Never Mind The Stocking-Tops..

My school life was, for the most part, a tame affair- a perfectly fitting thing to be, considering that all thirteen years of it were spent in girls' schools, one of them Catholic at that. One minor rampage with a plastic lizard (that got thirty-nine of us detention for an afternoon) and the odd successful attempt to sneak off the premises before classes gave out (and, correspondingly, one unsuccessful attempt to sneak in without discovery when I got late and wanted to avoid a demerit- I got caught trying to climb a barrier, which isn't easy if you're wearing a pleated skirt), were about as far as I got down the road to rebellion. Which isn't really very far, but still, it's the thought that counts, or shouldn't it?

It might be a result of my early history or anything, but I love school stories- especially when there are uniforms involved and the place in question is more than slightly bonkers. Whether it's Hogwarts (which was at its best and most glorious in the state of complete pandemonium that followed Fred and George Weasley's amazing exit- with orders given to the poltergeist to wreak even more mayhem!), or Colette's Claudine battling it out with her headmistress for the affections of her English teacher, or even The Hairy Bird (an utterly brilliant movie about a bunch of girls in the 1960s trying to stop their school from going co-ed), I love them best in a state of chaos. But as far as madness went, nothing could really top the cartoons I found in a shelf of the local lending library, which I first picked up because they reminded me of the illustrations in my Roald Dahl books.

It was the St Trinian's cartoons, of course. I wasn't aware, at the time, that they were so popular or that there'd been movies made of them -I still haven't seen any of the originals- but the girls drawn in there were more or less the coolest beings I'd ever seen in my (then) twelve years of life- frequent decapitations, flattenings and violent deaths notwithstanding (to be fair, I liked them even more because of the violence- I was a bloodthirsty little squit). Heaven knows how they ended up in our library in the first place, the librarian must have thought they were ok for little kids because they were cartoons (which is sound logic, until you consider things like South Park). And now I hear it's a movie, complete with explosions, tarted-up school uniforms (not really that tarty, if you ask me), Rupert Everett in drag* (yippee!), the fourth formers, the sixth formers (I liked the little girls better, but it looks like sex appeal gets more screen time), an art heist, and Colin Firth. It won't get near me any time soon, but given that I'm such a sucker for school stories, I'll even overlook the fact that the theme song is by Girls Aloud. I mean, it's catchy and that's perfect given that the possibility of shout-alongs is a bit of a factor in how much anyone under the age of fifteen loves a song (personal experience says this), but I can't be the only one who thinks that Girls Aloud so much as pronouncing the word 'anarchy' is hilarious. And dammit it may be a huge marketing ploy or whatever, but I still want to see it. Call it vicarious wish-fulfilment for all my macabre fantasies of taking a hockey stick to my Chemistry teacher...

I know I've yammered and gone berserk with the parentheses and this really had nothing at all to do with fashion, but- here's to all schoolgirls and former schoolgirls, wherever you are. May we never grow stodgy...

*I've always wanted to try drag. Sadly, the only time I thought I'd get a chance to dress up that way was out of the Shakespeare Society- that was the college drama club- cupboard, which turned out to be perfect for the boys to dress up like girls since it was full of eye-wateringly shiny, girlie-looking clothes (they put on Shakespeare, you see). I ended up in a skirt, since the most macho thing I could get out of there was a sword.

PS: A big THANK YOU to everyone for your get-well-soons! And I wasn't seriously ill, hungover or pregnant, so don't worry yourselves on that score.
images from ronaldsearle.blogspot.com and a random Google search.