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### Twenty Years On... We wonder at times just where the time has gone. In 1989, when the first issue of Maggie was being planned and released, we were all footloose and fancy free. In the majority of cases for those of us here in UK, we had either just left or were planning to leave school during those years. One or two of us had, of course, already left school and were trying, nay, struggling, to make it in the field of something scary called "Work". I won't bore you all here with how bad my life personally was back then as no doubt you've heard it all before anyhow. To summarise, I was working in Bedford at the time and was rather bored there / all the people I met seemed to be total dickheads and bastards and I didn't want to associate myself with them either at that time or ever again. We had people there who seemed to have no clue whatsoever about life and just muddled on, taking drugs, getting drunk and only caring about the times when they would spend hundreds of pounds a night on rounds of booze for everyone there ... Now, even though I left Bedford mainly through anger and frustration with the people there, things have taken a turn for the better, certainly in my recollections of the place and my time leading up to that, when I was still at school. Healing has now occurred and I feel all the more better for that. Having had a stammer since I first learnt to speak way back when, I finally decided to do something about it in 2003, when I joined up with a bunch of other stammerers, better or worse than myself, called the McGuire Programme. Started by an American stammerer called David McGuire back in the early nineties and using a technique which restores the power of confident speech back into us, this has been a serious godsend for me. The frustrations of not being able to speak properly, like others, were finally lifted, and through retaining the technique I was taught back in late 2003, has changed my life for the better, on all levels. I always swore that I'd never, ever, go back to my old upper school at Sharnbrook, near Bedford, ever again. But I had become softer since joining the McGuire Programme, with the pain and frustrations of not being able to speak properly having been brought under control. In mid 2006, a guy who was a year above me in the sixth form announced, via the website "Friends Reunited", that he was planning to organise a reunion for our school year. Originally this was planned to be held at some pub in Bedford, things changed however when the school were also made aware of the do, with the result that the event was to be held there instead, at a new building which had been built for the sixth form since my year had left the school. A lot of people from my year, some of whom I had been in vague contact with and others not, also found out about the event and decided to go too. And so it was that in November 2006, I was driving from my current place near Cambridge for an hour or so back to my old school. On parking my car, I was welcomed in by a gaggle of ladies who I had not seen for around 20 years. The evening passed by in a bit of a blur, but it was fantastic to get in touch with people again, guys as well as girls and reminisce about the old times, over a number of drinks, whether they were alcoholic or not. The resulting good memories have left me with a sense of being at peace and this is what I have also found with the scene at large too. I now find that I get on better with quite a lot of UK based sceners such as the Reservoir Gods and feel a lot better for this as well. Yep, I know that I fucked up at times, well, we live and learn from that. I have felt very proud to be a part of the Maggie diskzine over these years and also with the Alive diskzine and others getting contributions from me also. I do wish at times that people in the wider world outside the scene would do more to follow the scene way of life, as in, just getting on with people, rather than always striving to have the largest amount of money, the best car / house / whatever ad nauseum. Cheers, Felice. Back to News.