THERE are few things in life more futile than wishing you were young again; but who in their 'middle youth' hasn't wanted to rewind a few years when presented with a mirror, or worse still, a camera lens?

So far, however, I've never longed to return to my schooldays. No, those years of misery, hatred and loathing return only in recurring nightmares from which I awake, sweating and terrified, in the early hours of the morning.

These dreams tend to involve turning up for my French 'A' level, having unaccountably left all my clothes at home.

My psychiatrist tells me this is a common enough nightmare, but it seems to have become a bit too real for comfort for poor old Ashley Davis, an unfortunate Wolverhampton 16-year-old sent home from a crucial exam.

Thankfully, Ashley wasn't in his birthday suit, but he got turned away because he turned up in grey trousers rather than the regulation black.

Ashley's case is just one of a number of stories in the news this week that remind me just how wretched going to school really was.

In Scotland, some teacher is meant to have recruited a 'private army' of nine-year-old girls and issued them with rulers with which to discipline eight-year-old boys caught chatting in class.

Sadly, it is not recorded whether the lads got the flat of the ruler across their knuckles, but if post-traumatic stress disorder serves me right, the thin edge often delivered a more persuasive argument.

The teacher is likely to be effectively 'struck off' for her tough line on classroom order, which seems a bit harsh when you consider what constitutes a clip round the earhole in Japan.

Apparently, a 17-year-old who fell asleep in class there has been made to write an essay of apology - in his own blood.

He had to take a box-cutter to his thumb and use his blood as ink because his teacher judged he had not shown enough remorse for his doziness. Now, that'll teach him.

The main education talking-point of the week, however, has raged for decades in British schools.

Why, as long ago as my own schooldays there was a war of attrition over the length of the school skirt.

At our school, we didn't have much to celebrate when it came to uniform. The girls' school down the road had chosen a nice claret and grey kit, and even my brother and sister had an inoffensive navy blue get-up.

But not me. My school went in for brown and yellow ties, brown gym slips or skirts, and a fetching khaki geometric design for summer dresses.

Little wonder we girls rolled up our waistbands and left our collars undone on the sly. Heck, some of us even went so far as to buy skirts without the regulation zipped pockets for our purses and keys.

But what we wanted, far more than any right to choose the length of our skirts, was the right to wear trousers.

The lads might complain about blazers and ties in stuffy summer classrooms; but their hell was as nothing compared to the torment of winter dinner breaks with nothing but Start-Rites and an A-line gabardine number to keep the arctic blast at bay.

We would have leapt at the chance to make our chilblains and goosebumps history, and I'm sure things haven't altered down the years. So who on earth can be making such a fuss about young women being forced out of their minis and into a pair of slacks?

Updated: 10:21 Wednesday, June 23, 2004