FOR the past few months my past has been coming back to haunt me. It all began last July when I was contacted by an old schoolfriend who's organising an school reunion for this coming October.

Since then, various chums I've not seen for nearly 20 years have also discovered my whereabouts and have been writing to me, phoning me up and sending me emails to give me the low-down on what's been happening to them during the intervening decades.

Those I've heard from seem to have done extremely well for themselves, considering we went to a low-performance south London comprehensive. But then, the high achievers are bound to be the keenest on reunions.

They've also been sending me old photos to remind me of school events, such as when I played a rather gawky fairy in our school's production of Gilbert and Sullivan's Iolanthe. Embarrassingly, I still have the same haircut.

Most amusing of all, however,is a rediscovered holiday diary written by me and my 'best friend' of 1980, Sarah-Jane Denslow, when we were both 17.

Although I remember our two weeks camping in the South of France, I had no recollections of keeping this journal, which Sarah-Jane's mother came across recently in her attic.

Iwas alarmed to hear that Mrs Denslow had read it. We were teenagers, after all. But I had nothing to fear. What seemed so daring and outrageous to us then now sound so tame.

There's no mention of falling into alcoholic stupors, although one evening we "got merry on two glasses of wine and sang songs from Oliver!" And it appears it was several days before we were brave enough to sunbathe topless, or TOPLESS as Sarah-Jane wrote in big, bold letters.

We spent many innocent hours scuba diving with "Pelly-Legs Pete" and "Dennis the Deep Sea Menace", while our disco nights were livened by by "Ivor the Jiver" and "Sleeping Bag Steve", who apparently told us some jokes which, as I noted, "must have been very vulgar as we didn't understand them".

Ido recall this being the first time I fell in love. But again, the details suggest it was more Mills and Boon than Jackie Collins. The boy who swept me off my feet at the campsite nightclub walked me back to our tent and then slept outside it. No steamy sex romps. No all-night orgies. The next morning's diary entry begins "Rice Krispies for breakfast". Makes you weep, doesn't it?

In our school class at the time it was whispered that some of the girls were sleeping with their boyfriends, getting drunk and indulging in vices we were (and probably still are) too naive to imagine.

It's blatantly obvious to me now that, no matter what we thought of ourselves at the time, Sarah-Jane and I were about as reprobate as Julie Andrews in The Sound Of Music.

This is what worries me most about the reunions, I must get a different hairstyle before October.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.