Schooldays are meant to be the happiest days of our lives, so Leicester Mercury writer Lee Marlow went back to his old haunt of Castle Rock High to see how things had changed.

Leicester Mercury reporter Lee Marlow left high school as a 13-year-old, 18 years ago, and found himself sitting next to the “year-eight school sweetheart”, Jaz, for his English lesson.

But the day had started with assembly.

I’m a jumble of “where-did-they-come-from?” nerves, but I can’t seem to wipe the stupid grin from my face. The nerves go, but the daft smile stays with me all day.

Inside, it looks and smells just like it did in 1983 – the quarry-tiled science corridors with their trademark faint whiff of escaped gas, the boys’ toilets reeking of carelessly directed urine and liberally sprayed bleach. Even dinner time smells reassuringly familiar. They can’t still be using the same oil, can they?

These days, though, everything seems smaller. The classrooms – newly revamped and boasting more on-line computers than Dixons – the once imposing school hall and even the teachers.

Today, I am Gulliver and Castle Rock is Lilliput.

But some things never change. School assembly, for instance, remains a head-on collision of well-intentioned teacherly advice and student indifference.

At 9am, six long rows of year-eight students look restless and bored.

They’re a few weeks into their second year at Castle Rock and no longer the wet-behind-the-ears whipping boys – it’s arguably the best year of the best years of their life.

A bell clangs with a deja-vu ring and the school hall moves en masse upstairs, to what was a home economics classroom but is now festooned with computer terminals.

Back then, the school had two BBC computers. Now, it has 45 terminals – with the promise of more to come.

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