For some reason ( to this day I can't figure out why ) I was bullied from day one at my secondary school. In Britain, you start secondary school at age 11 ish. I was a short, red headed girl and I thought , not worthy of much attention. I didn't dress drifferently from the other girls ( strict school uniform ), I wasn't a 'swot'. As far as I could see, there wasn't anything to single me out.

Yet I was picked on constantly. For my hair, the way I wore it, whether in plaits or loose or what ever. For wearing wellies when it was pouring with rain and we were on a field trip! For being short. For talking with a 'standard english accent' ( not a slang accent, but not at all unusual at this school ). For walking through the school grounds (???) on my own, for walking through the school grounds with a friend! It didn't seem to matter, my place was obviously in the wrong.

I must comment that the majority of this bullying came from a group of girls who weren't even in my class. I didn't even know their names ( there were 300 girls in my year at school ). They didn't know mine!!!

Mostly it made me feel confused. I had no feelings for these girls one way or the other, why didn't they just leave me alone? The rest of the time, it pissed me off. But I knew I shouldn't rise to their bait. I was determined they wouldn't 'win'.

Yet there was little I could do about it. If I went to my parents and they went to the school, you knew all that would happen would be that the school would ask for the girls' names and I could only tell them what classes they were in! Then somehow it would come out that I'd gone to my parents etc. and that would really give the bullies something to get hold of.

The worst day was when these girls decided that they were going to get another girl to beat me up. Why? I haven't the faintest idea! We were coming from lunch break and everyone was filing up the stairs. Suddenly, a girl I didn't know started shoving me from behind, just enough to unbalance me but not enough to actually push me over. She was telling me "You're for it" ( "I'm going to do something nasty to you") and then she started grabbing the collar of my shirt and yanking backwards. Of course the teacher who monitered the stairs at this time of day had just left her post to talk to someone and didn't see me being throttled. She, of course, reappeared just as I turned round and kicked the girl in the stomache,who then fell down the stairs we were standing on. Apart from a couple of bruises she was fine, I was in trouble.

But that did it. I was still subject to taunting and having my bag grabbed and slung on low roofs etc. but nobady actually laid hands on me again. But it made me determined that I should be as much NOT like the girls that bullied me as possible. If they were going to bully me anyway, I might as well enjoy myself and give them something to concentrate on. I became a hippy. It may sound strange, but this was during the 'Punk Era' and at school there were two groups. Punks or 'Casuals'. So I was neither. I bought clothes from charity shops, wore beads and head bands. I embroidered "Love" on my school bag.

The girls still picked on me but the more outrageous I dressed the more pathetic their taunting became. I started laughing openly at them. By the time I was 15 they finally got bored and left me alone.

The point of this rant is just that. I reacted to being bullied by being furious. It could just as easily have been a reaction of depression, regardless of having a loving family and some good friends. I'm not saying that these girls never upset or made me cry, but my gut reaction was to lay the blame squarely where it belonged.

But there are plenty of people I went to school with who are convinced I was bullied because I was a hippy!

Inattention and woolly thinking are the reasons bullying exists.

TTFN M'Lady P.