Soft with fatigue.

Ergh. I've dragged myself from my filthy pit to write to you. I've had a problem with Valentine's Day since I was four years old and I'll have a problem with it for the rest of my life.

Charlwood was a private school, god knows why I went to private school at four years old but I suppose superior education seemed ideal at the time. I have a twin brother, Daniel, therefore we have been through school together, side by side, since the beginning of time. I've only just realized this and it's pretty cool, having an allie as close as a twin brother through all of the horror's of school life.

My family will always remember a teacher from that school, Miss Potter, we'll never forget her name, who endlessly and relentlessly picked on my brother like he was an annoying tumour attached to her eyelid. She was a very bad teacher. Oddly, I remember how we used to have to say a prayer before lunch or we wouldn't be allowed to eat, and how uncomfortable I felt even then. I remember Dan whispering venomously to all the kids at our table that we didn't believe in god, like we were admitting to having a heroine addiction, and all the children gasped and one hissed, 'I'm telling!' There was a milk scheme where one pupil was appointed daily(or was it weekly?) to control milk distribution. It was a high accolade. When it was some one's birthday they were allowed to stand up in front of assembly and be sung to. It was a very, very small school. Once, when my little sister was born, my brother and I announced her birth to everyone like we were royalty. I felt very important that day. But that school was not very good at making its students feel important. In hindsight, having left in Year 1 and gone to a comprehensive (due to the dreaded Miss Potter, no less,) and as I get older, I keep finding endless flaws in the way it was organised. I have a shamefully appalling memory and yet I remember so much from Charlwood, and I was only four years old.

I remember the competition to draw a rabbit. I remember the big cement tunnel in the playground that was submerged in a hill, (more likely a small mound,) so that it looked like a cave. I remember the old wooden crates and tires that you could play with at lunch, and the library. I remember the annual competition to choose a Harvest Queen and King... was it harvest? Or May Day? I think it was May Day actually. They were always Year 2's and they were always the prettiest and they always wore flowers in their hair and got to dance around the May pole and wear the stunning bridesmaid's dress of my dreams. I hated them. I was never Mary and I was never May Queen, or Princess. I was a cloud in the Nativity play and my brother was a robin. It was always the same girl who got to be Mary. I remember sitting in a circle and the teacher asking who would like to be Mary and even though I put my hand up I knew I wouldn't be picked and I knew who would. And she was. It's still the same to this day. I suppose I have a bit of a complex about May Queen's.

So, where's this all going, hey? The thing is this; I don't think school's should acknowledge Valentine's Day at all. It doesn't have any significance to the real world and only sets children up to suffer disappointment. But no, Charlwood decided that it would be super kitsch if all the Year 2's made a Valentine's card for someone in reception. [DISCLAIMER: I don't know how much of this memory I have fabricated or imagined, but every year it comes back to me with distinct clarity and horror and I can't help but believe that it is true. Then again, I'm adamant that when I watched my Dad arrest someone in Woolworth's he said 'I'm arresting for you ser-to-sigh-etty.' Which, in retrospect, is not true at all.] They sat each reception child in rows in the hall, facing the assembly door, a firing line. I have a vague memory of being elevated, like I was on a platform, but maybe that just illustrates the extent of my agony and solitude. The Year 2's filed in, embarrassed yet wildly impressed at their card making skills and the thought that were were expressing emotion to another pupil. Pink, red, sparkles, PVA glue, buttons, magazine cut-outs, asymmetrical hearts, fluff, finger prints. The cards fluttered in as if they were floating on an puff of glittery sweetness. The reception children twitched anxiously in their seats. Would the snotty, smelly boy give his card to me? The one who used to try and hold my hand at break time? Or would the very grown up, good looking stud, who had a trendy hair cut and a pretty mum? The one who was always May Day King and Joseph. Slowly, the hand-made masterpieces were distributed and excited chatter ensued. It was loud, and consuming, and somehow managed to throw an invisibility cloak over me in my small silence. In my patience. In my hope. I think I may have made a tiny, desperate prayer then, just a little one, like the time I prayed that Mum and Dad would let me stay up to watch You've Been Framed. The prayer drifted above me in the air like stagnant gas. The possibility was hanging on with all its might. I was hanging on, my heart pounded with pleading, 'Please, please, please.' Then, like a thousand tons of hot, harsh air, the truth hit me full in the face and feelings. No one had made me a card. No one. Not even the snotty, smelly boy. I was alone and lonely and stayed sat on my little school chair, devastated. I remember crying and needing to go to the toilet and needing to go home and needing to pull the head off every happy face in that hall. The crying overcame me. I was heaving heavy sobs out across the hall like the ceiling had just caved in on top of me, devastated.

So how did Charlwood resolve this abominable mistake? Mrs. Lamb, my teacher, haphazardly doodled some kind words on a piece of red card and folded it in half. I became the kid who'd got a Valentine's from the teacher. My brother taunted me with his card for what felt like weeks, but I suppose that was his role, the smug twin brother who got the chocolate milk. I cringe to think back to it. The burnt heart-shaped blotch in my memory, singed and steaming.

These sort of memories, these harrowing experiences as a child, they really do effect your whole perspective. Now, often, I feel like I'm the one missing out. The one who'll always be waiting for her Valentine's, who'll always look to Valentine's day with dread and hope, who, upon hearing the postman push letters through the door will, despite herself, run downstairs in angst and anticipation. Yet the one who'll always, inevitably, receive a little note from her Mum, or a heart felt recognition of the past from her sister, or a hastily scribbled piece of scrap paper from her teacher.