September. Back to school?  Well -  where I’m living, not exactly so.  Schools here have been put on a four day week in order to reduce costs and I am amazed  that many people who live here are indifferent to this.  Clearly, for them the word school does not carry the same connotations  as it does  for me; when I hear it, my body and mind ignite with feelings of pleasureable anticipation and I have to restrain the urge to rush out and buy stationery.

This is not the same as saying that school was an entirely wonderful experience for me.  It was  sometimes wonderful, sometimes dreadful, but always intense.  School (a series of  state schools in  the UK)  was,  more than anything, drama. There were  passionate friendships and equally passionate enmities. There was an endless series of new experiences, from team games and violin lessons to chemistry experiments and calculus (again, some good, some awful). There were gold stars and also bizarre  punishments such as  kneeling with one’s  face to the wall in the corridor during break time, or reciting the Lord’s Prayer twenty times without error...  There were tragedies, as when, in elementary school, a boy I knew was killed while crossing the road; there was bliss, which  could come in the  strangest of  forms, for example, whilst standing half frozen with my arms extended  to support my angel wings  during a candlelit  nativity play in the school yard, when I happened to look up and notice how many stars there were. 

And, of course, there were teachers: a race of eccentric giants who might with one hand fling open a  new window on the world, and with the other, hurl a wooden board eraser at the child sitting next to me. I will never forget them: Miss Robinson, my gentle elementary school  teacher with her child-like braids, ankle socks and sandals; the fiery Mr McIntosh, who would  pace up and down reciting  poetry (Tennyson, Burns, anything with a strong beat) for hours on end; the terrifying  Miss Smith who stalked the corridors of St George’s Primary in her dagger-like heels and  penned admonitory  letters  which had the parents quaking over supper at night.

At  secondary school,  the relationships were if anything even more intense. Latin was taught by Ms Edmonds,  a once brilliant woman infuriated by what she saw as the stupidity of her pupils; the slightest error drove her almost to apoplexy - and yet,  when I  fainted during class she caught me as I fell and carried me to the sick bay.  I remember too (with shame) the unfortunate, inexperienced  young woman who came to teach us religious studies and was mocked and humiliated by the class until she vanished  mid-term; she never returned, and, we were told later, abandoned the profession entirely.

The school I attended for the sixth form (11^th and 12th grade) was again a state school, but an unusually luxurious one.  Set in acres of woodland, the  main building had been designed by William Morris and the original windows and wallpapers were carefully preserved. The sixth formers had a relaxation room up in the attic space, filled with  sofas, armchairs and cushions. Additional class rooms were scattered in temporary buildings in the woods, and so long breaks were allowed between lessons to enable us to make our way from one place to  another.  Perhaps wisely, it  being so easy to hide, there were only two school rules that I ever heard of: No Smoking and No High Heels (the noise on the wooden stairs drove the headmistress, Mrs Phillips, wild).  The atmosphere was relaxed in the extreme.  A teacher crossing the grounds during recess might enquire about my home life, engage me in a long  conversation about some aspect of the news or a discussion of my essay on The Canterbury Tales; she might invite me to her home, even engage me to do her gardening or walk her dog. Indeed, when things were strained at home, I went to live with one of my teachers, Brenda Pye, and ever since have seen her as part of my family. I must have spent half my time at Buller’s Wood in her bright art studio-cum-classroom with its forest of paint-smeared easels and crowded cupboards where objects such as animal skulls, a stuffed crocodile,  willow pattern plates,  embroidered saris and  desiccated oranges were stored while they waited  their turn to star in a Still Life.  There was a darkroom and an endless supply of paint and good quality paper; the windows looked down on treetops and grass... who could want anything more?  Can I go back, please?

Or, failing that, can my children have something as good?