As if going to big school, and having to wear long trousers in September 1968, wasn’t alien enough, what I didn’t anticipate were the new words I’d have to learn.

We were told about prefects.  At my first playtime I expected to see a fleet of Ford Perfects lined up on the rugby pitch.  How surprised I was to see several bigger boys, adorned with their badges of authority, checking no one ventured onto the rugby field.  The rugby field confused me too.  Why had they built two longer poles above the football goalposts? Clearly they’d had a job-lot delivered?  And where was the penalty spot?

During the lunchbreak we learned about a thing called “the tuck shop”.  I was a massive fan of the ITV series Robin Hood, which ran in the early ‘60s; I thought we’d meet one of Robin’s merry men.  I was, however, praying it wasn’t a travelling barber’s.

We were also informed, should we ever need to temporarily leave our Tooting school, we’d require an exeat.  At primary school we’d not studied Latin.  We’d learned how to a throw a beanbag, pretend to be a tree during Music and Movement and drawn lots of dinosaurs; we’d never had to conjugate Latin verbs.

But the most confusing word for me was: homework.  My inability to get my head round this word was duly reflected in my 1973 O-level results.

Gloria sic transit (Gloria was ill on the journey).