My former teacher

I’m off to lunch with a former teacher. I am aware that the term is ‘old’ teacher, but this teacher is not old (and I’m still a terrible suck-up). We’re going to a pub just by my old school (the school cares less about the ageing process). I am terribly excited. I have passed this pub thousands of times. I have been inside it precisely once, at lunchtime, after the very last day of school. I was dressed as a school girl. (Our school didn’t have a uniform, we had chosen voluntarily to dress up as school girls. My hair was in pigtails. It seems I was channeling Heidi.

A sort of lightly smashed Heidi. Who was absolutely thrilled to be in the pub on a school day). I was drinking southern comfort and lemonade, which I told everyone was ‘a very refreshing summer drink’. The barman did not seem to care as much as I had assumed he would. I was 18 years old, but being in the pub the teachers frequented was all a bit too adult for me. Someone ordered crisps, which I refused to eat in a bid to seem more ‘grown-up’. I was an idiot. Luckily, I am getting a second chance. Today I will be far more grown-up. Gosh, I hope I get to pop into the staffroom. I hear they have excellent biscuits.