An oddity in an odd class
2002-03-10 || 1:13 p.m.

You know, I just got to thinking that maybe my problems stem from my reckless past. My last diary entry made me sound like a great student, working hard for exams, playing the game, with just a bit of juvenile sex thrown in as my only failing. The truth of course couldn't be more different. I would say that my school career was 'chequered' but that would be untrue. It was actually quite stable - downhill all the way. I started off at 11 with reasonably good intentions but these had already been thwarted by not being made house captain of St David's at primary school despite being a good kid, never mucking around and working hard. My face just never fitted. That job was mine and yet what did they make me? Librarian. As if that is the same at all. So I started secondary school with a bad attitude anyway, my dreams shattered, yeah right.

By the second year I'd discovered that mucking around was way more fun that working. What did me and my friend Claire do that year? No work! We skived off when we could, made so many hoax phone calls we kept British Telecom in business. Claire was a good pal to have, her parents were loaded, both of them were doctors. She always had stacks of money. We never did anything really terrible but we made the teacher's lives a pain. So much so that we were not allowed to sit together at all. The beginning of the third year started badly (ish) we decided it would be fun to go shop lifting. Got arrested. Enough said.

By the fourth year I had no friends. Too freaky. No one would sit with me. I spent my time writing, reading and listening to music. Got a friend in the end, called Soo, she'd moved from Southampton, no one would be friends with her either, she was a mod and liked The Jam so we sat together. We're still friends today. I had to wear school uniform but I had my hair spiked up, kept up with soap, and my skirts were so short other girl's boyfriends used to comment all the time. I didn't have a boyfriend at the time because I was totally obsessed with Naldo, the Italian greengrocer's son. God I loved him but he was years older than me and kept telling me he could not go out with me. Silly thing was when I was 16 I got asked out by this other Italian guy who ran my youth club. His eldest daughter was only 3 years younger than me! I saw him a few years back. Wish I could see Naldo again!

By then I had started drinking. I then decided that I didn't have to fancy someone to go out with them and went on a boyfriend rampage. That was fun but by the summer I was bored. In the summer when I was 16 I started smoking as well. Bad mistake really given my lungs but boy did I think I looked cool. I was also keeping this diary at the time. I'd read 'I capture the castle' by Dodi Smith and wanted to write something like that. I was also prettily heavily influenced at the time by 'Christiane F' and 'Go Ask Alice' I wanted to write an 'I capture the castle on drugs'.

Of course this meant that I needed to take drugs. So I started smoking cannabis. I never liked it. Other people would say they could 'really relate to the music, man' and get the munchies but I would sit there stone cold sober, thinking of far more interesting things I could be doing. My problem, of course, is that I analyse everything.

The only time I ever had a 'high' from drugs was when I accidentally smoked heroin. That was one the most frightening nights of my life. I could feel every organ in my body working. I was aware of every red and white blood cell and how they were travelling. Every heart beat, my kidneys and the waste travelling through. It really fucked with my head and from that day on I never took another drug again.

This gets me thinking about whether my past habits have damaged my body today. I was very young and stopped very young so I think its unlikely but ...

So how did I manage to pass any exams? Don't know really. When I was 16 I spent the summer sitting at the kitchen table playing Siouxsie and the Banshees. I can vividly remember playing their album 'Once Upon a Time the Singles' over and over again when I was revising my chemistry. My favourites were Love in a Void, Mirage and Spellbound. I also used to play Kaleidoscope and I just loved Trophy so much. I was also playing Sandinista by the Clash a lot at the time. The music helped I think and I passed 7 out of my 9 'O' levels.

Two years later, two years of alcohol abuse and smoking I was pissed all the time. When I was revising for my A levels I was heavily into the Smiths. I used to play them all the time. I revised very little. I got a good grade for my history A level because I ignored all that my teacher had told me (my boyfriend had chucked me the day before) and wrote a scathing essay about Wolsey. Somehow I managed to get a B grade. I got the top mark in RE too. And every student that got the top mark got a prize at the annual speech day awards. That year they gave a prize for every subject - except RE! It was my total anti-authority attitude. My head teacher hated me. My form teacher said to my parents I was 'an oddity in an odd class'.

Its possibly one of my proudest moments.