Results: 1979

Gary trudged the last few yards of his morning paper round.

Late July and the rain was teeming down.

At 16, Gary was a bit old for a paperboy, and today a gut feeling, a sickly sensation in the pit of his stomach had dragged his spirits down.

The cause of this was the imminent delivery of the much dreaded exam results, which were due today, July 26^th 1979.

He had seen the postman delivering these life changing buff coloured envelopes, and dreaded the thought that his mum would be waiting for him at the kitchen table, eager to know what he had achieved.

He would sneak in, he decided, take the envelope, and open it in the privacy of his bedroom.

However that was not to be.

His mum was waiting in the kitchen, the envelope placed on the table, next to a steaming mug of tea, an expectant look on her face.

The sinking feeling continued, oh my God, he thought.

‘Go on, then, open it’, she said.

He picked up the envelope , opened it and shut his eyes, then opened them  gradually to reveal that that the A’s he imagined that he would get had been mistakenly entered as C’s.

Four C’s and a B, that was it, not A’s like he thought, like family, teachers, and friends assured him he would get.

He choked back tears as Mum uttered appropriately comforting words, how she was proud of him and how not getting ‘A’ passes was not the end of the world, that he still had plenty time.

He was only sixteen after all; he could still have two years at school if he wanted.

She had said something about him being one of the good guys like his dad, not someone who would set the world on fire, but someone who would do a good job and get on with it.

Getting on with it, that was what Life was all about according to Mum and Dad, he would just have to get on with it, that was what folk did.

As he sat at the kitchen table, not really knowing what to say, time itself seemed to stand still.

Unusually the radio was off, usually it was 'Good Morning Scotland' with John Milne and Douglas Kynoch,but today the clock ticked on, sculpting the silence and assuring him that time had not stopped.

This was, in many ways, the first day of the rest of his life, it was odd how exam results could dictate the collective futures of the multitude of schoolchildren before their adult lives had effectively started.

He had no idea what he wanted to do when he left school, university was not on the agenda unless he stayed on until 6^th year , and today he wasn’t sure about anything.

Maybe he would apply to the Civil Service like Dad, a steady office job, with a suit and briefcase.

These jobs were supposed to be secure, but the world was changing especially since Mrs Thatcher had become Prime Minister earlier in the year.

 A new era with a female Prime Minister, the early seventies had been pretty grim, what with power cuts, strikes and the ‘Three Day Week’, maybe this Mrs Thatcher would do some good, Mum had said, but Dad had countered this by calling the new Prime Minister a ‘bitch’.

He was too young to decide what to do with his life at the moment, and the school careers advisor hadn't been much use. 

He went to his room, leaving his mum gazing out the window , sipping her tea.

Casting the envelope and those thoughts aside, he switched on the stereo, with the volume up to 10. His record collection would get him through this, he thought, as he put the needle in the groove, and revelled in  the thundering drum intro of Motorhead's 'Overkill' , followed by the furious electric thrum of the bass, aye,  the music would get him through this.

He would worry about the results later, once the school holidays were over.