Learn from best days of your life

NEXT week hundreds of 11 and 12-year-olds will be experiencing that strange mix of intrepid excitement and sheer terror that only a ride on a number 35 bus or the first day at high school can induce.

Butterflies will take flight inside their stomachs, tears will be shed at the discovery that what was deemed cool in the school shoe and bag department in July are now out.

It's a stressful time, high school, and if you get it wrong on that first day it could colour your whole educational career.

There is no doubt that high school can be a pretty scarring experience. It's a time of trying to be independent, but also of desiring to fit in and be accepted by the crowd. For girls especially, cliques rule at school, and as a result words and deeds emanating from your classmates during those formative teen years can leave a mark long after the final school bell has rung.

I was reminded of this last weekend at the wedding of an old school friend. We met on the high school "visit day" that all pupils go through when still at primary, and were firm pals from then on.

She has always been a beautiful person, as she has an ability to get on with anyone. Unsurprisingly then, she was one of those people at school who always had a large group of friends, and was invited to every party going.

I, on the other hand, was the kind who ended up in detention after hitting a girl in first-year modern studies class because she'd said she'd only asked me to go the cinema because "everyone else was busy".

For some reason I wasn't top of the party invite list. Quite what went wrong I couldn't figure out – it might have been wearing ankle socks when black tights were de rigueur or perhaps my quick temper and ready sarcasm. But I think in the main it was the large chip on my shoulder because I was an out-of- catchment pupil, coming from an area of town no-one else had ever heard of, never mind set foot in.

I was obviously from the uncool side of the tracks, while they lived in places the 12-year-old me considered to be much more exotic and glamorous, such as Marchmont, Blackford, Bruntsfield, the Grange, and even Tollcross.

Of course I had many friends at school, but yet there was still a desire to be accepted by the Alpha girls. The kind who wore all the latest fashions, spent their Saturdays shopping in Miss Selfridge, Benetton and Mansfield Shoes and had every boy in the year falling at their trendy feet. These things seem vitally important at that age.

One of those girls was also a guest at the wedding. She and I have been involved with the same wider group of friends for years, but have had a very awkward relationship, probably due in some small part to envy on my side, but also because I felt she never hid her dislike of me while at school. Never got an invite to one of her parties that's for sure.

So it came as a surprise, when we began to talk about our stilted relationship, that I had apparently once made her feel desperately small when I casually dismissed her attempt to have a career in radio. To say I felt ashamed is putting it mildly, yet I cannot remember the incident. No doubt it was probably a vain shot at making her feel as belittled as I had felt through school – my one chance of being able to feel "superior" – but because for once it wasn't me on the sharp end the memory eludes me.

Similarly she couldn't recall any issues at school – well not for me anyway. She, though, had left after fourth year because she could no longer stand being ridiculed by the latest group of "trendies". That was news to me. It seems she didn't always "fit in" either.

But that's teenage girls for you – all wrapped up in their own emotions and heads with no real idea of what's going on in anyone else's.

If there's a moral to this story that all those starting high school next week might take with them, it's that while this is an incredibly important time in your life, you do well to remember it doesn't last forever. So leave all the bad stuff behind at the school gates. Take your education and friendships with you, and use any adversity to make you a better, stronger person. Don't keep it inside to throw in the faces of your tormentors years later. Be the bigger person.

And remember it really doesn't matter what colour your Rucanor bag is. In 20 years they won't be making them any longer.

Breathe easy
There are few things more terrifying than watching your child struggle to breathe. A week ago my son had his third asthma attack, and although we now know what to do in such an event, the rapidity of an attack never gets any less scary.

We went to St John's Hospital in Livingston for the first time, were whizzed through A&E and given a room on our own so as not to disturb the kids already sleeping in the main ward.

The staff, from nurses to doctors to play supervisors, were all fantastic and ensured my four-year-old was never scared by what was going on – even when his chest was being X-rayed, while his face was covered in an oxygen mask and he was attached by various wires to monitors.

Asthma is frightening. There are 5.2 million people in the UK receiving treatment for asthma and out of those 1.1 million are children. My son is one of them. And while asthma may cost the NHS £889 million a year, every penny is worth it.