Graduation
Yesterday was what we call sailor-hat day in the town where we live: the day when graduating high-school students wearing naval-style caps parade round the streets celebrating on impromptu floats bedecked with birch-boughs.
As I recall, my last day at school was a much lower-key affair: we did pretty much nothing, and went home at lunchtime. There was a celebration of sorts on the day our exam results came through: a few of us gathered in the Royal Arms on High Street and spent the afternoon drinking. I had at least one bottle of 1080 cider too many (do they even still make that stuff?) and felt obliged to vomit in an alleyway while staggering home.
My university graduation made for more of a show: I donned a batcape & mortar-board and was handed my certificate on-stage at the Royal Albert Hall, with my mother, father and sister all in the audience. That night a bunch of us got stoned at the flat in Wimbledon where I’d lived until a couple of months before, and I slept, though barely, on the floor in the lounge.
