My son Owen is in the middle of his A level exams, which has brought back vivid memories of my own A levels, which began 44 years ago this weekend, on 7 June 1982. (These are the school leaving exams in Wales, England and Northern Ireland.) I have a detailed record of my A level experience because I kept a diary for the first time that year.

I never expected Britain to be at war when I sat those exams. Let alone fighting Argentina over a group of islands 8,000 miles away.

Yet that was the reality as I woke on the morning of Friday 2 April 1982. As I slowly woke at the start of the last day of the school term, I seemed to hear some retired general on Radio 4’s Today programme talking of nuking Buenos Aires, and assumed it must be a weird dream. Later that day, we learned that Argentina had invaded the Falkland islands, one of the few remaining British overseas territories. Margaret Thatcher’s British government was stunned. I wrote more about the war on the 40th anniversary.

The war wasn’t the only historic event that spring. The week before my first A level, Pope John Paul II visited Cardiff at the end of his visit to Great Britain. Dad was in charge of the papal media centre, while my friend Anthony served food at the papal youth event at Ninian Park, the last event before the pope left Britain. (Anthony said seeing hot dogs being ‘cooked’ put him off them for life.)

The day I sat my second A level, Tuesday 8 June, I noted that the first film had arrived of British forces on the Falklands after the 21 May ‘D-Day’ landings. To those used to instant news from more recent conflicts, the Falklands was closer to the radio and newsreel reporting of 1939-45. All news footage had to be taken 8,000 miles back to Britain, and reviewed by censors, so it took up to two weeks for it to be shown on British television. (On 13 May, I was late going to school, as I wanted to watch the first film of the naval task force, broadcast by the BBC at 8.50am.)

Later that Tuesday, Argentinian aircraft bombed the British ship Sir Galahad, which was acting as a troop carrier for the Welsh Guards. That night I noted in my diary that ITN had reported ‘several of our ships damaged’. The following day, I recorded that it was ‘clear that there were many casualties in yesterday’s Argentine action – 20 dead?’ Sadly, the toll was far greater: 48 crew and Welsh soldiers lost their lives. Survivors included Simon Weston from Nelson, South Wales, who was badly burned and later endured 96 major operations. He later recalled:

‘My first … really low point was when they wheeled me into the transit hospital at RAF Lyneham and I passed my mother in the corridor and she said to my gran, “Oh Mam, look at that poor boy” and I cried out “Mam, it’s me!” As she recognised my voice her face turned to stone.’

On the evening of Sunday 13 June, my revision for the following day’s macro economics A level was interrupted when I answered a phone call. It was the Daily Mail, calling to tell Dad that HMS Glamorgan had been hit by an Exocet missile, killing 12 men. Dad was public relations officer for South Glamorgan council, and the paper wanted a comment from South Glamorgan about the news.

Argentinian forces on the Falklands surrendered on Monday 14 June, the day I sat my second economics A level. I noted the exam was ‘harder than hoped for, but reasonable nevertheless’. (Talk about hedging my verdict!) I was pleased to have a ‘very good’ question about incomes policy, the classic 1970s phenomenon that Margaret Thatcher had already consigned to history, at least for the private sector.

I had begun that morning with 40 minutes of light revision until 10.10am (very specific!) when I played soccer with friends for 97 minutes. I relished letting off steam in this way during my A level season, declaring in my diary, ‘This is the life! It seems important to get in the right mood for exams, not that I’ve been suffering from tension. More a question of hoping for the right questions, and improvising if they don’t turn up’.

The following day’s third English A level included prose and poetry questions about war, which seemed topical.

Incidentally, the Falklands wasn’t the only conflict during our A levels. Israel invaded Lebanon the day before my first exam. My father, Bob Skinner, was in Jerusalem at the time, on an ill-timed mission to secure tourist flights to Israel from Cardiff airport. Dad was invited to dinner by the general manager of the Hilton hotel. Half way through the meal, his host suddenly apologised that he had to leave right away, as he had been called up for military duty.

My reflections on the war as my A levels drew closer

(My diary note for Saturday 5 June, two days before my first A level on the Monday)

‘Another glorious day’s weather. [Temperatures were in the mid 80s – these were the final years of using Fahrenheit.] There has been a considerable lull in the Falklands war, apart from the landing of an RAF Vulcan V-bomber in Brazil (!) on Thursday. Surely Britain isn’t waiting for Monday?

‘It seems incredible that this crisis – war – should have lasted this long. On 2 April we simply wondered whether it would be over by the time we went back [to school] after Easter [on 19 April]. We joked about veinticinco de Mayo [Argentina’s national day, and the name of its only aircraft carrier, the former British second world war ship HMS Venerable]. That it would still be going on at the time of our A levels is, looking back, unbelievable. The jokes are that it will be over by Christmas. The war, though probably not the basic disagreement, surely will be.

‘It is surprising, even fascinating, how attitudes towards [the war] and its effect on us change. Over Easter it was a grave distraction from revision. The paucity of information and the ‘peace negotiations’ made it irresistible to listen to every bulletin, every report, especially as BBC and ITV bulletins had very different assessments of the chances of a settlement. At times they placed almost reckless confidence in the chances of a settlement – for example, on 28 April before the total exclusion zone was imposed, and 6 May [after the Argentinian cruiser General Belgrano and HMS Sheffield were destroyed].

‘This war is losing its ability to shock. It is difficult to recapture the reaction to the 2 April [Argentinian invasion]: staggering, shocking; incredulity. All this was true.

‘Back to reality – or Saturday 5 June. Anthony phones. After a day of laborious – frustrating – revision, shot through with the feeling that ‘I’m not getting anywhere’ – which I wasn’t – a game of soccer was just what I needed.’

I also reflected that evening on my mood in the final days before the exams.

‘It’s strange to contrast the casual attitude I seem to be taking to these exams. It’s not complacency — far from it — but more a realisation that possibly adrenaline is an inadequate stimulus to work. That’s my theory and I only hope it works. One thing is certain: I’m more prepared for English, history, and economics being perhaps another story. It’s 12:11 a.m. Sunday now, and I seem to harbour the naive belief that I’m about to do at least two hours’ work.’ {As it turned out, I did better in history and economics, with the top grade, A, than in English, B.]

This late night revision was a new departure for me. I only started doing this (and early morning work) during my ‘mock’ A level exams three months earlier, prompted by the example of my friend Anthony. Perhaps more helpful were our regular games of football – soccer as I called it in my diary, disproving the idea that the word is a recent Americanism.

Incidentally, I now realise one huge contrast between my A level preparations and Owen’s 44 years later. Today’s students test themselves with past exam papers to assess how ready they are. As a result, they have a far better idea of the questions that are likely to come up. We didn’t do this, as my diary confirms. The day before my first economics exam, I admitted that it was hard to know how prepared I was ‘not having written an economics answer in the three months’ since the mock exams.

Invading Cardiff’s Roath Park Lake islands

I included this photo of 18 year old me on an island on a Cardiff lake at the start of this blogpost. Here’s the story behind it.

The very day that British troops landed on the Falklands to confront the Argentinian occupiers, 21 May, a group of Cardiff High School six form students landed on two much smaller islands. Roath Park Lake, just down the road from Cardiff High School, has five wooded islands, and nine of us decided that it would be great fun to hire rowing boats and land on them.

Judging from my sketch (the dark circles, above) we landed on two of the islands, and one of my friends took the photo of me on one of them. One of us must have taken a camera, although I haven’t seen any other photos of the adventure. (If my 1982 friends have any, do let me know!) We mounted another landing the following week, on Argentina’s national day. veinticinco de Mayo. As I reported in my diary:

‘Our “invasion” on the lake was more of a fiasco than the original. The naval battle was incredible, with me, Beaver and Dunc getting revenge on Anthony, Bruce et al. Beaver got struck in the eye with an oar! We got soaked, and don’t want another invasion for some time.’

I suggested in my diary that our own adventures reflected the ‘excitement’ over the war and that we wanted to ‘play some part, but without the pain, the anguish and the discomfort’. I added that it reflected our realisation that this war was historic. ‘We are living out, in our mundane way, this piece of living nostalgia’.

On the day we officially left school, Friday 28 May, another group of six formers sank two rowing boats on the lake. It sounded serious – the police were called – but we found out later that the parks people took a relaxed view of it, and no further action was taken. Possibly as a result of these teenage high jinks, Cardiff City Council fenced off the area of Roath Park Lake that included the islands, so people could no longer row round them, let alone stage landings. That may be the least known consequence of the Falklands war.

I should finish this blogpost with an apology. This post reflects the excitement that this unlikely war created amongst a group of teenagers as they prepared to sit important exams. (In my defence, I’d point out that finding Britain at war was a novel experience for us in 1982, years before Tony Blair’s disastrous decisions to join America’s invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan.) The grim reality is that over 900 men, and three women Falkland islanders, died during the 1982 conflict, while many survivors were scarred physically and mentally by their experiences. It is tragic that 44 years after the Falklands war leaders like Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump think nothing of ruining millions of lives by launching military adventures.