’ to teach teenagers about human behaviour. Mr G confesses that he was just making it up as he went along. ‘I think we let your year group down; you were guinea pigs; we were so young and had such little guidance’. I told him we felt just the same way but naively thought that the staff had a plan. I also noted that he could not have put me off school completely for I went on to become a Head of Sixth Form myself. ‘ ‘You were not the most academic year,’ he says – hopefully ignoring my comment that I have entered the world of education . ‘but you were the most interesting’.

Back in the library I meet my former RE teacher and am the fourth student of 1975 to tell him this morning what impact his telling of the Nicky Cruz story ‘Run Baby Run’ had on us. In my memory, Mr F held us transfixed – no OHP visuals, possibly an old tape recorder. He tells us that Nicky Cruz is still alive and one of my peers tells Mr F (I feel uncomfortable using his Christian name) that her father bought her family tickets to hear Cruz speak on account of her evangelical retelling of her RE lessons at home.

I am called over to meet Mr A (excusez moi, Monsieur A), my French teacher who tells me, ‘you always had so much promise’. I think he is remembering my French sounding christian name rather than any linguistic flair I may have demonstrated. The only detention I ever got in my whole life was for copying from my neighbour in Mr A’s French test. To this day my French comprises being able to sing lines from the songs that he taught us, strumming along on his guitar ‘ Je suis tres intelligent, tu est tres stupide’. Oh I miss those days and he was probably right. Mr A tells me that he could have taught literature instead, but felt French offered more freedom – this may explain why he taught us how to make omelettes (sorry, crepes) and kites that we spent weeks flying on the school sports field. Life skills like these are sadly under rated; I can still make a mean omelette and am a regular competitor at the Bristol Kite Festival.

Finally I am reunited with my former biology teacher, Mr F. I immediately apologise for our merciless teenage references to his tight trousers – he would turn to write on the whiteboard and we would chuckle,’Sir we can see your VPL (Visable Panty Line from an advert of this era). ‘You all made my life hell,’ he said smiling, but as I turn to join a ‘The 1975′ reunion photo’ I remember that as A level students we used to take Mr F – and other teachers – to the local pub in our lunchtime, so I think he survived this era unscathed. It does beg the question of who was left running the school when we were down at the ‘Spotted Cow’? Someone really should have been left to supervise that lunch queue.

I think we managed to get some twenty of us in The 1975 photo and then we regroup to ask each other who has kept in touch with who. When you still feel young at heart it winds you to hear that too many of our year group are no longer with us – including the chap I caught the school bus with every day and who was responsible for both my dinner queue memories. There have been romances, divorces and grandchildren and there is this sense that our year group were either cutting edge or guinea pigs. Maybe we were both.

Working in a school as I do now, I know we still do not always get it right, and that school is not a happy place for everyone – students or staff. I realise that my own school memories are bitter sweet and my back to the future morning has reminded me of the freedoms we once had. As I return to my car, one of my peer group comments on the school gates and the fence that we pass through. ‘We didn’t have these back in the day. We used to just register and then disappear off for a smoke’. I don’t remember that; I must have been sitting my French detention.

It is time to wind up the tour. The Head Teacher kicks us out of the library (being thrown out of the library is about as rebellious as my life gets) for he needs us to flash some cash at the school Fayre. I return to the school gym and can remember the school discos and the whole year group dancing to ‘Summer Loving’ from Grease.

My head is full on my return journey to Bristol and so is my heart.

I am half way up the motorway when I remember that I have forgotten to tour the science labs. I can recall that the lab technician persuaded me to be a Rat Keeper in Year 7, tasking me with keeping a family of rats alive over a whole school holiday – without telling me that we would meet the dynasty again on the dissecting table at the start of the next academic year. Guinea pigs? The science technician had a daughter in our year, so how did she manage to swerve the grave responsibilities of rodent watch when her mum could have so easily taken all those vermin cages home for her to supervise. I smell a rat.

PS : If you are still reading: Chat GBT summarises ‘our’ The1975 as:

Pioneers, interesting guinea pigs, lacking in fashion sense.