FRANCES WHITING

“The only thing that differs each year is my hairstyles, which start off badly in Year 1 with a pudding bowl cut”

As I told you recently we are moving house, which means coming across all sorts of things we haven’t used in years, so we can repack them to not use in the next house, and the one after that, until our children have to deal with it. It’s the circle of life.

Anyway, one of the boxes I unearthed was marked: “Fran, School Photos”, or as it should have been more accurately titled: “Bad Haircuts I have had.”

My parents dutifully purchased these photos year after year, just as I went on to do with my own children.

Parents everywhere do this despite the fact that these photos do no one any favours, and are the childhood equivalent of the adult passport photo.

I found those too, by the way, and I look like the head of an international drug cartel in every one. Why I am not automatically arrested at every airport I go to, I do not know.

What I do know, from looking through my school photos, is that in those days, parents just bought the one photo of the whole class.

This is different from today where we are able to buy the individual and class photos, the key ring, the calendar, the personalised mug, and the wallet-sized photos until we realise one day that none of this is necessary, and we have never, ever put one of these photos in our wallets.

Anyway, back to my school days photos, which look exactly the same year after year; four or five tiered rows, back rows standing, front row sitting, and an annoying girl with perfect plaits always getting to sit in the middle and hold the class sign.

I’m not bitter. Everyone has the same, fixed smile on their faces, except for one boy crossing his eyes and poking his tongue out.

It’s the same boy every year – in our case Ronnie Cordon.

Every school has its Ronnie Cordon, the naughty, slightly shady kid. I don’t know what became of ours, but I suspect he went into banking.

The only thing that differs each year is my hairstyles, which start off badly in Year 1 with a pudding bowl cut that I can only presume my mother gave me as some sort of punishment.

After that I am sporting a variety of very tight plaits or pigtails my mother has given me.

All the girls are wearing these but we have all rebelled by pulling out one very long and very thin strand of hair to hang beside our faces like pieces of limp spaghetti.

In Year 7, I have given myself what can only be described as an extreme side fringe – no wonder I never had any boyfriends in primary school.

What I do have is this boxful of bad photos, which I’m sure you do too, to remind us all that every kid goes through the awkward years and to be ever thankful that social media wasn’t around to record ours.