33. San (The Sanatorium)

There’s a Sanatorium block at school. It’s at the very end of the long corridor past the Upper Fourth classrooms, well away from the dorms. Matron has a surgery down there and that’s where we are weighed and measured every year. I hate weighing and measuring day. We have to line up outside Matron’s room down the length of the corridor and one by one we are called into the surgery. They leave the door open and I’m sure Webb deliberately calls out our height and weight loudly so that as many girls in the queue outside the room can hear. It’s so embarrassing. I am always heavier (but not taller) than the other girls in my class. I wish I didn’t have to go through this humiliating ritual every year. What is the point of it anyway?

San is where girls are supposed to go when they are not well. I’ve never go to San. And I’ve never been unwell enough to stay in bed. Except once. The thing is you have to have a temperature for Matron to let you stay in bed. It doesn’t matter how ill you feel. When I have my period my belly hurts so much, the cramps are so painful, but I am never allowed to stay in bed. I asked once and Webb said I was being dramatic and anyway I have to get used to it because that’s what having periods is like and life can’t stop just because I have a period. Message received and understood Mrs Webb.

Caz, Emma and I tried once to make ourselves sick enough to stay in bed. We drank a mixture of shampoo, deodorant and cordial to see if we could make ourselves vomit and just before matron came in we put our tongues on the radiator so that our temperatures would be high when she used the thermometer. Neither of those things worked and we were all sent down to breakfast. It was wort a try through.

Last term there was a bug that went round  the boarders and for one day the whole dorm was made to stay in bed. It was so good, we each got a bottle of Lucozade and some dry toast, served to us on a tray, in bed! It was like a party. None of us felt that bad so really it was just fun to have a blip in our normal routine.

This term, the school is getting bigger, there are more boarders and I think they have run out of beds, so they have turned the San into a dorm block. Each room sleeps two girls and I am sharing with Emma. I am so happy. I like sharing with Emma. She is quiet and kind and we both love sleeping. I have a picture of Davide on my bedside table and a poster of David Bowie above my bed. Emma jokes about Davide and thinks I secretly take the photo into bed with me at night, which I don’t. Emma loves Supertramp, she has a poster of theirs above her bed and sometimes we listen to their music before lights out.

I said dreamer, you’re nothing but a dreamer…

When it’s time for lights out we have this funny little ritual we go through; we take a sip from our dream potion bottles (Emma has brought us each a tiny little glass bottle with a cork stopper, they have a magic dream potion inside). We say goodnight, and just go to sleep. We don’t spend hours talking or trying to read with torches, we don’t creep out of bed into another dorm. We just say goodnight and go to sleep.

That's why I love sharing with Emma. It's so easy and calm. And we laugh a lot.

Everyone is in San this term; Minty (Sam), Caz, Michelle, Nicky, Helen, Sarah, Cathy, Tina, Mandy…

Now that we are older and we are in the Upper Fifth the rules seem less strict. We are allowed to play music, I think. Or maybe we're just breaking the rules, I'm not quite sure. San is a long way from Matron’s office, which is up in the boarding area where all the dorms are so she won't hear us anyway, no one will.

We have a little freedom, or at least we have the feeling of freedom. Webb and Dodds aren’t there all the time, so we can break the rules and not always, always get caught. The San corridor reverberates to the sound of Under Pressure by David Bowie and Queen, we have decided that this is our theme tune this term. I spend hours on my bed listening to and singing along to Life on Mars and writing letters to my friends in Italy.

San is like a little haven, the only dampener is Michelle. She is Webb’s daughter and it’s like having a spy in our midst. She tries to fit in with us but we all know she tells tales so we can’t trust her. She walks around with her sweater sleeves pulled over her hands, clutching the ends with her fingers, talking to herself and always looking annoyed. She doesn’t really join in with us and she seems more interested in lessons than in having fun. I can’t imagine having Webb as my mum or being Matron’s daughter. I think that is the definition of hell. I feel sorry for Michelle but it's not enough to make me like her.

I really like Minty though. She is so… so… everything I want to be. She’s good at all the sports, she’s on the lax team and the netball team, she is tall and lean and muscly and she’s just one of the coolest girls. I like her name, Minty. Not one calls her Sam. I like the way her hair is thick and sticks out a bit, I like her freckles and her green eyes. I admire the way her skirt is just the right length; above her knees but not too short that it looks girly. I like the way she walks with a bit of a swagger. I like all the badges she has pinned to the front of her polo neck sweater, she always wears polo necks, not like me. She has a Team Captain badge and her house badge (I’ve lost mine) and her Form Captain badge. I only have one polo neck and I think I’ve lost that too. She appears so confident but without being arrogant, it just seems so natural to her to be popular. Sometimes we hang out in her dorm and sit on her bed listening to music. She likes Bowie too and we both know the words to Life on Mars off by heart. We lie across the width of the bed with our heads hanging off the edge and our legs up against the wall sining along with Bowie.

It's a god-awful small affair

To the girl with the mousy hair

But her mummy is yelling, "No!"

And her daddy has told her to go

Sometimes we fool around in her bed, just messing about. We snuggle and she tickles me and I laugh a lot. And then sometimes I think she’s ignoring me, I don’t know if we are really friends or not. I think it’s because I’m not sporty. All her friends are sporty.  She shares the dorm with Mandy and they are always going to matches together and playing rounders in the summer. I hate rounders. I hate everything to do with running and catching and being outside. I am definitely not one of the sporty girls. Swimming doesn’t count, for some reason, so I will always be on the periphery of her friendship group, not quite a close friend.

Minty wrote something in my diary the other day… I keep reading it. She called me darling and  wrote “you have lovely hair which is soft on my fingers”… and “Sofì likes to have her neck caressed”  and then said she should stop making advances because I have Davide. I’m spelling my name like that at the moment, I like it. Sofì. It’s Italian, obviously and it looks cool. And it’s what I want to call myself not what my parents have called me. Not that I’ve told them, they probably wouldn’t approve. I don’t think my parents would approve of me very much at all if they really knew me, but it’s ok, because they don’t and I’ll make sure it stays that way.

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David Bowie and Queen were the soundtracks to my life that year at school. Music was a lifeline, a portal, a way to escape the narrowness and monotony of life as a boarder. It still is today. My journey to work in the early morning, in my little car, listening to music (played rather loudly) or to an audio book, read by someone with a soothing voice, is still my way of escaping the stresses and strains of daily life. For just a little while I am in a time out of time, I sing and drum the steering wheel and I feel lighter. Or sometimes I play sad tunes and let myself cry or ruminate. I cannot imagine my life without a soundtrack.

I have such fond memories of San with Emma. I wasn't one of a popular, sporty girls and I didn't really have a best friend that year. Emma and I, in our little room, it just worked. It was easy and comforting. Emma was kind and funny and we both seemed to understand that it was ok not to have to try to be anyting other than we were. Our dorm felt like a little haven.

For years I longed to be like Sam Pearson Miles (Minty) and girls like her. I admired the sporty girls; Scoop and Sally Petter (or was is Pettit?). But that was just not me. I've never been sporty and would still far rather curl up on the sofa with a good book than run around in the cold!