7th September 2020

Faith Liversedge: Back to school special

Can you feel it? A slight cooling of the air, the breeze through the trees, the silk inside a chestnut shell?

The grass is jewelled.

Jet planes meet in the air to be refuelled.

All those things we know so well.

This is actually my favourite time of year. I still get a slight whiff of that back-to-school feeling, which weirdly, I always enjoyed.

Did you?

I saw it as a great excuse to buy new stuff – shoes, pencil cases and school bags – and to find out what Pepsi and Shirlie had been up to all summer.

If only I’d been to school with a Pepsi and Shirlie.

But around the time of the late 80s, the real kudos came from arriving at the school gates with a branded piece of kit.

It’s weird to think this because it’s a bit naff now, but branded gear was all the rage then. It seems that this was the point when corporates saw what they could do by slapping their logo on gifts – especially for the young.

Take those Natwest piggy banks. Who didn’t have one of them? I’d made a half-hearted attempt to collect the set, but I only made it as far as the one in the nappy. I didn’t even know until now that there was a Sir Nathanial Westminster (who sounds like a right laugh). But you’d have to have saved £100 in 2 years to get him.

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