As I mentioned in an earlier installment, only one other boy progressed from my primary school to my secondary school at the same time as me, due to the tendency of RAF families to disappear from one year to the next. Imagine my surprise when, on the first day of my fourth year, I discovered that one of those families had come full circle and returned to the UK. After three years, I would be reunited with my old pal Martin (not to be confused with the Martin referenced in the previous year’s entry). I pretty much dropped Tam overnight, which I think he was secretly happy about because he really preferred the company of Martin (evil Martin, that is) and Vijay.
In my school, you could head into town at lunchtime if you had a signed note from your parents (sixth formers exempted, of course). Early in the year I figured that my dad’s signature was pretty simple, and forging signatures on downtown notes was a victimless crime, so I indulged with no compunction. Upon telling my dad about this, years later, he laughed and said that he would happily have signed those notes himself. I replied that I’m sure he would, but I didn’t feel the need to inconvenience him.
Of great relevance is the fact that this was the first year of my GCSEs. Now, instead of taking (almost) all lessons with my form group, I was getting to know other people from my year much better (or, at the very least, I wasn’t sharing a classroom with my existing friends as much).
By December, evil Martin was low on my nemesis list, presumably because I was no longer burdened with his company as often. However, in the same journal entry I demonstrate that I am not completely over my tendency to rank girls in order of fanciability. Documents also record that I took Nathan into the city so that we could buy Christmas presents for our respective families. I am holding in my hand, right now, an audio cassette that contains a podcast (back then we didn’t call them podcasts, of course) of me describing the various arcade machines that we played on that day, and how I whupped his ass at *Ridge Racer*. It’s bowel-tremblingly dull.
In February, I came to blows with evil Martin. The diary is disappointingly dry of details, and my memory is sadly incomplete. As I recall, we were all playing football at lunchtime, and I criticised him in some way that clearly hit a nerve, because he lunged at me and twatted me on the side of the head repeatedly. As he was walking away, I remarked that if he was serious about a career as a professional footballer, he’d need to learn to control his temper, as there would always be those who would wish to exploit his short fuse. Sadly, I didn’t get to finish this speech, as he rushed back and twatted me a few more times for good measure. I managed to land a couple of hits myself, but really it was all about the moral victory for me. The following day we had a chat about it during a Biology lesson, and he conceded that my point was a valid one.
In March, I bought a copy of *Practical Photographer* for the topless shots. Just in case you were wondering what happened to puberty. I also ended my brief period of taking trumpet lessons, when I realised that chicks just didn’t dig it.
Throughout this year, Martin (the non-evil one) supplanted Tam as my city-going accomplice of choice ((though I still spent a lot of time with evil Martin, Tam and Vijay out of school)). We would go bowling, play a bit of Laser tag, play the arcade machines – all the stuff that Tam and I used to do. The journal covers all this in quite precise detail, even listing the individual shops that we went into, and the games that we played on my Amiga when we got home. Naturally, my expenses are also logged to the penny.
But out of the blue!
> 28th August
> Dear Journal,
> Hurrah! Tam came over yesterday for the night. I’m glad because Martin is starting to annoy me…
How odd. It’s never really explained in detail, but I remember my relationship with Martin tapering away at about this point. There are very few mentions of his name in my diary after this point.
*This is part 4 of a 7-part series called “My Teenage Years” which documents my school days between the ages of 11 and 17*
4 replies on “My Teenage Years: 14”
Which Martin is evil and which isn’t. You can use hair colour if needs be to distinguish for me. I thought I had it in the bag but now I”m confused!
I’ll email you.
Hang on a minute. Was Tam a girl or a boy? He/She came over for the night, indeed. I smell a rat.
Well he was a boy.
I stayed at his house once.
The two are un related but I thought I would let you know !!