First day at Sedbergh. Felt embarrassed to go in because of orthodontic brace. Go in. Yacoub has a large guitar. Unpack trunks. (Will write essay).
I note later: what a hope. Didn’t do a thing. (In relation to writing up my first day at another all male boarding school, having already endured five years of all male boarding prep-school)
‘Was unpopular for first term’, I wrote at some stage later, adding ‘am now good friends with ‘the lads’.’
Fifty years on I am finally getting round to the task of writing up those few days.
I was recently out of a walking plaster having badly broken my leg in March. I limped and wore ankle boots (by special dispensation). I wasn’t long off crutches. I wouldn’t use a stick. Two nicknames were quickly thrown my way ‘hoppety’ and then ‘boots’ soon turned into the more derogatory ‘booties’. Later, as friends/acquaintances (enemies) from my boarding prep school emerged (from other houses), the detested nickname ‘Granny’ came back into partial use. I’m surprised I even dare mention it here I so hated being called that and have defined or redefined myself ever since by what they meant – my predilection for adhering to rules and seeing rhat others did the same.
Arrival & First Impressions
Who brought you? Mother, father, both? How did their demeanour affect you—brisk, emotional, or detached?
Divorced for three years, separated two years before that my parents lived in different orbits: my mother in the family home in Gosforth; my father now resident at Appleby Castle, not only a home, but the HQ and training centre for the PLC businesses he ran.
For two years, and so six return journeys my brother had been put onto the private hire bus from the other side of the Great North Road frim where we lived – organised by the mother of a Sedbergh boys who lived in Melton Park. I’m sure I joined my brother with my own trunk and tuc box, both which has seen five years of use already at Mowden. I’d have been sent to Isaac Waltons in Newcastle with a note from my mother – equip this boy with school kit as required. I have a note glued into a scrap book that was from my mother along the lines of ‘Please supply my son with a school blazer and a skirt’ yes! Because I was expected to pick up something for my sister.
What did the school smell and sound like as you crossed the threshold? (Echoes in corridors, polish, wet wool, the scrape of trunks on stairs.)
We were dropped in a car park in the centre of Sedbergh. From here we took it in turns to use any of a collection of luggage trolleys to wheel or stuff up the hill and along the drive to Winder House. This tool is up oart of the school cricket pitch, passed Chapel, passed a collection of squash courts and the School Sanatorium (which I was never to enter in my three years) and along the drive looking over the town and a rugby field (or two) to the gates of Winder House.
Winder is unchanged 50 years on, a three or even four story mansion house with grit courtyard at the rear and only entrance used by boys. Some musical rooms like a collection of outside tookiwts to one side, an awning before the entrance in the hall. From here if I recall it was left to junior common rooms, common room/tv room and the dining room. It was onwards or left to the toilet block and bath/showers. There were six baths, three either side of the same tilted space – bathing was a communal affair as it had been at Mowden.
Upstairs took you to studies, spaces for individual senior boys, and studies shared by two or three for the more junior. For our first and possibly second years we were in common rooms. On that floor, and up to the third floor there were two long spaces, reaching to either side of the building, best described as a Victorian Ward with the beds enclosed not by curtains but wooden cubicles with a door. We first years, for that year only if I recall, we’re in the only open dormitory shared by perhaps 12 boys – that years intake to this house.
I recall my older brother taking me to a communal space next to the kitchens where there was a single gas ring, a kettle and toaster where snacks could be cooked up. He proudly shows me how to make hot chocolate by adding a splash of hot water to Hot Chocolate powder, adding sugar and then more hot water and milk.
Near here there was also a shelf or space where letters inward were left for collection. I think there was an letterbox like affair somewhere about as well.
Did you see your older brother that day? Was there a word, a glance, a sense of protection or distance?
Most of the time my brother kept to his group of friends. We went out together for expats with Mum or Dad. With Mul this might be an overnight at the Barbon Inn, with Dad
The Physical Burden
You were limping, out of plaster, boots on. Did you carry your own trunk, or did someone help? Did you feel the eyes of others on you as you moved awkwardly?
The trunks were certainly my brothers role. How he took to rhat I don’t recall. Probably with aplomb when we were both younger. He was 14 and 9 months, I was 13 and 11 months.
Was there a moment of humiliation, or did you steel yourself against it?
I think the regular back and forth walk along the drive and up school hill for assembly and lessons or to Chapep would have revealed the limp. The brace was also inescapable and the though far more common place today I don’t recall anyone else having a brace on their teeth. There would have been a quip about Jaws from the Bond movies. The boys the year above were in particular keen to establish their seniority and ensure we knew where we stood in the ‘pecking order’. This was reinforced by being given ‘fag duties’. I got off very lightly. Assigned to the rhem Head of House, I think, he had another boy and I clean a shoe each in the morning. I don’t recall anything else, like making tea and toast, or running a bath, or notoriously warming the toilet seat. Fags also had to run notes over to other houses. Something I never did, maybe because of my leg, but because I was made ‘head of fags’, possibly reputationalpy from my prep school days as the winner some few times over, of the ‘D C Prize’ (Dormitory Captain or Prefect). I was known for getting boys to abide by the rules ro the letter.
The Brace & The Guitar
You’ve remembered Yacoub’s large guitar—what did it symbolise for you that day? A flamboyant contrast to your own self-consciousness?
Away from Mowden’s restrictions I was a budding hour player. I was into strumming along to the likes of Bowie, the Beetles and Elton John. I had no qualms about singing.
Not with Yacoub, but with two other boys, lead guitar and drums, we formed a band to do covers: Thin Lizzy and The Sex Pistols come to mind.
Did the brace on your teeth ache, or did it simply ache in your mind, the embarrassment you couldn’t shake?
It was a pain. Apples were off the menu. Toffees too! If hit in the face it could puncture the lip. When I returned to rugby I needed a gum shield, in those days thought a ‘bit sissy’.
Unpacking the Trunk
Can you recall how the trunk was opened, the order of your belongings, the feel of the clothes, the smell of soap, polish, or wool?
Just emptied into assigned drawers. The tuc box was of more interest as with mum we’d assembled a collection of staples and personal goodies: sand which spread, tuna paste, baked beans, cans of Heinz tomato soup. That kind of thing.
Did your mother/father fuss, or did you insist on doing it alone?
No fuss. She’d been doing trunks since my older brother had started Mowden in 1968, and had two school age daughters at day schools with uniforms and labels to stitch into clothing.
The Dormitory
First evening—what was the dormitory like? Light fading, windows rattling, beds neatly made.
The nicely for some was striking. Those new to boarding school dominated the conversation. I dare say there were attempts at the usual tomfoolery: pillow flghts, slipper fights and lighting your fart through your pyjamas with a match.
The Rountree twin—was his presence reassuring, or did it make you more conscious of being “back at the bottom”?
I’m surprised at his total lack of interest in any of us, as if it was beneath him, event for me who was like him a former head chorister and captain of swimming at Mowden.
What was said after lights out? The first jokes, the first taunts, the whispers in the dark.
I don’t recall. Matron, a German spinster, probably ‘put us to bed’ and turned the lights out. Or the deputy House Master.
Meals & Rituals
What did you eat that evening? Was there grace, a formal system of serving? Did you know where to sit, or did you hover in uncertainty?
Grace, possibly a register taken. In all likelihood a reading and a hymn. The only recollection of meals was that they were just that: maybe mince and two veg, rhem a pudding. By comparison a lot of food at Mowden had felt like supersized snacks: marmite on toast, beans on toast and so on. Each table had a large red plastic slop bowl for scraps. There was a floor to ceiling mural of idyllic 1930s style rural and Sedbergh activities on the wall – in the style of Frank Branwyn,
Did you sense rugby already in the air—boys boasting about the game, sizing each other up?
Possible, the Head of House had the iconic brown colours blazer, rather than the tweed jacket or black jacket rhat all other boys wore. There would have been honours boards somewhere I’m sure.
The Emotional Weather
Can you name the dominant emotion of that day? Fear, embarrassment, resignation, determination?
A new, broken start. Had I arrived, as initially planned, for the summer term I would in all likelihood have remained in that year group. This would have made a massive difference. I would have been in the 4th Form, one of the most junior boys, not in the 3rd form and considered one of the most senior in that year group.
If your 13-year-old self had been forced to write one line in the “essay,” what would it have been?
Here we go again. Let the fight for the top begin once more.
KAI > This is excellent, Jonathan — you’ve already done what most people struggle with: re-inhabiting day one as both the boy and the man, layering detail, sensory memory, and hindsight. What you’ve written is effectively the bones of that “lost essay,” only now it carries the texture of fifty years’ distance.
Here’s how you could work with what you’ve produced:
What Stands Out from Your Account
- The fracture between home worlds: divorced parents, different “orbits,” and the logistics of being shuttled from Gosforth to Sedbergh. The school run itself becomes part of the initiation ritual.
- The body as marker: limp, boots, and brace all set you apart before a word was spoken. Unlike the others, you couldn’t blend into anonymity.
- Objects with charge: Yacoub’s guitar (symbol of flamboyance vs. your self-consciousness), the tuck box (a little kingdom of Heinz cans and sandwich spread), the communal kettle (a moment of brotherly pride in teaching you hot chocolate).
- Authority rejected: already wary of becoming “Granny” again, yet paradoxically placed as “head of fags” because of your prep-school reputation. A position you neither wanted nor respected.
- The dormitory shift: five years of enclosed cubicles at Mowden replaced by the exposure of an open dorm with 12 boys. The difference mattered.
- The emotional weather: you call it “a new, broken start”—that phrase could anchor the whole narrative.
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