Winder House, Sedbergh School
German was dull – just going over the same chapter yet again. The teacher was boring; he made the subject dull. It was all about learning from the textbook. We were in the old Victorian teaching block, second floor, down the corridor. The classrooms were large, deep and square, with functional linoleum-covered tables and chairs; the windows were high, stone Victorian and monastic-like. The teacher may have been on a platform with a blackboard behind and various subject-related posters and maps displayed. He was an Englishman, possibly late twenties or early thirties, and new to Sedbergh. He’d worked or taught in Germany, of course. We worked from a standard textbook. Two years later, I dug out my book again after meeting a German girl I fancied, and I made rapid progress in German over those two weeks of summer holidays in 1978, faster than in two years of German at school.
I had only taken German to get out of Latin. I would soon drop Latin, then German, as I entered my O-Level year.
Two rooms back down the corridor, and we had a French test, which I hadn’t expected. I got 20/25. Not bad, given that I have got 3 or fewer out of 25 in the past. With languages, the problem was a lack of cultural or social engagement. I need to visit the country, to see its films, to listen to its music. To make friends, to fall in love … to become European.
We had an engaging French teacher my first year who indulged my efforts to write poetry and song lyrics in French. I would do so much more with the language if we had got away from textbooks and rote vocabulary and grammar, and stuck with spoken, lived French. Four years later I find myself on Radio Val d’Isere playing the guitar and singing songs with French lyrics – school wasn’t going to get in my
As well as Petit Nicholas, we had Voix et Images de France, Credif; and Grammar notes. My relationship with French was a romantic one; I felt it was sullied by being taught at me. Imagine having lessons on falling in love.
In a different block, a Geography test, an essay, and we watched a film on worldwide crops. This could not have been a video. Or did the school have some contraption for playing content to a screen? A heavy-duty machine and TV that got wheeled between classrooms? Or was it a programme being transmitted on BBC2 at that time? The only 16mm projector was in the assembly hall, or the only lecture theatre. I’d always felt an affinity with Geography, its international scope, the physicality of landscapes and urban environments.
Break.
This required a 0.4 mile walk across the school campus, past the cricket field and Chapel, and along Lupton Lane. I made toast, with butter and Marmite, instant coffee and Jammie Dodgers. Did we call it ‘the pantry’? These supplies came from my tuck box. We made our brews in a space near the hatches through to the House kitchens, and then ate in the common room, where some boys played table tennis or read newspapers.
We could get subscriptions to papers, and, being suitably pretentious, I got the FT if only to look at the share price of FIH PLC, my father’s business. The rest of it was meaningless to me, and I took no interest in current affairs, politics and big business.
Forgot Maths book and Flute.
I assume, having realised, I ran back to Winder House for both – a few days later another boy dies the same and we time him. He got there and back in under ten minutes. Or did I realise on the way in that I had forgotten them? More likely. A note in my diary feels like a reminder not to do this again. Not that I was writing a reflective diary, as I didn’t read this stuff back until I came back to the same day a year later. I could tell you what I was doing on this day in 1976,77,78,79,80 – all the way through to the 1990s.
Maths bad in prep:
Music
In my music lesson during the music block or house, I played Beethoven’s Ländler, not very well. I have no recollection of which. I started on a Mexican-style Grieg. Was it syncopated? Who knows!
Two things had disrupted my music progress since prep: school – I had had six months off school after badly breaking my leg (skiing), and so had not sung in a choir (sight reading), or played my flute or the piano at all. I had a brace fitted, which made playing the flute difficult, even though we didn’t have a piano at home. Dad had bought a pricey short-keyboard electric piano, which I hadn’t used much because it didn’t have the full seven-octave range and sounded naff.
Lunch.
I carry Pill’s case (George Pilkington) when he gets a report. (?) He was in my year, younger. I had no idea what ‘getting a report’ meant, but it clearly meant he was off to a meeting and wanted someone to take his case back to the house.
We had briefcases, I think, for our school things, not satchels. We all looked like ‘young, sirs’, commuting into the city, especially on a rainy day in grey macks, with an umbrella. I have a feeling only prefects were allowed umbrellas. All we lesser mortals could do was put our collars up.
Go for a walk on Settlebeck. Think of Motte and Bailey.
I loved escaping onto the fells, following a beck upstream into the hills, hidden from everyone. I still do it, following streams to the source. If I saw a chance to block the flow of the water by moving a stone or branch I’d do so; if the stream was blocked with leaf litter or a tangle of something I’d help break the water free – what was that about?
Come summer, I’d strip off and sunbathe, often naked. Whether I was ever spotted is another matter – it was never mentioned. I’d tuck myself under a south-facing hawthorn bush well away from any path or prying eyes. There must have been some lumpen natural feature which made me think of a motte and bailey.
We had formal sports for two hours every weekday afternoon. Had I signed up for squash or swimming, then taken myself off for a walk? Or was a walk/run up Winder a thing? Possibly.
Tea
Back at the house, exactly like break: a brew, cuppa soup, sandwich spread on toast kind of thing.
Practice piano in our ‘music cubes’ – three external spaces in the rear yard. These brick, or stone spaces, enough for an upright piano, a stool and a music-stand, were where anyone taking a musical instrument had to practice, whether you played the bassoon, flute, piano or drums. A year later, I’m in here with two other boys learning six songs to perform in a set. We included the Sex Pistols ‘Anarchy in the UK’ which delivered the iconic moment of the House Master going behind the stage to unplug the amp, for another year.
Take work, life-saving and blocking (water polo).
The school pool was a sad four-lane, 25m affair. There was formal squad training, which I did, two-hour sets at least four afternoons a week. Otherwise, it was pool-time to accommodate non-competitive swimmers, so a shambolic water-polo, or life-saving.
Grubber
The school tuck shop was run by three large, elderly ladies who smelt of body odour and urine.
This was off the Library Car park. A low-rise, grotty, pebble-dashed building. It had the vibe of a 1950s transport café, but was filled only with teenage boys. A loathesome space, but the confectionery was cheap. Curl-Whirlies, Polo mints and Opal Fruits come to mind. Give me eight years, and I’d be working on the Rowntrees Polo Account at J Walter Thompson – just saying.
Supper. At the House.
Two courses. Came in on trays picked up from a hatch the other side of the dining room? We sat in year groups. 8 to 6 to a table. A read plastic ‘slop bowl’ in the middle for scraps.
Divinity prep.
Prep: was formal time, in our common room or studies, no music, no. games. I guess it was for 45 minutes to an hour from around 7.00pm.
I have no idea what, but I had rejected religion, so I considered this to be a scripture class—badly written hackneyed stories of dubious origin for witless people. I go full on rejection of Christianity when I choose not to get confirmed. I wish I’d had the wit to convert to another religion and so get out of Chapel on a Sunday, for another life and another version of me.
Change rooms.
Could this have been a move across from one junior common room to a larger middle common room? This was the common space for Third Formers and Fourth Formers. I sat awkwardly between the two as I would have been in the Fourth Form already had I not missed the entire summer term. I gave up being one of the more senior and older boys on the top rung of the ladder in the junior common room, to being the most junior boy, an interloper even, on the bottom rung of the Fourth Former’s common room – and I was a Third Former. I had to keep my head down and avoid conflict or being told to ‘watch my nip’ if I did anything that junior boys should not do. It was always the other most junior boy in the pecking order who wanted to ensure that I understood that my place was beneath him. If it gave him someone he thought he could boss around, he was mistaken.
Leave a Reply