Life is Full of Ups and Downs.

Highdown School, Emmer Green, Reading, Berkshire, England.

It is amazing that it is Friday again so quickly, guess it has always been this quick, just sometimes it seems slower.

When I was at school and things were not going so well the week seemed to be endless, especially when we had classes with an unpopular teacher.

Maths lessons took three times as long as an art class and music classes seemed to be finished before they started.

Except when the horrid boys decided to tease the teacher, he was such a nice shy man, he would blush bright red which made them persist in teasing him time and again.

All so they could see him turn puce and start to get extremely nervous that he would be seen by his colleagues.

They would carry on until he got so worried and nervous he would start to stutter and drip with sweat.

Really did not like the boys that did this, they did stop it when they realised how unpopular they had become with the rest of the class.

I think if they had picked on the teacher who bullied the class it would have been supported by the majority.

The music teacher was liked by most of the pupils as he allowed them to play pieces they liked and he was fun.

Soon the tormentors found they were isolated which was not what they liked so they stopped and faded into obscurity.

I recently looked up my old school and discovered that it is a very good school these days, it is not called The Grove anymore, it is called Highdown School and is linked to Microsoft and other computer companies based in Reading.

Really good to discover this, nice to see that my old school is no longer the worse school in town, as it was when my parents placed me there.

This was the school where the class teacher greeted us on the first day by telling us he did not expect any of us to achieve anything in life.

According to him we would be doing very well if we got managed to get jobs with Courage’s (local brewery).

Or Huntley & Palmers (biscuit factory) or Sutton Seeds (seed and bulb company).

These were the local companies, Reading was known for its beer, bulbs and biscuits, by the eighties the brewery moved to the outskirts of town.

And Sutton Seeds and Huntley & Palmers were both taken over by other companies, and both moved to other locations with different names.

In the eighties Microsoft and other computer companies moved into Reading and by the sound of it not only changed schools like Highdown but changed Reading from a county town into Silicone Valley England.

Think the pupils at Highdown School will be doing work experience at Microsoft and will be able to pick and choose where they will work.

The days of pupils being treated like we were at the Grove seem to be long gone now and Highdown School is a wonderful community school.

Life is full of ups and downs.