Scan Magazine

By Maria Smedstad

Before starting school in England, I found myself trawling through the shops of my nearest town in an apprehensive daze, as I tried to gather the garments needed for my school uniform. If anyone reads this who is in fact English, you may frown in bewilderment at this thought, but as no one had exactly explained to me what the official rules of a school uniform were, I genuinely found the whole thing to be a mystery.

Having purchased an ill-fitting grey skirt and a horrific shirt, I turned up for my first day of school. I was taken to an office, where one of my future teachers looked me up and down dispassionately, then dug around in a drawer until she found a crumpled old school tie, which I sort of wrapped around my neck a few times before being sent on my way. I won’t mention the shop from which I bought my skirt and shirt, but I can tell you that I left a small trail of static sparks in my wake and that everything itched. Stuffing the itchy shirt inside the itchy skirt seemed idiotic, so I didn’t. Around day four I got cold during a lesson and put on a jumper. The sight of me with my shirt untucked, wearing a non-school jumper became too much for one of my teachers, who stopped the lesson to tell me off. You may shake your head in disbelief, but I still didn’t understand what I was doing wrong. (Largely because, unfortunately, the teacher had a severe case of lazy eye, so I didn’t know she was talking to me.) Some of my newly found friends, more sympathetic towards a clueless foreigner, gradually filled me in, until I finally felt I understood the rules. That is until charity non-uniform day arrived. My friends again patiently tried to explain, but in the end snapped in exasperation. ‘Just turn up in your jeans and bring a can of tinned beans.’ Which I did – still not completely understanding why.

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Maria Smedstad moved to the UK from Sweden in 1994. She received a degree in Illustration in 2001, before settling in the capital as a freelance cartoonist, creating the autobiographical cartoon Em. She writes a column on the trials and tribulations of life as a Swede in the UK.