Sometimes it's good to be a little less rebellious - Jenny Lindsay

One of those girls unattracted by floppy-fringed peers with high-cheekbones, who self-published poetry pamphlets with titles like ‘The Agony of Me.’

If I hadn’t become smitten with every guy who liked The Cranberries, or learned how to roll my own cigarettes at the age of 15; bunked off school to watch zombie films with a stoner boyfriend – at my worst I had 56 per cent attendance across a four month period – then maybe I’d have managed to scrape more than four Bs across two years of Highers.

This weekend, British actor Bella Ramsey, best known for her role in Game of Thrones - which she starred in from the age of only 11 – reflected on a conscious choice she made to be a sensible teen.

“I kind of wish that I had made the most of being a teenager and getting away with things and being a bit rebellious,” she said.

During filming for her latest movie, Sunny Dancer, which is about a summer camp for teenagers affected by cancer, Ramsey says being with the young cast members opened her eyes to her lack of experience.

Surrounded by adults for most of her formative years, she built a successful and impressive career. But I can understand the loss she may feel at having never been sick in a park with a bunch of fellow dirtbags, or getting away with staying out all night in the company of a moody, raven-haired beauty, serenading you with dark love songs, like some people have.

You don’t realise you’ve been a walking stereotype until you stop being one. While I was never drawn to hard drugs or the dangers of That Flat on the High Street (everyone in a small town knows where That Flat is), I could’ve been more sensible. Less short-term in my attitudes.

While my truancy often included skiving so I could study, and being removed from class once resulted in me nicking Orwell books from the English staff base, mostly, I was cultivating a rebellion against adult authority of any kind.

There’s a place for healthy scepticism of those in charge. But it would eventually lead to dropping out of university in a hail of failure, having indebted myself unnecessarily with a full student loan, purely so I could escape Ayrshire and get to Edinburgh, aged 17.

An incapability of thinking long-term – a common trait in smokers, addicts, and those who do something as idiotic as decide to work in the arts for a living – continued for some years.

Everything was Very Important. Urgent.

Particularly matters of the heart. I’ll spare the details. Let’s just say, I concur with Iris Murdoch that “There is nothing like early promiscuous sex for dispelling life’s bright mysterious expectations.”

I’ve now followed the pattern my 17-year-old self would’ve been appalled by, and become far more conservative in middle-age. Cliches become so for a reason. It’s less a case of self- interest making one resist bombast and hedonism, but wisdom. Then again, what conservative wouldn’t claim that?

Having returned to my Ayrshire home half a decade ago, I know ‘getting away with things’ in your youth doesn’t last.

Reconnecting with an old school friend last year, who never left the Shire and who I’d completely lost touch with until recently, she filled me in on the fates of many of our classmates.

Some hadn’t been friends, some quite the opposite. But, as she reeled off a list of familiar names followed by their one-word fate, it was shocking.

Drugs. Booze. Jail. Jail. Dead. Dead. Jail. Heroin overdose. Fatal heart attack at 46 years old.

Puts my skiving into some perspective. Her matter-of-factness, having had a front row seat to these struggles in the small town we grew up in, whose oppressive everybody-knows-your-business atmosphere had repelled me eastwards in the first place, was sobering. Of course, Bella Ramsey likely isn’t thinking of South Ayrshire style rebellion, with its self- harming excesses and boredom-filling disrespect for sobriety. It’s possible she has in mind getting away with hiding an ill-advised tattoo from your parents, dying your hair bright purple, or flirting with bisexuality.

Also, before I paint an overly dreadful picture of both my home town – and my former peer group – some of the most rebellious friends I had now live enviously ordinary lives, filled with family, love, and a healthy respect for what’s most important.

Increasingly – and here my midlife crisis and newly-found conservatism rears its head again – I think that is getting to a stage of life where it’s possible to have regrets. And it not mattering. Knowing who, and what, to allow in your head. Getting out of the place where love is not, even if it feels for some time that there’s nowhere else to go.

I recently had a wonderful reunion with some fellow ‘returners’ to Ayrshire; those of us who, for a variety of reasons, have found ourselves back in a place we’d never imagined we’d ever wish to come back to.

Once, we’d have been moshing, flirting, faking IDs to get in to the Powerhouse. Around the table were people who, for some years, rarely saw me sober in my late teens.

That night – as if we’d never been apart – we toasted D, who recently left us too young – and discussed, amongst other things, council plans for our high street’s rejuvenation, whether social media should be banned for kids, and how – when all’s said and done – we were glad to be here.

A quiet one, a couple of jars, hugs from people who’ve known the worst of you, and still want your company.

It felt good. It felt rebellious.