My birthday. Away at boarding school as I had been since 1970.
Saturday 27th September 1975
Lessons ended at lunch time or break, I don’t recall, but we had classes. Tweed jacket, black trousers, white shirt and tie, the sound of rugby boots on gravel as boys trotted off to house rugger matches or to watch the First Eleven. I couldn’t play having smashed my leg badly skiing in March. I had a limp. One foot smaller than the other and to support my ankle I wore non-regulation ankle boots. I acquired the nickname ‘booties’
Mum appeared in her navy Austin Maxi, my older brother beside me with his restless energy and advanced DIY motorised go-kart schemes. Mum had driven 90 miles from Newcastle and booked into the Cross Keys at Cautley. The inn was owned by a former pastry chef of Sharrow Bay, so we had to have pudding.
My memories are cryptic. My diary entry consists of a single line.
After lunch we wandered up towards Cautley Spout, not far. The hillsides were raw with sheep and bog, streams cutting deep dells. Mum walked gently, fussing about my healing leg. My brother spotted an abandoned van and with improbable resource produced a hacksaw to claim the steering wheel. His world was practical, mechanical; mine was more about watching, imagining, judging.
The return to Winder House was muted. The car headlights swept across the forecourt, then we were back inside the regime—prayers, rollcall, acquaintances, not friends. For a few hours, I had been someone’s young teenage son; now again an inmate of ‘posh prison’.
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