Me and Four boys, or Five Individuals?

My God. I go away for seven days on holiday, and I come back to umpteen posts to read. Mind you, I shouln't really complain: they are all jolly good.

Anyway, I went on my last ever school ski trip (I'm one of those very sad people to have gone on nearly every one since Year 7) to Austria this week. What made this trip unique however, was the fact that I was the only Upper Sixth Former on the trip.

So what the hell am I getting to? Give me a minute.

I am well known, bordering on notorious, for being able to get on with pupils of any age. I am also well known however, for finding it difficult to 'strike a note' with those whom I have little in common. If anything, that is.

So the ultimate challenge arrived last Saturday: share a bedroom with four Lower Sixth boys (yes four, not two or three), for a week.

Aside the fact that they have no apparent interest in discussing current affairs, or any other 'detached' or 'impersonal' subject, I knew this was going to be harder still: in brief, it was going to get personal.

I swore myself at the beginning of the trip that I would strive to take it as a 'learning curve', an experience to 'widen my horizons', to use a daft cliche.

So how did it go? Despite my initial concerns, not badly at all would be the general response. True enough, we didn't share that much in common: while I prefer to discuss my usual waffle, they dwell on....well, ummm, sex. Just sex. Sex, the whole of sex, and nothing but sex. (Sorry about the law connotation, P.A.). I hope at this point you can appreciate I'm stumbling on a bit of a 'challenging' topic for me.

Masturbation. Sex. Fantasies. You name it, we discussed it. GASP......SHOCK HORROR. Yes, I use the correct personal pronoun: we. (Save the 'fantasies' part - I only listened. Honestly.)

So why do I dwell on this? In short, this trip has taught me about something which a 1000 Citizenship or PSHE lessons could never do: tolerance.

Tolerance. Tolerance. Tolerance. Say it out loud to yourself: then consider this: what does it mean to you? Secondly, are you are really a tolerant person? Is such an abstract concept really that important?

You may (like I do) think that scoffing at Chardonnay de Pitsea with her three little horrors and Deric as a boyfriend (who happens to be serving time for G.B.H.) doesn't do much harm. I know that I could have walked out of the Lower Sixth's room in disgust, and asked for a new room. I probably would have got one too. Like you might have gotten a cheap laugh at your snobbish arrogance re Miss Pitsea. (cloaked by the way, in one's seemingly impregable intellect and air of self-superiority).

But I didn't. I stuck at it. And do you know what? I'm bloody pleased I did. That room, for me, came to reflect our world: there are billions of other people, all of whom have different opinions, beliefs and values. I do not write this blog as some sort of self-congratulation, but simply to ask you all to reflect: how do wars break out? How do millions die every year?

I bet if you think about it, you will soon realise. Intolerance is an evil in our world, which sadly in quite impossible to eradicate. But if we all did our bit, if we all said to ourselves - "No, I'm going to accept that others are different, and I respect that", then our lives would be a whole lot better.

And by the way, it is actually quite refreshing to discuss issues of taboo: how else do we break down prejudice and intolerance?

N