Kirsty Bosley: Happiest days of my life are now – as I don't have to go to school

It's not because my street is situated well away from the main road. And it's not the blissful relaxation that comes from listening to the sound of my boyfriend's steady, rhythmic breathing.

It's the calm realisation that I don't have to get up to go to school.

The happy silence that fills my mind as I remember I don't have to knot a tie around my neck like a constricting noose. I don't have to put on the shiny blue trousers detrimental to both my static electricity levels and my street cred. I don't have the rubbish walk from our house to the gates, unremarkable in its familiarity, punctuated only by occasionally having one of my legs kicked into the other by one of my brother's mates. "One nil," they'd shout, as I quietly wished they'd fall down an open manhole.

Every time I think to complain about getting up to go to work, I take a moment to thank my lucky stars I'm going somewhere where I don't have to raise my hand to ask if I can go for a wee.

There's joy to be had when I remember I won't be given a long multiplication task by my boss today, with the added pressure that if I don't successfully solve it, my whole future is in jeopardy.

Even on the busiest days, with the most stressful deadlines, I momentarily close my eyes and thank whatever greater power there might be deciding my fate I don't have to go to detention after work.

It's highly unlikely that I will be told to stay behind and write I MUST NOT TALK AT WORK over and over again for half an hour, as punishment for the minor crime of daring to ask a colleague if they've seen Justin Bieber's leaked nude photographs.

The novelty of not having to go to school has never truly worn off for me. It's not that I hated school. I despised every single day of it. Every day I was too scared to bunk off for fear of the wrath of my mother was a day I abhorred.

In year seven, we were made to shower after every PE lesson. Even if I'd spent the whole lesson standing around in an obscenely yellow polo shirt watching other girls jump over a pole of their own volition thinking 'there's no way on this planet I'm going to do this flaming nonsense'. There was no reason for me to shower – I hadn't broken a sweat on any other part of my body but my palms. And even then it was because I'd clenched them shut in frustration at the cruel hand the 12-year-old me felt she'd been dealt.

As I stripped into little skinny nothingness, I wet only my hair, my arms and my legs in a bid to convince the hawk-eyed gym teacher I'd actually washed. Sometimes she'd bust me, and send me back to shower for real, and I would imagine forcing the shower head into her mouth until the water cascaded from her nose and ears. That's one shower little me would have been happy to bask in, I'm sure.

In the rush to get to the next lesson, I'd pull my clothes over my still damp skin, my little pants rolling into bunches and defying me as I cursed them to hell. Still sodden and miserable, I'd make my way to the next lesson, carrying a huge backpack of gear that threatened to topple me if I walked around corners too quickly.

The fact my boss doesn't make me play rounders against my fellow writers and then bark at me to shower in record time is something I cherish most about her. I don't think I've ever told her how much I love and respect her for not making me run 800-metres around a track on a Wednesday morning. So I'll take this opportunity now: thank you.

It wasn't just PE I was glad to see the back of when I left school more than a decade ago. Aside from the occasional pub quiz on the electronic machine down the boozer, I have never once needed to recall the table of chemical elements. Not even once.

I've never since seen a Bunsen burner out here in the real world, and I have no use for a teat pipette. I'm not saying chemistry is a pointless subject, of course. But for me, it was a load of carbon, radium, phosphorous (C, Ra, P). Oh wait, I've just used chemical symbols for the first time in my adult life. Thanks for the help, Google.

There were some subjects I loved. English is the first, of course, because I was allowed to read aloud in class and I have always enjoyed the sound of my own voice (I MUST NOT TALK AT WORK, I MUST NOT TALK AT WORK). I got to read books by great writers such as Shakespeare, John Steinbeck and George Bernard Shaw and it gave me an excuse to practice my handwriting which, I can assure you, is great. If they gave gold medals for nice-girl's writing, instead of high jumps, I'd be the champion of the world.

I also had a lot of time for RE, because I'm exceptionally nosy and really wanted to understand why some people wore turbans and why others didn't come into assembly with the rest of us to sing hymns.

I liked music, because I could sing loudly without obtaining even MORE lines, and I could sit and listen to pieces of chill-out classical music so long as I made an extra effort to identify the violas correctly (less whiny than a violin, more whiny than a cello).

But despite these few, small joys, school for me was five years of misery, the likes of which I've never looked back on and thought 'I'd love to go back'.

However, this week (for work) I have to regress back to being 12, visiting my old high school to take on a day as a student. Can you please phone in sick for me? I've got a tummy ache . . .