The fact of the matter is that I, like a Master Tom Livingston, attend a single-sex boarding school in the middle of nowhere. But my life is undoubtedly much, MUCH more of a struggle, as my school is : a) All girls, b) In England.

Yes, this is no ordinary learning establishment. Oh no. In this, the English equivalent of Camp X-Ray, we are forced to wear uniforms that consist of kilt-like garments and jumpers (or sweaters, as they are called in the States). We are also banned from wearing shoes with heels higher than one millimetre, i.e. fashionable ones. Each morning we wake at seven and each evening we are in bed with the lights out by ten. Our only form of entertainment during the long, cold English nights is sneaking into the Geography classrooms (just below the dormitories) and turning all the chairs to face the back wall. When we go in the next morning, we simply exclaim ‘I thought I heard the caretakers giggling down here last night!’ and turn the desks back with sighs.

Lessons last from eight a.m. until four p.m. and are compulsory, as in most fee-paying schools

But if you are unlucky, you could get Sport with Bill and Bob, lesbian lovers whose only pleasure in life (apart from lesbian sex) is torturing poor defenceless teenage girls. They make us run around freezing hockey pitches in our Games knickers in all weathers. The only escape is to plead injury, in which case you are immediately sent to the school Nurse, a pleasant-looking, jolly lady with no friends.

Of course, it is not all scary and messed-up inside these tall walls. On a Sunday afternoon, we girls will gladly spend hours poring over copies of CosmoGirl! or some other teenage magazine that gives us glimpse of what life is like for your average working-class girl who doesn’t live at school. Until we are found giggling about the Agony Aunt pages, which include questions such as ‘can I get pregnant from kissing?’. Even we sad, sheltered boarding-school ladies know the answer to THAT one. Of course you can, if you don’t use a condom. Anyway, if we are caught reading this ‘foul’ material, it is confiscated. I am sure this rule only exists so that the teachers can obtain sexual health education from the said Agony Aunt pages. Once or twice I’ve looked into the Teachers Lounge and seen them gathered around their leader, listening intently to which types of STDs one can catch from oral sex.

Another crappy rule is that no make-up is all

Some topics in this essay:
Camp X-Ray, Bill Bob, Agony Aunt, Head Shoulders’, Teachers Lounge, BOX TAMPONS’, Bill Ben, Dear Hockeysticks, Barbara Cartland, Miss Hockeysticks, aunt pages, boarding school, agony aunt pages, agony aunt,