Those were the days

Found this lurking in a pile of 'memory stuff':

It's a photo of school sports day 1980.  Our class (4L) won that year, and I can say, the rose-tinted hue of halcyon days aside, it was the best year of school for me.  My memory of it is that I was (for some obscure reason) very popular, and being in the top year of the school (the last before high school), I had the confidence of feeling a big fish in a small pond.  Even the most popular boy in the school fancied me.  Haaaa haaaaa.  Lordy knows why because I was a scrawny boyish looking thing with a foul temper.  Still - it's all about confidence and I was quite settled in my peer group back then, and I was very sporty and hence popular with the boys because I could beat them at PE and I played football at lunchtime. 

That's me in the middle, in white.  The one that looks like a boy Oliver says.  I rest my case.  The blonde girl on my right is Michelle, who I was re-acquainted with when I went to the Rosemary Conley classes in recent years.  She still has lovely thick blonde hair and married her high-school boyfriend.  She is still married to him and is a very, very nice woman.  The boy on my left is Stephen - the most popular boy in school of whom I speak.  He went by the nickname of 'Bogie'.  Don't ask.  Blonde girl next to Michelle is Carol, who had large breasts from the age of about 10, and was therefore extremely popular with the boys.  Her tits were the complete opposite to mine, which didn't put in an appearance until about 1983.  Funny isn't it, it was a deal then.  Now,  tits is tits.  Time is a great leveller. 

Next to Carol and partly obscured by Deanna, is Vanessa.  She is holding a smurf aloft.  They were popular then, the smurfs - the first wave of smurfs.  Smurf was my nickname, because I was a virtual dwarf at middle school.  I seem to recall being the smallest girl in the year. (with the worst clothes).   Anyhoo, I digress.  Vanessa was my best buddy then.  We drifted apart in high school while she dabbled with another friend (I have never quite forgiven her) but we held on to friendship, and now we email and meet up (by accident the last time) and I value her enormously.  (She won't quite believe that I am sure).

This happy golden year was led by Mrs Lee.  A fabulous teacher who liked me, and, sensing her liking for me, I flourished in my schoolwork and self belief.  She told me I would go a long way.  Have I gone a long way?  It's been 32 years, and that's a long way I suppose.  I haven't achieved something like 'hey, I'm a neuro surgeon', but I chose to home-teach my son, and I think she would like that.  She called me Chatterbox.  Ha ha.

Enough reminiscing.  The present is slipping away from me while I sit here.

Laters.