The joy (and horror) of a school reunion
Older, fatter and... wiser?
Last week I was struggling to identify what I wanted from life. This week, I feel like I’ve been living my best version of it. Ok, so it might be the vagaries of my age, but it’s amazing what a few days away from home can do for the soul.
I spent Monday to Wednesday in Tuscany, on an extremely jolly press trip to see the olive harvest, courtesy of Filippo Berio. I’d gone out in September for a big piece I’ve written for the Sunday Times Magazine (out this Sunday; please buy a copy), and they very kindly invited me out for their annual harvest hoopla. Ok, so I ate my body weight in cheese and it turns out I don’t, actually, have capacity for seven courses at lunchtime that includes a different glass of wine for every course (two of them pasta-based) - in fact I don’t even have capacity to eat more than one really big meal a day - but it was extremely refreshing (in every sense of the word) regardless. And a bit of SUNSHINE was so, so good for topping up my cheeriness levels.
The only thing stressing me out about all the cheese-eating was the fact that, on my return I had a school reunion to go to. It’s twenty five years (!!) since I left school, and a pal I’m still in touch with via FB posted about it and I thought yeah, why not?
I should say at this point that this was the school I went to for just two years, for sixth form. Prior to that I’d been at a cosy little girls school in the middle of the Yorkshire countryside where we all still shared baths until we were about 14, played outside lots and generally mooched around being delightfully unselfconscious and messy and generally not caring very much about things like boys, or even learning anything. Some of my greatest friends are from this girls’ school - because when you’ve known someone since they were 10 and shared a bedroom (and a bath) with them there’s nothing really to hide. I adore my friendships with these women because they’re so easy and uncomplicated and we’re all so fond of each other because we’ve known each other for such a long time.
But this school only went up to 16, and at the time my parents felt I needed to get out of Yorkshire to know there were other places, so packed me off to board at a school in the Midlands for two years. I absolutely loved it - it was really thrilling after so many years of tininess to be in a big place, with great teaching (for the first time I wasn’t the best in the class so I actually had to pull my finger out and do some work), a whole new opportunity to reinvent myself and crucially, BOYS. So exciting.
Of course I made some mistakes and yearned for some boys and got dumped by others and generally spent two years trying to work out who I was, along with working quite hard and doing lots of extra currricular stuff, but the whole experience was generally really positive and I have very happy memories of being there. But because I was only there for two years I didn’t make the same sort of friendships, and while I’m still peripherally in touch with people I haven’t actually seen many of them in person over the years. We had a 10-year reunion a while back, but that was a bit awkward and weird because most of us still hadn’t really worked out who we were, and we were all still establishing ourselves etc etc and I didn’t enjoy it very much.
Twenty five years though - well, that’s a bit grown up isn’t it. So I thought yes I’ll go, but I was still really nervous, and planned my outfit and wanted to look great and just generally radiate confidence and fabulousness. And then I arrived late and sweaty because I’d had a prior commitment, and laden with bags because I’d been away but was catching a train home after, and needing the loo desperately, so of course I immediately grabbed a glass of champagne and spilled most of it down myself at which point I had to go to the loo and pull myself together and give myself a bit of a talking to.
But after that - well, I had SUCH a nice time. I think it’s because, now we’re all in our 40s, we’re all pretty established (midlife crises notwithstanding). We’ve all got kids around the same age (bar my first boyfriend who got started young and now has a 20-year-old and 17-year old twins, waah); we’re all similarly knackered trying to juggle lives and jobs and families; we’ve all got a few more wrinkles (lots of gratifying comments about how I look exactly the same means the Botox is clearly working) - basically nobody’s trying to prove themselves any more, because we’re all pretty settled being who we are. We worry about the same stuff - our kids and if we can give them what we all now realise we were so lucky to have ourselves growing up; if we’re ever going to able to pay our mortgages off; whether everyone’s happy. And if they are, we’re winning.
I got chatting to a bloke who’d been in my English class and he told me he had been similarly nervous about coming, and we discussed why that might be. And he said it was because of that thing of being quite happy in his life, but wondering how it might compare to everyone else’s and being a bit worried it might seem lacking, somehow. But then we looked around and realised that actually, by this point in life, everyone’s been through a bit of shit - people have lost parents; there’s a couple of divorces under the belt; we’re all finding raising kids who aren’t tiny children any more pretty hard work. And sure, we don’t all look quite as glamorous and carefree as we did at the 10-year reunion (there were a LOT of bald heads which reminded me why being a woman isn’t all bad), but we were all just bloody glad to be out on a night with old friends who’d made a real effort to be there - some flew in from other countries and most people had travelled a fair distance. Of course a school reunion is fairly self-selecting anyway - if you’re having a really shitty time you might give it a miss, and if you hated school you probably wouldn’t touch it with a barge pole, but I was struck by how everyone there genuinely wanted to catch up and find out about other people’s lives, rather than just show off about their own.
And then I realised it was 10.45, I’d drunk far too much white wine on an empty stomach and I had to RUN if I was going to catch my train; the last one to York - so run I did, along with my friend Nick who valiantly hefted my suitcase up the steps of the Tube to Kings Cross station - only to see my train steaming out of the platform. Nick was genuinely worried about what I was going to do, but because I’d had a bit too much wine I was very blase and told him I’d be fine. Which is how I found myself on the 11.33pm train to Leeds, had to wait a further hour for a train from Leeds to York (because I didn’t want to fork out £85 for a taxi) and didn’t get home until 3.30am. Which really did make me feel like a teenager again.
Yorkshire excellence of the week
One of the other people on my trip to Tuscany was a man called Mario who makes cheese. Specifically, Yorkshire Pecorino, for which he uses sheep’s milk from local farmers, and which he now sells in all sorts of fancy places, including Waitrose, Booths and Neal’s Yard (you can also buy it direct).
Mario is a bombastic, flamboyant Italian man, who also has a Yorkshire accent - so he’ll say a super Italian-sounding sentence but one word, like, say, ‘nightclub’ will be pure Yorkshire. It’s hilarious.
Anyway, another girl on the trip and I are now planning to visit him in January and spend a day making cheese with him. I can’t wait. In the meantime, Waitrose here I come.
Something to save up for
Every time I go away for a few days I ended up feeling mildly dissatisfied with my luggage situation. Earlier this year I bought this dinky little four-wheel cabin case which I imagined would come in extremely handy for my multiple monthly trips up and down to London. Which it has up to a point, except as you have to unzip the whole thing to get anything out, it’s not brilliant to stick my laptop in, as I don’t want to have to show the whole world my knickers and washbag every time I want to do some work on the train, or in a cafe. So I end up taking the cabin bag for my overnight things, and my little crossbody bag for my purse and sunnies and keys, and then usually slinging my laptop and leads in some sort of canvas tote - all of which makes me look like some kind of executive bag lady.
I’ve decided that what I need is a decent-sized tote that can double up as a smart handbag and also fit my laptop. Not as handy as my crossbody, and will definitely bugger up my shoulder/bag but at least I’ll look the part (I keep mentally trying to get on board with a rucksack, but I’m really not a rucksack kinda gal.) Currently in my sights is this beauty from Sézane:
They also have it in red, and I do love a red bag.
I’m going to go to the Sézane shop when I’m in London next week and put my laptop and purse etc in one of them to test it out (hopefully they won’t think I’m about to shoplift it) and see what I think. Let me know if you have any handy alternative recommendations!