An email from my old school and the spiral that followed

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Five years ago, I got the email that I had, without realising, been waiting for my whole adult life. It was from my old secondary school asking me to come and do a speech for the sixth form.

Here’s what followed in my brain:

Firstly, pure joy. Surely one definition of success is being asked to return to speak at your own school. I’ve made it!

Then it started to feel weird that it had come at a time when success-wise it could be argued that I was in something of a trough. That’s not to say that peaks weren’t a-coming. The biggest peaks of all. I like to live my life in blind optimism. But maybe I could have expected this email the decade before, when I worked in radio and had won an award, for example.

So then I started thinking about what a crippling disappointment I would be to the students. I’m a nobody. A nothing. I looked at a list of my school’s notable alumni on Wikipedia to see who I was a poor substitute for. The Bootstrap Cook Jack Monroe, Jane Root, controller of BBC2 and Natalie Emmanuel from Hollyoaks.

Even my own dad, when I told him about this talk, said, “Oh, how did you find out about that?” Like I’d won a competition to do it.

It started to feel ridiculous that I’d been asked. Why me? I’ve got school friends who are doctors, partners in law firms, psychologists and teachers. My friend Steph designed Wembley Stadium. Kind of. In that she once made a prop for a TV show of an architect’s model of a stadium and did one with a big arch. A short time later they unveiled the new Wembley stadium. With a big arch. I’m not successful. I haven’t even got a pension.

And then I thought about how long ago I left the school. I was there from 1986 to 1993. So this would be like someone coming to give me a talk in sixth form, who’d attended between 1958 and 1965. They would have seemed like the oldest person alive. I would have thought, “Why have they got this old fuddy duddy in?” Because we said words like fuddy duddy in 1993.

A memory of a radio show feature started to come back to me. I had been challenged to get something named after me and I decided to go for the newly built wing of my old secondary school.

I rang them up and suggested to the business manager that it be called the Annabel Port Wing. Their response was, “Sorry to sound a bit mercenary, but of what benefit is this to us?”

I was forced to sink very low and said in desperation, “But I’m Annabel Port. I’m on the school Wikipedia page.”

“Right, that’s not something I go on,” he told me.

“You should! I’m there. And a girl from Hollyoaks.”

“Oh yes,” he said, perking up considerably. “Natalie Emmanuelle. I do know her.”

I did not succeed in this challenge.

Suddenly, a new emotion emerged. Annoyance. There were only eight people on the notable past pupils on Wikipedia. Why hadn’t they asked me to do a speech sooner? I’d left 28 years ago! I went from feeling embarrassed that they’d asked someone so lowly to feeling outraged that it took them so long.

It was at this point that I got another email from the school, which mentioned there would be two of us doing a speech. Me and another past pupil, who is the head teacher of a local primary school, but I wouldn’t know her as she left much more recently. Why did she get fast-tracked? And am I actually the backup speaker in case she drops out?

Considering I was only asked four weeks before the event, which is kind of short notice, I was also now wondering if someone backed out and I was a last-minute desperate replacement.

Anyway, of course I said yes to doing it. Figuring that I’d panic about it closer to the time. And, in a cliffhanger more thrilling than who shot J.R., I’ll tell you about the car crash of a speech next week.