Eighteen

Recently one of my oldest friends, Dave – a friendship dating back to our schooldays at a state grammar-turned-comprehensive in Stevenage New Town – mentioned to me the remarks written by the headmaster in his report at the end of our final year of sixth-form studies, and before the A-level exams that would determine our next step on the educational ladder, in summer 1972. I won't quote what was written, but, to me, those three brief sentences seemed oddly barbed, verging on the downright impertinent, although the reason Dave mentioned them was that he regarded this gnomic parting shot, in retrospect, as insightful and quite prophetic.

I honestly couldn't remember what that odd and ill-starred man [1] had written in mine, although the general tenor of all my reports through the years at that school had been remarkably similar: he's a very bright lad, capable of outstanding work, but so careless when it comes to detail that he is quite capable of falling short of his own potential. Also slightly barbed, I suppose, but also, as it turned out, insightful and quite prophetic. Maybe those teachers knew a thing or two after all.

I knew I'd got my own school report book somewhere, and after a bit of digging around managed to find it in a box of documents. Turning to that last page, I read some surprisingly fulsome reports, qualified as usual with those comments about "detail" (yawn), not to mention the head of sixth form's words, "All this, despite his apparent slovenliness!" Hey, it's a happening look, man! Get with the times!

But all the head had written was, "I concur and add my own good wishes". That was it; no snarky psychological insights, no nothing, just, "wot they said, have a good one". Might as well have been a birthday card.

That aside, I have to say that the rush of reminiscence delivered by opening those pages after so many years was a bit overwhelming. It was not entirely nostalgic – I doubt anyone remembers seven adolescent years in an all-boys school with unalloyed pleasure – but rather more a hefty dose of "seeing ourselves as others see us", followed by a stiff nostalgia chaser.

Now, it's true – although I shouldn't exaggerate this – I had started secondary school as an obedient little "swot", as we say, but became something of a rebel over the years, although not enough of a rebel to leave (or be asked to leave) at 16, and either join the real world or take my A-levels at the local FE college, which is what the bone-deep rebels did. Not everyone likes being at school; I was ambivalent about it myself. By the sixth form I was regularly carpeted about my scruffiness, hair length, laziness, and so on. Hilariously, I was often told that not shaving set a bad example for the younger boys. My attitude was tolerated, though, simply because I was clearly an Oxbridge prospect, and – second only to sporting success – nothing mattered more to small-town ex-grammars than a few Oxbridge entrance successes each year. So, along with a few similarly-minded chums, I walked the wobbly line between "characterful" behaviour and expulsion, confident in the safety net provided by my uncanny ability to ace any exam put in front of me, despite my apparent slovenliness.

However, although I could remember the general tone of the reports of the various teachers I had encountered over those seven years, I had completely forgotten the actual words they had written. After all, school reports are primarily aimed at parents, not pupils. So, reading that final report, two quite similar comments stood out, and suddenly I was indeed seeing myself as others saw me. The report of an English teachers was one: "His outstanding, but modest, contributions have been invaluable and have helped to raise the standard of the group as a whole". The report of my German teacher was the other: "I thank him for the distinguished contribution he has made to group discussion & atmosphere, where his spontaneous & uncynical approach has been invaluable".

I was actually quite moved by those remarks. Despite my introversion, I can be quite the little loudmouth and show-off in the right circumstances, and there were certainly occasions when I know I went a little over the top. You do not win friends by diverting an A-level geography class on population statistics by disputing the use of the word "random" in "random distribution" for rather too long, for example. But I could easily imagine how unrewarding, even depressing, it would be, trying to raise a spark of interest out of some dull bunch of teenage boys, year after year, and what a difference getting to engage with the occasional lively group would make. Their gratitude was clearly real, not just some formulaic well-wishing for the future, but I don't think I'd even noticed these two little tributes at the time, or cared about them if I had. But it seems I had made a positive difference, both for them and for our subject groups, and that felt very good, fifty-four years later.

This was swiftly followed by that stiff chaser of nostalgia.

I had forgotten how much I had enjoyed those "group discussions". State secondary schools here in Hampshire, for whatever reason, do not have sixth forms; instead, students wishing to study A-level courses must attend one of a few post-16 colleges with anything up to 3,500 students in each. It can be a bit impersonal, as there are multiple large classes in the popular subjects, drawn from all the schools in the catchment area, so my children's experience was very different from my own long-ago sixth-form years in Hertfordshire in the last century.

Our German group, for example, was made up of just nine of us, boys who had all sat in the same classrooms for many years; in the case of three of us this had been from the age of eight, as we had been in the same primary school class. In fact, one of them even had a surname very similar to mine, so we had actually sat next to each other for years at our alphabetically-arranged desks. It's an odd word to choose, perhaps, but it felt cosy. Most of the time anyway; it could get pretty chilly if we hadn't performed up to our teacher's expectations (see, for example, the post Aieee!).

In German we got to study Goethe, Kafka, and 20th century poets like Rilke, Celan, and Trakl; in English Shakespeare, Milton, and 19th century poets like Browning, Tennyson, and Arnold. What a menu, what a feast! Those sixth-form sessions will likely be the closest encounters with great literature you will ever have, a sort of intellectual growth spurt, in which you feel yourself growing into something approaching your full mental height for the first time. We were no longer a class of 30 boys sitting in rows of desks, some paying attention to the blackboard, some daydreaming, some plotting mischief, and a few even [um, no, let's not mention that. Ed]. We were now a little collective, a band of brothers with a common academic purpose, guided by excellent teachers. I found it intoxicating; it's no exaggeration that you could occasionally get high on the flashes of insight as they sparked around the room.

In comparison, university was a let-down.

That same old friend and I both did well enough at A-level to be encouraged to stay on for an extra term of tutoring before sitting the Oxford Entrance exam. Both of us were successful, and after interviews were admitted to Balliol College to study English: no small achievement for a couple of lads from our sort of background. But Oxford's much-vaunted collegiate tutorial system was not what I had imagined it to be, at least as far as English at Balliol was concerned. Other subjects like PPE (philosophy, politics and economics) were the source of the college’s renown, and other colleges had built a greater reputation for English. I suppose I had expected a higher-voltage version of what I had experienced in the sixth form, but it never even came close.

The nadir for me came when I read out an essay on Virginia Woolf's The Years – a book I admired very much – and it turned out that the junior tutor leading the session – he was on loan from Reading University, I think – had never actually read it himself, and therefore had nothing to say beyond, "Hmm, interesting...". Yeah, well, you're not wrong there, chum. So, after three years of this, in our final farewell session with our senior tutor Dave angrily accused the college of running what was, in effect, a correspondence course, which was about right. I believe things may have improved since then.

But, remembering those sixth-form years, I'm reminded of how, back in March 2009, I drove my son and a friend from their sixth-form college all the way from Southampton over to Guildford to see Measure for Measure at the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre (with Alistair McGowan as the Duke, and the action transposed to a "Victorian" Vienna). They were studying it for A-level, so this rare chance to see one of Shakespeare's weirder plays in performance was very opportune, and easily worth an hour's drive each way.

Driving back home through a very dark, very starry night – partly concentrating on the road, partly turning the play over in my mind, and partly listening to the chatter of two very bright soon-to-be 18-year-olds – I finally felt the true weight of my subsequent thirty-seven years of reading, listening, looking, learning, working, succeeding, screwing up, and daydreaming. I was no longer eighteen, no matter how much it might feel that way inside. I was fifty-five.

It was not an unpleasant feeling, and I remember sitting in a happy silence, slightly high with the realisation that just continuing to turn up and to be open to whatever "life" presents – having learned how to pay the closest possible attention to it and to give your best possible response – is perhaps the only achievement worth the name. Although just now what I'm mainly aware of is just how quickly "eighteen" became "fifty-five" and then "seventy-two"...

Question: Where does it go? Discuss. You have three hours. Write on one side of the paper only.

1. For reasons that are murky and much-rumoured, this headmaster was dismissed just a few years later.