Oh Chalkstone Middle School, how I miss you and your myriad shades of brownness. I am not clear whether the school based the color of it's uniform on the dark brown wood stain that was used to cover much of the exterior of the school, or whether the exterior color was deliberately matched to the uniform. It is sufficient to say that they were of a very similar brownness.

By the time I had joined the school, there wasn’t actually a strict uniform anymore. The combination of blue shirt, brown sweater, brown trousers, and brown blazer had been set aside for something a little more progressive...a colour code. If memory serves me correctly, we were allowed to wear anything that was brown, blue, black, white or grey, as long as there were no jeans and as long as it was mostly plain. I.e. no racy slogans, mottos or controversial fashion statements like the FRANKIE SAY RELAX T-shirts that were popular around this time. However, whilst we had the freedom to be able to mix and match from any of these colours, I was in the unenviable situation having inherited a large collection of 'pass-me-down' vestments from my two elder brothers who had both attended the same school before me. My wardrobe was therefore bedecked in swathes of blue and brown clothes. It would take approximately another 25 years before I could bring myself to voluntarily wear the color brown again.

This picture was the latest version of my annual school photo and my blonde hair had finally started turning a little darker (no doubt in order to blend in with the poo-brown colour of the uniform). Other bodily transformations are revealed by closing of the gap between my two front teeth. Overall, I have to say that I look pretty happy in this picture. Maybe the school was putting something in the milk?

We were still a couple of months away from Margaret Thatcher’s decisive second term election victory, and so while the seeds of anti-Thatcherism may have already been planted, they had yet to germinate and grow into the strident force that would affect many of my generation. On the other side of the Atlantic, President Reagan had just announced plans for the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) which became more popularly known as ‘Star Wars’. If you ever want to get an 11 year old boy to be enthusiastic about a costly (and ultimately unfeasible) policy that aimed to put orbiting lasers in space, then having it named after one of the most popular films of all time certainly helps. Even if the goal of SDI was to shoot the legs of helpless kittens, with a name like ‘Star Wars’, it would have had my support.