The Joys of Small Town Living.

Posted by Katy Regan at 22:19 on 3 Mar 2010

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Nothing like being with youngsters to make you feel elderly. I went to visit the local comp yesterday where I seem to have become involved in a unlikely way. I say unlikely because I was always quite literally the naughtiest girl in school - expelled from primary school / suspended on a regular basis from secondary school so it seems hilarious to me that now, in my twilight years, some English teacher at a local high-school, much like the one I went to seems to think that with my writing credentials I am the perfect candidate to talk to their six formers about ‘career success' and ‘motivating yourself'. Oh if my ex head-master could see me now!

I talked for ten minutes to two hundred and fifty students about my ‘career path' and how I had got to the heady heights of writing a novel and spending most of my time in my dining room in a Sainsbury's jumper shitting myself and drinking too much wine alone.

Ah, how we project an image so different from reality. They were very attentive, seemed to be enthralled (I say seem, many of the front row giggled to the extent that I wondered if I'd left my flies undone).

Then I joined said English teacher in his class to talk to small groups about my career path and how I ‘made life enhancing choices in my life' (like have a baby with my friend and then willingly send myself half mad by deciding to write a novel about it). At the end, one student, looked about twenty four if you ask me, but was obviously only eighteen because he was in the upper sixth said. "And Katy, did you get your bank card back?" I looked at him blank.

"Sorry?" I said. "The other night" he smiled, quite innocently. "You were in the pub on your own, asking for your bank card. It had been behind the bar for weeks and then..." 

"Oh GOD"  Now I knew where I'd seen him before. He was the fresh-faced man who worked at the local pub!   Great, so local lush, woman so drunk she left her bank card behind the bar and forgot about it for so long that when she collected it had forgotten her pin number, was now giving'motivational talks' to sixth formers. Oh the joy of the small community. You couldn't be anonymous if you wanted to be.

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