My pen pal snogged the girl of my dreams

In the latest of his reflections, Will Gore recalls how heads turned as he and his oh-so-cool German exchange partner walked through the school gates

Brat pack: Judd Nelson, Emilio Estevez, Ally Sheedy, Molly Ringwald and Anthony Michael Hall in John Hughes’ 1985 film ‘The Breakfast Club’ (Universal)

I suppose pen pals don’t exist any longer, at least technically. What is the equivalent for the internet age, “e-mates”? “Digi-buds”?

What’s more, in the globalised world there is presumably no need to randomly connect with a bookish nerd from Essen or a devil-may-care BMX afficionado from La Rochelle, when like-minded bods from around the planet can be found in an instant, lip-syncing to your favourite song on TikTok.

Had I joined in with the rest of my class I would have ended up being attached to a lad called Marko. His letter was handed to me by our German teacher as we began the school exchange process one day in Year 8. Marko had big, curly writing and, at the end of his script – which included all the usual niceties about hobbies and pets – he had added a cartoonish picture of a man smoking a fat cigarette, with the word “cool!” beneath it.