Back To School!

It’s that time again – the end of August – it’s “Back To School” time!

I think it is part of being a kid that you are meant to “hate school”, but actually, I had a really great time at school – of course, at the time, I wouldn’t admit it, but I did!

I spent every day with my best friends in the world, had milk and biscuits in the playground at break time, sang in assembly, created ‘masterpieces’ in art class and got to read Roald Dahl books in class – sounds like fun to me!

Of course, time passes and suddenly I have a degree and some semblance of a career and have got to the point where seeing the new teeny-tiny school shoes in the shops at this time of year makes my womb twitch a little bit as I plummet towards my mid-twenties!

I was shopping yesterday – picking up some bits and bobs for a post I’m working on at the moment – and all I could see everywhere I looked around the shopping centre (which was sooooo busy – shopping on the last sunday of the summer holidays – BAD IDEA!) was signs about going “Back To School”. Whether it was tiny-person school shoes, new school bags or on the front of shops like WHSmith or paperchase that provide, without a doubt, the pinnacle of all “Back To School” shopping trips – The Stationery Shop.

When I was younger, and had finally come to terms with the fact that no matter how much I pleaded with my mum, I was never going to be allowed an extra week off school and did in fact have start my new school year on time, I used to get so excited about the stationery shopping trip.

Picking a new pencil case, demanding that my old pencil sharpener was broken just so I could get a new one in the shape of a monkey, grabbing a bendy ruler and a pink protractor that would be used twice before it got lost in the bottom of my school bag, never to be seen again, and filling the basket with coloured pencils and more biros than anyone would get through in a decade is something that I look back on with huge amounts of nostalgia. I also think it may have sparked my ridiculous (and expensive!) stationery habit! (I mean seriously, Paperchase, if you need a brand ambassador who owns more than half of your stock already and is lusting after the other half: here I am!)

Being a “grown-up” is tough, and I think there are times that we all look back on the times when our biggest concern was that we wanted a pink backpack like all the other girls and think how much easier it would be to go back to then, instead of dealing with rent, bills, searching for a job, finding a boyfriend or deciding what shade of “essie” nail polish would best match your new shoes.

So yeah, 7-year-old me, but I would love to go back to school. I look at these kids with their new school bags and their shiny new shoes and remember how much fun I had, the friends I made, the stories I had to tell, and I’m more than a bit jealous. I guess that I, and I bet I’m not the only one, would quite like to be 10 again!