School Reunion

Recently I met an old school friend at a school reunion. She reminded me of something I had long since forgotten. She remembered how, in class, I would always be hunkered down in the back row, writing stories for my classmates. They would tell me who they wanted to be married to, where they wanted to be living and any other detail they could think of and I would write for them, weaving their dreams into a story that I would bind into a small book with some decoration on the outside. My schoolmates loved it, although the teachers were not so keen, as I recall.

There were stories about footballers who found the love of their life in our boarding school sixth form, dusky princes who swept up their loves and rode off to castles in far away lands. Then there were the more ordinary requests for picture-perfect families living happily ever after! But every request was one that I gave my all to.

I remember one occasion when I was caught scribbling away in the back row and was told to stand at the front and read out the story I was writing to the class. The subject of the story had chosen to be the wife of the famous pop star Cliff Richard. Imagine her horror as her story of her future life with her hero was read out to the entire class! She had been particularly specific in the details of their affection for each other, and her classmates were not slow to remind her of them in the months to come.

Now I get the chance to write about real people and real lives, and I find them just as fascinating as those fictional lives I invented to amuse my friends back in my school days. I suppose that just as when I was a teenager, the complexity and the variety of the lives we lead will always be a wonder to me.