Plus ça change ...........

.......... plus c'est la même chose!

Almost thirty years it might be since we all left school, but the years rolled back and we were all transported back to the years 1974 - 1980 via partially forgotten stories of derring-do in Maths, English, Latin, Physics, Engineering Drawing, French, Religious Education, Geography and other subjects, and involving frisbees, broken light bulbs, corporal punishment (the belt!), playground football, human pyramids (our speciality!), spoons, the sexual awakenings of adolescent boys when confronted by attractive female teachers, the fantasies caused by that last one, teachers who were there in 1974 and are still teaching the offspring of my contemporaries (not the sexy teachers though!), broken ribs, and lost fingertips.

In particular, a fair number of us at the school reunion last night started at Dalziel High School in 1974 in the class called "The Defenders". The norm at that time was to split the year's intake into classes of around 30 pupils for the first couple of years at secondary school, and give each class a name. There was officially no hierarchy, but it soon became apparent that we had been split according to perceived academic ability when coming from our primary schools, and the de facto pecking order was no secret. Due to an obvious clerical error I was in The Defenders, which was the top class (yes really!). One of the obvious and superficial differences was that The Defenders were taught Latin, whilst all the other classes received tuition in Classical Studies (which involved studying the social aspects of Rome rather than the language itself).

But I don't want to give the impression that we were in any way up ourselves. No, not at all. I remember taking a perverse pleasure in 1980 at a presentation to a teacher who was moving on to another job. At that time I was in 6th year, the final year at school although one could leave after completing 4 years, and was around 17-18 years old. The 4th year pupils at that time were a nasty bunch, into breaking windows, and carrying golf clubs to school supposedly as sports kit, but really as implied weapons, and they thought themselves pretty disruptive and tough. The English teacher who was leaving, as an aside the daughter of another English teacher at Dalziel, Wilson Humphries, who happened to be an ex professional footballer, made a speech after she was presented with flowers etc. To my surprise she told everyone present that although the present 4th year thought themselves something special in the bad boy stakes, in fact when she started as a teacher she taught a class called The Defenders, and after every lesson she went back to the staffroom and cried because of the behaviour of that class. She also said that having taught The Defenders, she could handle anything after that! As I said, I took some perverse pleasure in being singled out to these nasty little 4th years as previously being involved in disruption beyond what they were capable of.

I should explain that our disruption and bad behaviour wasn't of the brutal variety. No, we put some effort into it, and amongst other things it involved waiting until the teacher turned his/her back to write on the blackboard (and it was a blackboard at the time, no political correctness or modern technology for us!) and we then swapped seats with each other, more or less silently. We were in desks of two people next to each other. There was usually a slight look of puzzlement on the teacher's face when they turned round again, but we only got caught once, when one Latin teacher turned to the blackboard but spun round again two seconds later, leaving three people in one pair of desks and one person in the pair behind! OK, you had to be there!

So anyway, last night was tremendous and was far better than I'd hoped. There were around 17 of us, male and female, and we hit it off with each other (again) very quickly, so really nothing has changed.

I can summarise it easily by pointing out that it's a long time since I've literally cried laughing. But I did last night.

There are plans afoot to repeat this reunion every year from now on, and this morning I trawled the Friends Reunited Website to contact others from our year to get contact details for next year.

Happy days.

Mutatis mutandis

I left school, ahem, a number of years ago, well OK, almost thirty years ago, and apart from one memorable occasion a few years ago when I went to a surprise 40th birthday party for a former schoolmate, I have seen pretty well no one from those days.

The advent of Friends Reunited, and more recently Facebook has meant that I have in fact kept in email contact with a small handful of people, but never face to face.

So anyway, in January I was contacted by someone I haven't seen since about 1979, and he's arranged a bit of a get together next Friday which has rather grown in scale as the net widens and more people are contacted and invited.

It's only a few beers in the Electric Bar in Motherwell, which always has been more or less an unofficial Dalziel High School Former Pupils Club, but I'm actually really looking forward to it. Particularly now that sense appears to have prevailed and the event has been opened up to persons of the feminine gender too!

I say sense has prevailed only because when it was first mooted to include ladies there were a few low level grumblings about it being a lads evening and if women were there we wouldn't be able to swear and fart. Well personally I rarely fart, not when there's anyone at all around anyway, but as regular readers will realise, I do swear a lot. I don't go out of my way to offend, and I will in fact take steps to try not to offend, but swearing is an intrinsic part of my vocabulary, and if I can swear when in conversation with clergy and family members, then I can do so in front of adult females with whom I went to school!

So anyway, the latest email has just arrived and to my surprise, frankly, it seems that there are a number of the girls intent on turning up. It'll be good to catch up with people, male and female alike, albeit I'm well aware that none of us will be the same people we were in 1980.

I know I'm certainly not.

Thankfully.

The photos, from around 1964 and 1977, and my current profile image respectively, are evidence of physical changes, but underneath the exterior, there are inevitably psychological ones too, which are much more important. Maybe in a future post I'll try to outline those changes.

Or maybe not.

Anyway, the profile photo is not actually of me, as if you needed to be told that, but in some ways it does bear a passing resemblance. It is my beard, and those are a former pair of glasses of mine, for instance. And sometimes it's how I see myself.

But in any case, changes or not, Davy, Dougie, Dougie, Dougie, Euan, Gordon, Ian, Paul, Scott, Tom, Hazel, Karen, Elaine, Mags, Margaret, Carol and June - it's going to be a good one!

Heroes

Was in the Bier Halle Republic in Great Western Road last night for a wee drink and bit of food prior to attending Evensong. It was £4.15 for a pint of Kronenbourg Blanc. Lovely beer, but outrageous prices!

Evensong was good, with the choir singing Durufle's Ubi Caritas. Ubi caritas et amor, Deus ibi est. Where charity and love are, God is there.

In the morning, having woken stupidly early for a Sunday, I quit the house and headed towards town carrying my new camera, determined to start playing with it properly and get used to the buttons and dials so that I don't have to think about what to press and when. I got as far as the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and the Transport Museum, which are across the road from each other, but since neither opened until about 11am I confined myself to a wander round outside.

I've seen the war memorial outside the Art Gallery a few times, but only from a distance, and I discovered to my surprise that it is actually dedicated to the Cameronians (Scottish Rifles) which was a Lanarkshire based regiment, now long disbanded, which my grandfather (see photo below) joined the TA version of on 29th March 1929 as a Rifleman, leaving again on 19th January 1930 before enlisting with the Scots Guards on 11th August 1930 and serving with them for exactly 3 years before being transferred to the Army Reserve on 10th August 1933. His certificate of service book from this time says he was a clean, sober and hard working man who was honest, willing and reliable. It also says he was a good footballer!

In another subsequent certificate of service book for him, he kept the same army number (3242219) and rejoined the Scots Guards upon mobilisation on 1st December 1939, leaving again on 19th September 1944 after 4 years and 293 days. By this time he was a sergeant, his conduct was again listed as very good, and he was described as a clean, honest, sober and hardworking non-commissioned officer who carried out his duties in a satisfactory manner during his service with the colours.

Clearly he was mobilised due to the outbreak of World War II but left before it was finished. The reason given for his discharge was that he ceased to fulfil army physical requirements. I understand that he caught Tuberculosis, and in my lifetime I know he spent some time in Erskine Hospital, which actually isn't too far from where I now live, which is for injured, disabled and ill service personnel. I have a photo of me taken by him when I was a small child lying at the foot of his hospital bed in Erskine.

In total he spent 7 years and 293 days with the colours, and 6 years and 112 days in the reserve, making a total of 14 years and 40 days service. He enlisted with the Cameronians when he was around 22 years old, joined the regular army in the Scots Guards at about 23, was mobilised at the start of the war when he was about 32 and was invalided out when he was about 37. In fact he, and his contemporaries, obviously packed a lot of experiences into a small number of years around that time.

So anyway, what was I saying? Oh yes, the Cameronians memorial. The photo at the top of the page is a part of the memorial.

I've just this minute been contacted via Friends Reunited by a former school mate who I haven't seen since about 1979. He's thinking about arranging a bit of a reunion, which I'd guess will be no more than meeting in a pub rather than hiring a hall etc, and he's looking for email addresses for our contemporaries. Makes me realise that I've lost contact with all of them, although recently through Facebook I've made contact with a couple. So I think I'm now going to go onto Friends Reunited and start messaging people to try to re-establish some contact. It was all such a long time ago!