Brighton has always been another world. Even as a kid I knew that it was a bit "different". It has got a lot more "different" over the years. It just gets odder and odder.

I feel a bit self-conscious commenting in a thread like this. I had an enormously privileged education: a combination of an Armed Forces bursary and an academic scholarship meant that I spent my secondary education in the rarefied surroundings of an old-fashioned independent boarding school. Most of the staff were Oxbridge graduates and very good at their job, class sizes were small (no bigger than 22 until O-level, most A-level classes were 15 or fewer), the extracurricular opportunities were spectacular (regular overseas tours for sports teams, theatre productions and music ensembles of all sorts). I don't think a single CSE was offered on the syllabus - even the carpenters and metal-bashers took O-levels.

I was one of those lucky folks who can belie the lack of effort in class with surprising results at exam time. With a hatful of good grades at O-level I was encouraged to sit (and was given extra tuition towards) the Oxbridge entrance. As a result of which I was a recipient of one of the "two Es" offers mentioned above. I probably did less work in the term before A-level exams than at any other time before or since, yet (largely as a result of the Oxford offer) received a glowing, almost sycophantic, school report that term. I date my increasingly cynical attitude towards the opinions of authority figures from that school report. It was probably all their fault that I did so little work at Oxford that I was thrown out before completing my degree.

ETA: Oh, and we had lots of international students, so long as their daddies could pay the fees. One of them was the son of the Thai prime minister, I think; another is now the king of Swaziland. Nobody paid any attention to the colour of his skin, nor do I recall ever being rude to him - but then again, his bodyguards were very large indeed.

I am older, - I have a Pitmans Shorthand certificate, an LCC Typewriting certificate (we learned on manual typewriters!) and took my only GCSE in my 40's (English, A*) just to prove to myself that I wasn't thick, lol. Despite being an avid reader from the age of 3 I failed the 11+, went to the secondary modern that my two sisters had been to, left there after getting beaten up (badly) and attended private school until I was 15 (Clarke's College).

In my first job as a junior secretary in Kensington I used a teleprinter (telex) and operated a 10x50 dolls eye switchboard and got paid the princely sum of £11 a week (of which half went to my father). In those days, I could get a one month travel pass from Bromley to Victoria for the train and underground (circle line) for £6! I don't think you could get a single for that nowadays.

Fond memories of smoking disque bleu, going to the Admiral Codrington for lunch daily and getting chatted up by a Russian ballet dancer on the underground, lol!

Now I really feel old!

"Well, of course, we had it tough......"

Niet. One had an absolutely brilliant time drinking screwdrivers at the age of 16, stopping traffic in one's mini-skirt and generally getting up to all sorts of mischief!

Well of course I did that too.

TMI Siouxie, TMI.

I worked in Chelsea around then and lived in Belsize Park. Those were the days....

Is this where we all confess to dressing in our mum's dresses and high heels?

Too young for the booze at 6 or 7 though.

Don't be daft, Novo wouldn't be seen dead in Crimplene. I'm sure he was more of a cheesecloth and loon pants guy.

I did that for the GPO and then operated a digital switchboard for British Telecom. That may have been the best job I've ever had.

One of the joys of the nightshift in the telephone exchange was that you could listen to calls and, if they were entertaining, put them on speaker for the enjoyment of the other employees. And so it was that I came to be hearing a mother offering advice to her daughter on a marital problem. That London-Jewish voice sqawking "and if that don't get 'im going, nuffink will" rings in me ears to this day.

Great job, operating the eaudies, I expect it's all gone now.

I have to admit to having had a cheesecloth shirt, but I'm not sure what loon pants were? Can you find a picture for me?

Very deliberately targeted Smartarsery: mainly because the class was a complete waste of time & I resented enormously that it was compulsory. HE had been abolished at the school some years before & I thought the reintroduction was irrelevant, amongst some rather stronger feelings relating to girls' education. (I was a rabid feminist at a rather young age.)

TBH, my schooldays were much closer to yours than others in the thread (startlingly similar in fact!), but I that hasn't stopped me commenting .

There were, in the time I was there, the grand total of 6 non-White pupils: 3 African diplomats' daughters, 2 HK Chinese, 1 Indian. And lots of Army brats .

Oops, assimilated moment. Loon trousers

http://http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/ff/Loon_Pants.gif

I had a mildly unusual education in that I attended a middle school until the age of 12. When you went to high school , you went straight into third form ( there was no first or second form)
I did Latin for the last two years of middle school and for the first two years of high school, until you took your "options" when I dropped it quicker than a red hot coal.

The national curriculum was just coming in, limiting what options we were allowed.
Basically you picked History or Geography. Then a "technology" subject ( I ended up doing child development , don't ask , just don't!)

then you had two "free choices" I opted for business studies and what was called " keyboarding" ( was really typing and transcription)

I was told in no uncertain terms that "people of my ability didn't take those kind of subjects"
so I ended up doing German and another course that escapes me at the moment. All GCSEs

So now I can order a beer in German but can't touch type.


Just remembered , it was religious studies" - again tres useful!

What is this thing with History and Geography? It was the same in my high school. You did both for the first two years but in the two years running up to O-level, you had to pick one. That's a shame. I would have liked to do both.