Sunday 9th March 1975
Letter Home
Dear Mum,
Thank tonnes (new metric ton) for coming yesterday. By the way, the place Dad goes skiing is La Plagne? I have no idea where that is.
Don’t work yourself to death getting all our clothes. I’m sure that we’ll manage. I hope you and Jo keep up those exercises; they’ll be very useful for skiing and will make you feel more lively and healthy.
There isn’t much to say that you don’t know already.
See you Wednesday?
P.S. I’ve just asked B if he had started to get Sedbergh clothes, and he hasn’t. If you still have the jacket, you could try and contact Mrs. Parker, who is very artistic, by the way, and ask her. B says he will write and tell her.
Diary Entry
‘Read ‘killer’ in the morning. Write a list of swimmers, write out the days hymns for church. Church goes well. Choir very expressionate (sic). Write 4 letters. Change for swimming. Go swimming. Everyone much faster myself 33 yards in 20 seconds. Have tuck. Come back. Play Fives win 15-2. Do some scenery painting. Plunge. Hair wash. Watch box. Play bugger my neighbour. Watch Colditz. Dream as usual. I do most nights’.
The book was Killer by Joey, whom I dubbed Killer Joey. It is an extremely violent tale about a Mafia murderer. I wonder if my brother or a much older second cousin who stayed with us while studying at Newcastle University has been reading it. It was one of the first adult books I had read.
I wrote a list of hymns for church, which Mrs. T. gave me. The Church went well, and the choir was very expressive. The twenty or so of us in the choir faced each other across the chancel, the younger sopranos in front. The Head and second choristers kept time together, conducting with our right hand and following the organist.
Letter Writing. Wrote four letters. This was a formal supervised exercise in a classroom after church and before we were released to play before Sunday lunch. Letters typically went to Mum, Dad, Grandparents, and perhaps a female acquaintance, best described as a penpal.
Changed for swimming. We took a bus to Newburn. I swam 33 yards in 20 seconds. Everyone was much faster. The Pescod brothers, who lived in Hong Kong, were strong swimmers. I’ve written before about the deep frustration of not getting proper swim teaching or coaching.
Had tuck. Sweats from a vending machine. Came back.
Played Fives and won 15-2. I’m not sure against whom; it’s likely one of the other DCs. The Fives court was next to the gym in the stable block. We had Fives gloves and balls, but these were in rare supply, so we didn’t play often. I presume the court was part of the old hall. We played a similar game with a tennis ball in the DC’s common room, whacking it around and hoping it wouldn’t smash a window, which it sometimes did. When there were enough of us, we played Pirates in the gym—not allowed to touch the floor off any mattress, and being ‘got’ if someone puts their hand in your back.
Did some scenery painting for a production of either Alice Through the Looking Glass, with Alice played by a boy, of course, or Wind in the Willows. I was painting strange objects to appear on a shelf in a shop. My school roles to date had been: tree, back end of a cow, lady-in-waiting, and the station master in The Ghost Train. I have some photos.
We had plunge baths and a hair washing. This refers to the communal plunge bath and likely a weekly hair wash. Soap came from a commercial-sized container. At the end of term, Maty Ma, as we called Matron, would fill the plunge bath high, making it more like a swimming pool.
Played Bugger My Neighbour. Likely with cards in our common room. The DC’s common room was small, more snug with leather-bound chairs and a couch, like a gentleman’s club.
Watched Colditz. In the woods, we played war games, imagining ourselves with machine guns and hand grenades—Japs and Commandos, typically. Some teachers were army or navy veterans. The dens had trenches, barbed wire, arms stores, traps, and lookout points.
The woods were a wonder of climbs, tree falls, dens and paths.
Dreamed as usual. I do most nights. I wrote dreams down some years later. I had a copy of Jung’s Man and His Symbols. The more I wrote down, the more I taught myself to remember them. The only Mowden dream I can recall for now is being dressed like one of the three musketeers and being run through, then finding a way to return to the dream behind my enemies, whom I then vanquished. I also had dreams of falling. And a dream about the Head Master behaving badly with a sheep!
There was a ‘sick dorm’ for anyone running a temperature. I often suffered from earache, known to the Matron as ‘fakeritis’ since it wasn’t associated with a temperature. It’s taken a lifetime to identify the problem: certain foods, sugar, flavourings, preservatives, additives, milk in certain forms, and yeast cause swelling, earache, and mucus in my throat. Too much of something could make me physically sick. I received no sympathy or understanding from the school. The same applied to my undiagnosed asthma, which was only identified when I was 18. I have an allergy to house dust and damp spores.
I remember being in the sick dorm, and the boy next to me had asthma. When I heard his wheezing, I imagined a cortège slowly coming down the corridor carrying a draped coffin. It was so vivid I could see it in my mind’s eye. I reflected on it often enough and later felt the physical pain of asthma myself in my late teens.
I had a specific dream or image in my head whenever I was about to be sick, which was surprisingly often. I’m not good with milk, sugar, large amounts of cake, or cheese. The dream was a collection of bobbins of different colours with slowly unwinding thread. They were all suspended in mid-air, in suspended animation, each turning and twisting. The image matched a feeling of being seasick. Hypnotic is the key word. It was as if the disorientation in my head was reflected by an unsettled stomach, which would be cured by vomiting. Sitting up and staying very still was my only way of counteracting it, but it wasn’t always enough. This dream alerts me to wake up, get out of bed slowly and head for the bathroom.
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