You might want to start with the Intro, Part One and Part Two first.
On Part Two I realised that I had kind of jumped a section. Me becoming a Christian happened in 1995 but actually something else happened before then. In 1994, while I was still at Lower School this gorgeous baby arrived on the scene. It was my cousin V. Now why do I mention this birth and not D,M or K arriving, well I was definitely far too young to remember D being born as I was 4 days off being a month old when he arrived and when it comes to my other cousins, I don’t remember them any younger than about 6 or 7ish.
I remember going to visit V and my Auntie at the hospital. I remember holding V and knowing the even in my 9 year old self I had to protect her as much as I could at that age. Rich and I did things like teaching her to walk and talk. Now I think she knows more than me, she’s now 18 and has recently gone away to university – I feel really old!). She was home just for the weekend and she’s changed so much already but for the better. It’s kind of funny!
Anyway back to the normal thread, following the issues in Year Six, it was decided that at the end of the academic year, that as well as moving up to Year Seven, I would move class. I made friends quite easily once I was in my new class. My two closest friends were Cat and Amy. We didn’t always get on but I think most of the time it was okay. There was a horrible moment part way into Year Seven when rumours/truths of what happened got circulated. I was genuinely terrified that people wouldn’t want to be my friends any more. Thankfully most of them were grow up enough to give me the benefit of the doubt and ignore the rumours.
It was about this time that me and Brains started hanging out more. We’d known each other from lower school but had kind of grown apart during our first two years in middle school. But this was the year in a way, Brains had “rescued” me.
I’d been going to the same church for my whole life and the idea of moving church scared me to death lol. Somehow I ended up going to Powerhouse which was the youth group for my age group at Woodside Church. I then ended up staying at Woodside until about 2006.
It first started with me going to Powerhouse then towards the end of Year Eight at school Brains and I moved up to Yoof to get used to it before moving officially in September 1999 when both me, Brains and the rest of our year group moved up to Upper Schools, where some of the rumours/truths started again.
But first up there was something awesome that happened that summer. At the end of July 1999, my Dad, Rich and I got baptised, we were also joined by our family friend called Freda. We were the first four to get baptised at Little Staughton Baptist Church for the first time in fifty years or something like that. I went first and it was freezing even thought it was the middle of Summer! I remember inviting a bunch of my friends from school or church and none of them came it was all family instead but it was still cool. Brains was going to come but she was at Stoneleigh and it was the year that it was flooded out and an emergency evacuation of the site took place.
Back to school……….
Unfortunately my class were less accepting and it was just the start of the bullying that followed me through Upper School. Most of it was due to me being a bit of a teacher’s pet. I was of thinking that if I wanted to succeed then I needed to work hard. If that meant reading extra or going home and asking my Dad/my Mum/other relative or friend about what they knew on a particular subject then I would.
Specifically in ICT, by Year Nine most of the stuff I was being taught, I’d already covered at home with my Dad and his knowledge from Excel and Word as per what he uses at work himself. Some ICT lessons, I’d finish my work within the first fifteen minutes or so, and then help other people in the class with their work. Now I gave up ICT, at the end of Year Nine as it was taking up a vital slot in my timetable for other subjects – and I think it took up two slots rather than one if you did it at GCSE and for something that I pretty much already knew they would be wasted lessons. So now as a 26 year old, who regularly writes spreadsheets and creates presentations I wish I had an ICT qualification to show to employers what I can do rather than trying to show what I can do just from my CV.
So that’s part three done, part four to follow…….
